Website Optimisation

[BradNaylor]

I've been inundated in the last few days with PM's from forum members asking my advice on setting up websites and optimising them so that they come up near the top of Google searches.

Everybody seems to be setting up in business!! :lol:

I have accumulated a certain amount of knowledge on the subject through trial and error but I am far from being an expert. I would welcome any input from more technically minded people on the dark art of website optimisation.

My own experience is as follows;

1. Key Words

With most website design packages you will be asked to enter a list of key words and phrases which will picked up by search engines. Do this - it is very important.

Equally important however, is this;

At the bottom of each page of your website, in a font so small that it cannot be read by the naked eye, List your key words and phrases, each seperated by a comma. I don't know why it works, but it does!

2. Links

Google apparantly likes websites with lots of links to and from them. My mate Phil and I have three websites between us, all linked together. This has helped zoom all three up the rankings. So put as many links as you can in!


3. Google Maps

This is the key. Assuming that you mainly want business from your local area, register with Google Maps. It is completely free and it works amazingly.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?client=fi ... =en&tab=wl

Click on the link 'Put your business on Google Maps' and complete the form.

Within a week or so you will find your website appearing on local Google searches.

4. Local free directories and databases

If you do a search in your local area for 'cabinet makers' you will firstly get a few dotted on a map - this is Google Maps. You need to be there.

Below this however, ther will be a list of results linked through local directories such as touchlocal. There are dozens of them. A basic listing on these is usually free if you take the time to fill in the online form. The more of these you register with the higher up Google you seem to come.

5. Yell.com

This one is not free I'm afraid, but it is highy effective. Businesses with a weblink on Yell always seem to come higher up the Google rankings than ones which don't. Some people even use Yell.com as a search engine for local businesses. At around £350 per year I find it good value.

I'm sure I have only tickled the surface of what is possible - over to you, guys!

Cheers
Dan

 

[Escudo]

Dan,

When my colleague set up our web page, he managed to get it to appear at the top of the google search.

I have just checked and now my name and a link to me goes all down the first and most of the second page. Gaw'd knows how he did this, but it is very good.

Our web page is a little out of date now and needs updating, something I must organise soon - however it is very important to appear as near to the top in the google list.

Good subject this for anyone setting up in business or organising a web page.

Cheers, Tony.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I was having a conversation about this very subject on Friday evening. Paul, for that is his name, reckons that keywords no longer work as well as they used to because they are being superseded by Google Adwords. It's something I have to investigate.

As to the links. I understand that the Bots that search do some sort of correlation between your keywords and the actual content of the page. The higher the correlation, the higher your score.

They also take into account the number of links coming in from outside. This is why link exchanges are a good idea, both parties benefit. In fact, it would make sense for all of us to have a links page on our sites (I don't think it even has to be navigable toable). We could all list each others sites as links and that would help us all. I'm game, anyone want to so a swap?

S

 

[misterfish]

Talking to my son who is a software engineer heavilly involved with web development he says that the best thing to do is a search on SEO (=Search Engine Optimisation). This should give links to useful tips as well as software and specialists in the field.

Misterfish

 

[bugbear]

There a lot of guesswork and BS in this field. All the SEO companies claim they can get you to the top of the list.

A moments thought reveals that at-most-one of them is telling the truth.

Further google change their code at whim, partially to circumvent the latest trick the SEO's try.

My website is a google "top hit" for two subjects. I have not tried to SEO in any way; I simply have content that happens to be good (indeed, probably the best in its field), and Google finds it.

BugBear

 

[wizer]

I agree BugBear. The only thing I have found that really gets you high up in the lists, is page hits. You need to find some other way to get hits on your page before the search engines take notice.

 

[misterfish]

Following my initial consultation results postedabove from Simon my developer son, he has now sent me the following email full of useful information:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

I'm no expert at SEO, but here is some anecdotal hints:

1) Make sure you submit your page to google and use their tools like the website optimiser
2) Make use of Robots.Txt to only allow spidering of important pages
3) Try and make your page validate (http://validator.w3.org/)
4) Make sure you have text equivalents of all graphics (especially buttons, use alt tags etc) - in fact stick as much text as you can onto the page. Don't hide the text using css or font colours as I've heard this can rank you down (no proof of this though)
5) Make sure you have filled in the Meta Data with useful keywords
6) Try adding a block of 'about us' text; normally these are at the bottom of each page in a footer but I've heard people suggest that Google ranks text based on it's proximity to the top of the HTML file; you could try adding it first and using CSS to move it to the bottom of the page.
7) Get people to link to you - the more the better.
8 ) I believe the Google toolbar will tell you your page rank; use it to test your page.
9) Use search engine friendly URLs (that is to say, replace www.mysite.com?page=1 with something like www.mysite.com/my_first_page/page);

And finaly, cheat,

Buy some Google adwords and become a sponsored link... (be warned, competitors can out sponser you though...)

Misterfish

 

[ByronBlack]

Use wordtracker to research the correct keyword phrases, and optimise your website to include these keyword phrases in well written a good quality content. Your position in google will be determined by use of keywords - preferably ones that aren't highly competitive (forget about woodworking for example) and pagerank which is determined by the quality of incoming links.

Dan - do not put tiny writing or text with the same color as your background, or spam as many keywords you can into a small space. This will get you blacklisted from search results, and will take many months to rectify, if at all.

 

[chunkolini]

Try the google link posted by Dan (thanks Dan), I cocked it up and have to wait for a letter to give me a code to activate my two sites.
Mrs Chunkolini popped her reflexology site up, and 5 minutes later; from previously barely registering on google; she appeared on the first page, type in ross on wye and we even have our own little arrow on the map. Some other directories charge a fortune for this type of thing.

Well worth five minytes.

Chunko'.

 

[matt]

The single most effective method I've used (in combination with standards compliant design etc) is a good title. This is particularly important if you service a particular need in a particular area. Get it in the title and you'll shoot up the search engine ranking for searches similar to your title.

 

[user 5053]

It entirely depends on what field and product or service you are in and how competitive it is etc. . Google analitics is very good. The is a lot of mistique and nonsense spoken about getting up the search ranking but you just have to roll up your sleeves and get on and do the spade work yourself.

 

[matt]

The single most effective method I've used (in combination with standards compliant design etc) is a good title. This is particularly important if you service a particular need in a particular area. Get it in the title and you'll shoot up the search engine ranking for searches similar to your title.

Google search "bespoke furniture south east london". Check out the 1st site (Greenwich Wood Works) (after the sponsored links). Title tag!

Google search "handmade fitted kitchens south east london".Check out the 1st (Greenwich Wood Works) and 5th sites (Russell Blake) (after the sponsored links). Title tag!

Google search "tiling blackheath". Find the 9th site (Tactile Ceramics). This temporary holding page is just an image - no content whatsoever (not even meta data). The title tag is the most influential factor in it's Google ranking.

The examples both illustrate how influential the title tag is and also how fickle it can be too. Hence my suggestion that the more specialist your area/site the more beneficial it can be (generally speaking).

NB: Tactile Ceramics and Russell Blake have very few (if any...) links in from other sites. Greenwich Wood Works has some but not what I would call particularly good links for the content.

 

[Dave S]

They also take into account the number of links coming in from outside. This is why link exchanges are a good idea, both parties benefit. In fact, it would make sense for all of us to have a links page on our sites (I don't think it even has to be navigable toable). We could all list each others sites as links and that would help us all. I'm game, anyone want to so a swap?
S

Now my understanding is that swapping links is now a bad idea, :? because so many people were doing it that Google now pays little attention to it. I'm led to believe that it is genuine links to your site, ie links from sites that you don't link to which are of value.

But as Bugbear said, there is a lot of BS in this area. :x

Dave

 

[Steve Maskery]

How on earth are we supposed to work this game? I have an SEO company pestering me at the moment. They may be good and they may be worthless, I have no idea.

If we have to forget about "woodwork" as a keyword, and if, like mine, the business is not geographically based, then how can I get a meaningful title that is not replicated a million times?

I would love to come up under "woodworking DVDs" but I don't. Now if you search for "Steve Maskery's Woodworking DVDs" then it's a different matter. The problem is that nobody in the world is going to enter that search string, are they? It all very well having specialist keywords, but they have to be keywords that people are likely to want to search.

I don't understand it, that's for sure.
S

 

[Dave S]

Wish I knew the answer as well, Steve.

One thing I notice though...you say you'd like to come up under "woodworking DVDs" but you don't actually have that as a keyword on your product page. It doesn't seem to appear in your text either.

You also don't have "workshop essentials" as a keyword although it does appear several times in your text.

My immediate thought was that you have a lot of keywords - I wonder if that can count against you. I would have thought that several of them are not much help anyway.

The other thing I have read is that Google pays special attention to headings. Not so much <h1> but more so <h2>, <h3>. Apparently. careful use of these will help Google work out what the content of your page is about. Bearing that in mind, you might want to look at your product page. For example, the first DVD, you have this:

<div>
<h3> New!</h3>
Workshop Essentials 3
<br>
The Ultimate Tablesaw Tenon Jig
<br>
</div>

Note that for some reason, the code snippet above is getting mangled when I paste it into this post and the class assignment on the outer div is being deleted :-s

What you could do, is put the title of the DVD in <h3>, and put 'New!' in <p> and give it a class of its own (which sets it to red, italic).

If what I read is correct, this would assist the Googlebot in sorting out the content of your page.

Having said all that, it is only what I have heard/read and is no more valid than anything else you may hear or read. I am very much finding my own way around this topic myself.

As it happens, I have a book out of the library at the moment about optimising for Google. It's a small but recent book (2008 IIRC). If I learn anything I think worthwhile, I'll pass it on.

Dave

 

[matt]

How on earth are we supposed to work this game? I have an SEO company pestering me at the moment. They may be good and they may be worthless, I have no idea.

If we have to forget about "wwodwork" as a keyword, and if, like mine, the business is not geographically based, then how can I get a meaningful title that is not replicated a million times.

I would love to come up under "woodworking DVDs" but I don't. Now if you search for "Steve Maskery's Woodworking DVDs" then it's a different matter. The problem is that nobody in the world is going to enter that search string, are they? It all very well having specialist keywords, but they have to be keywords that people are likely to want to search.

I don't understand it, that's for sure.
S

This is where title is not so helpful... Someone once said that a web site is like pinning a post it note on a tree in the middle of a forest and hoping someone will find it.

You're selling a specialist sub-category of a HUGE (DVD) market. You may do better to sell your products through a distributor in the DVD market or focus marketing through woodworking retailers to capture the specialist customer base?

 

[Jake]

Or focus on the content of the DVD as the keywords which will lead people to you, rather than the fact of the DVD.

 

[matt]

Or focus on the content of the DVD as the keywords which will lead people to you, rather than the fact of the DVD.

Good point.

As an aside... ranking and number of visitors is not indicative of a sites success. Conversion rate is the performance indicator that really counts. You need to understand how many visits are converted in to sales.

 

[ByronBlack]

Steve, you need to use some keyword software to identify potential keyword phrases for your services. Go to 'wordtracker' or type into google 'keyword research' read a few articles and follow the links to the various tools that will allow you to research and discover keywords.

The reason why the examples earlier in this thread were a successs are not just because of the tite. The title is just one of many factors within a page that dictates pagerank and search engine position. A search engine will assess the page overall for keywords, and make an assessment on the aggregate rather than any one single factor.

Incoming links are also important. If you are competing for a keyword phrase the websites that has the most good quality (high pagerank) links incoming to it will be given priority over a website with less quality links to it.

The best content in the world can only get you so far, you need incoming links if you are to compete with others.

SEO is a big subject and has many many factors. I would avoid any unsolicted SEO company as the vast majority of them are scammers, and many will promise you 'no.1' on google - well I could do that for you tomorrow, but it will be for an obscure keyword phrase that only 2 people a year look for.

To re-cap: research your keywords first, read articles on how to select them (it's a pretty straight forward method when you read a few articles), once you have your list of keywords, write compelling and qood quality content using these keywords in a natural fasion - don't spam the same phrases over and over. Make use of the title as suggested, but also your page name, page header, page text and use your keywords in any picture 'alt' tags and internal links.

When you have done that, the next task is to get as many incoming links as possible using your chosen keyword phrases. This can be achived in the following ways:

- commenting on blogs in a meaningful way, most will allow you to enter your web address - make sure you use your keywords here in the link (very important)

- submit your website to the DMOZ and Yahoo directory

- Start a myspace/facebook/twitter account and produce content while all the time using links to your website using your links.

- Comment on forums with your optimised link in your signature

- Write a blog, each entry should be compelling and interesting (this will make others link to your content).

- Use Youtube and other video websites, in the description use a link to your website.

- Write articles on 'squidoo' 'hubpages' 'ehow' all the while linking back to your website. This method is particular suited to woodworking as you can lead a subject into an area that your DVD continues..

I hope that helps a little.

(To qualify my information, I used to run a web development company and did all this for a living).

Edit: Matt, the examples you have given, espeically the blackheath only proves that these are not competitive keywords. For example if you do a search for 'tiling blackheath' in the keyword adsense tool, you'll find there are so little searches for this term, that google has no sufficient data to even return a result, so you could get there just by having a page with a single keyword on it. PageRank is the single biggest factor in a good position, and to get PageRank, you need quality incoming links, it's the basis of google's entire algorithm.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you BB, that is most helpful.
S