Search Engine Optimise your website for Google
It is a known fact that many Internet users believe that Google is the only search engine worth using, hence optimising your website for Google is a must for any web master. This article aims to provide certain steps which would help you transform your website to something which is friendly to Google spiders as well as giving you tips on how to build link authority.
On page optimisation
First things first, you cannot rank high on Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) if Google does not know what your page is about. To allow Google to easily understand what your page (or website overall) is about, there are certain simple but important things which can be done. I've taken the liberty of throwing them into categories to help sort out the good stuff.
Descriptive Page Titles
I know this has been repeated many times, and to some, over hyped, but its a fact that the top results on Google have atleast one keyword listed in their title. Not to mention the fact that the link used on Google is the actual title text. In other words, having good title text will help with both ranking on SERPs as well as attracting users to click on it. You would be hitting two birds with on stone if you can nail this part.
Though a word of warning, take caution as to what keywords you use in your title as well as how long the title is. Having too many keywords would make the website look spammy, and having a title which is too long would mean that each keyword would hold less weighting. It must also read normally and make perfect sense to humans. Remember, this is quality over quantity.
Compelling Meta descriptions
As with the page title, having related keywords in your meta description would not only earn you a higher ranking on Google SERPs but also persuade users to click on your link. The description text acts as your sales pitch as well as keyword basket, and if you are able to provide targeted keywords as well as a compelling sales pitch in your meta description, then your battle would be half over.
As with the page title, do not spam keywords in the meta description. This would only set the spam alarm off at Google Head quarters, and adding to this, users would most likely not click on your link. Keep your description to a maximum of 420 characters, though only 154 characters are displayed on the result pages.
Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
Many forget Search engines in general don't like query strings in the URL, if anything, they are unable to understand it. Worse case scenario is to have a session ID in a query string, this is because the next time Google bot comes around to crawl your website, the session ID would have changed, and hence the URL is different. That produces duplicate content which in turn creates a whole bucket full of horror.
To keep things simple, use your server's built in URL rewrite functionalities to rewrite your dynamic URls to something which:
- Will never change
- Is easy to understand by humans
- has a file name which relates to the content of the page
There are several advantages, these include:
- keeping googlebot happy
- preventing duplicate content from being produced
- unable users to quickly and easily understand where they are
- provide another place for keywords to be present
- easily booked marked by users
- easy to remember
Note that if you do implement a change of URL structure, you must redirect traffic from the old url to the new url, with a 301 header response. This tells the Google that your page have moved permanently to the new location and it instructs them to pass all the link authority/page rank and incoming links of the old page to the new page. This is not an optional step.
Effective Internal Linking Structure
This topic was covered in a previous article regarding internal linking structure, but much attention was paid to an automated internal linking system. To reiterate the important points, internal linking provides a means to distribute page rank as well as link authority throughout your website. If no proper internal linking strategy have been implemented then your link authority would be wasted on that specific page.
Adding to this, it also helps Googlebot crawl your website more efficiently and you will be able to get a deeper and more frequent crawl. However, please take caution as to what pages you link to internally as there are certain pages which you do not wish to be crawled or indexed by Google. Pages which provide no real value to users with too much irrelevant content (to tell the truth, you shouldn't have these pages in the first place) will affect your other valued pages if they are both indexed.
One way to increase internal linking would be to have links from within your content (article, blogs etc) to link to other "related" pages. You can also have a "related article" block within an article page, which links to related articles (obviously). There are alot of other methods to do this, however I will cover this in a different article.
Off page optimisation
Building Inbound Links
Now that you have great on page optimisation, great content, a great website with real value to users, you move on to building links . Having an effective link strategy is what will put you ahead of your competitor and ultimately crush them. But how can you obtain links? There are a few simple ways to do it, but the following are the main ways.
Press Releases
Submitting press releases or articles to PR website (especially the ones where you must pay) will not only get you link authority, but will also give you some free traffic. Remember to write about a topic which relates to your website and drop links within your content. Use a short descriptive anchor text and only have a maximum of three links in a 400-500 word article. Do not have this article on your website, as this will definitely create dulplicate content issues which you would rather avoid.
Link Directories
Many speculate that the links from directories no long hold any value, however I have been using this method for every website I have built and it has always giving great results. Though you must use caution as to which directory you submit your link to. Having your link on a low quailty directory will not only not help you, but will discredit your other links. Also, remember to place your link in the appropriate category and never look at the page rank of that page (even though its tempting) that page rank would most likely change during Googles PR update.
Link Exchange
I see no value in this method, however feel free to try it. Most of the time, web masters email other related websites in request for a link exchange, I have never done this before so I am unable to comment
Purchasing links
This is one of the easiest way to obtain quality links, though it will put a hole in your wallet as well as cause you to continuously pay on a monthly basis. Make sure not to purchase links from bad neighbourhoods as well as un-related sites.
Sponsoring a non-profit organisation
This is a very common method of link building as well as a very good one. Not only do you get a free quality link from an authority website, you also feel good about yourself afterwards. You will also get thanked by many different people from different wakes of life.
Link Baiting
Although this should actually be part of "Building Inbound links", I have decided to make a new sub section for this topic, mainly because of all the hype around it. Link baiting is the art of creating content for the sake of people linking to you. It enables you to obtain free links without physically going to different websites and adding it. All you really need to do is write something which is either very good, very funny or very controversial. People will then automatically link to you and viola, Bobs your uncle.
There are many different methods of how to create link baits and if anything, celebrities are the best at it (seriously, like everything they do is a link bait, even going to buy condoms). We won't be discussing link baiting methods here, as that deserves an article of its own.
Any more..?
Well, in theory this is all there really is to do, search engine optimisation is not rocket science and definitely not hard, it just depends on how motivated you are to do it as well as how much time you have on your hand. It is true that it takes alot of your time and energy, and if anything it becomes very boring and mundane. However, if implemented correctly, the benefits are unlimited and the potential for income increases by ten folds, no make that twenty folds.
Can you SEO my site for me?
I most certainly can, however I won't be able to do it for free (I really want that sports car). I am available by an hourly basis and I provide SEO consulting as well as other SEO services. Please contact me for more information or a free quote and simple pointers on your website.