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Google: How Ranking Works and What You Can Do to Boost Your Position

Many businesses are lured to the web by the fantasy of access to millions of customers just waiting to discover them via a search engine. The harsh reality is that there are so many businesses online, the competition for eye balls is hundreds of times greater, especially when your target market is only local. Still, search engines, and more specifically Google, can bring even small businesses new customers. The trick is showing up high enough on a results pages for search terms related to your business. There are some things you can do to increase your chances, but realize up front that there's no silver bullet.

The Basics

Search engines use "bots" or automated programs that go from server to server ("crawl") and read the pages of your site. But bots are essentially blind; they do not see your pages they way you see them in a browser. They only look at the textual content, in other words...the words. You can build a great flashy site with lots of style and whiz bang effects, but if there is no text for the search engine to index, your site isn't going to rank well if it even shows up at all.

The most important thing you can do when planning the development of your website is focus on what words will appear on your pages. The key to making this work is to try to incorporate the words and phrases that you think people using a search engine will type in to find you (i.e., keywords and keyphrases). For example, a headline that reads: "Welcome to Our Site" essentially doesn't actually mention anything specific about what you do. A better choice would be: "For Quality Camera Supplies and Photography Equipment, Shop with Joe's Photo Supplies. No one is going to type "welcome to our site" into a search engine and find you; however, they may type in "shop for camera supplies." By choosing words and phrases to place on your page related to your business, especially in your headlines and subheads, search engines will be able to create a better overall picture of what your site is and what defines your business.

The Myth of Meta Tags

Some of you have probably been told that meta tags are the key to ranking well in search engines. While that may have been true in 1990, it isn't so today. Meta tags are specially defined code, most of which does not display in your browser window but can be read by a search bot. There are three main meta tags: meta title, meta description and meta keywords. In the earlier days of the internet, these tags were used to define a web page, and search engines relied on them to determine how to index your site. However, the tags were so egregiously abused in order to drive traffic to websites that search engines began ignoring these tags for the most part and not including them as part of their indexing.

There is one tag however that does remain somewhat relevant, and that is the title tag. The title tag is the only meta tag whose contents you can see in browser view. At the very top of your browser window you typically will see a page title, which displays the contents of the meta title tag. There is on-going debate as to how much weight the search engines still give to this tag, but it is good practice to place your keywords and phrases here on every page, just as you would in a headline. A good rule of thumb is to keep the meta title to 8 or 9 words (or 60 characters). Your first word should be your top keyword—the word or phrase you want to focus on for search engine traffic.

As far as the meta keywords and meta description, it doesn't hurt to include them but know that they are essentially useless. Some sites still display the meta description of your site in their search results but they do not use the contents of the meta description as part of their indexing. The maximum recommend number of characters for the meta description is 255. Meta keywords should be limited to 20 words/phrases.

Keywords in Practice

For some, it's a good idea to focus on only one or two keyphrases per page. Since search engines will index all the pages of your site, it's possible that a person may enter your site from a page other than your home page, such as a product page, if the search terms they are looking for appear there. So if you sell dog food, cat food and mouse food, your dog food page should focus on using keywords related to dogs and dog food; your cat page should focus on keywords related to cats and cat food, and so on. Trying to get every possible keyword related to your business on every page will not give enough weight to those words and therefore not encourage the search engines to rank your site high when those search terms are used.

An important thing to keep in mind when choosing terms to focus on in your content, page titles and headlines is your competition. There are a lot of websites out there, and chances are there are thousands of companies around the world doing the same thing you do and vying for the same customers. So how can you stand out? By taking a narrower approach to the keywords you choose to focus on. For example, it will be very difficult to achieve high search results using the keyword “shoes.” Your biggest competitors, like Payless, Zappos, etc., have a much greater web presence than you do and consequently will rank higher for such a broad term. But what if you just focused on one type of shoe that perhaps Payless doesn’t carry, for example, “pink pumps?” That term narrows down the audience and increases the chances of your website ranking higher in the results and consequently attracting the customer to your website. If you want to narrow even further, you might want focus on only local customers. So “pink pumps in Chester County, PA” might be a reasonable keyword phrase to consider.

Content is King, But Be Careful

Generally speaking, the more content you place on your site and the more frequently you update it can help your search engine ranking. But the content that you include should be related to your business. In other words, if you sell shoes, don't write articles about candy bars just because more people search for "candy bars" than they do on "shoes." That's misleading content, and eventually, Google will catch on and penalize you. However, if you want to include unrelated content, an effective alternative is to incorporate a blog into your site.

A blog essentially is an online journal that allows you to create content on a regular basis and store all your previous articles in a logical, searchable format. There are many services available for hosting your blog or your can have blog software installed directly on your site. Using a service has the added advantage of placing your content into a publicly accessible area and consequently may lead to potential customers finding out about you, even though they didn't find your main site first. Blog entries can also be "tagged" by readers and submitted to other aggregate sites, like de.li.ci.ous and Digg, which can further pull traffic to your site.

One "black hat" technique you want to avoid is creating pages filled with your keywords repeated over and over. Your keywords and phrases need to be presented in a logical, readable order, as in sentences that make sense. You also want to avoid structuring content like so: "We make girls shoes, boys shoes, teen shoes, high heel shoes, boat shoes, and dress shoes. And our girls shoes, boys shoes, teen shoes, high heel shoes, boat shoes, and dress shoes are the best girls shoes, boys shoes, teen shoes, high heel shoes, boat shoes, and dress shoes on the market." Not only do the search engines not like this, but your visitors will be turned off by poor writing skills.

Colorizing text the same color as your page background (in order to conceal it in browser view) is also a big no-no. Google's bots pick up on that right away, and your site will get banned.

Google Page Rank

In addition to the content on your site, Google is unique in that it employs an additional meter upon which to rate your site. The number of other websites that link to yours (known as Link Popularity) plays a huge role in determining the position your website will appear for search terms related to your website. Google assigns a Page Rank, from 0 to 10, based on the number of relevant other sites that link to yours. However, they can’t be just any ol' websites. The websites linking to yours have to have some weight to them already in Google or be related to your industry. Google tries to establish the validity and relevance of your site based on other sites that link to you, which it has already verified, related and ranked.

Google uses your Page Rank as part of its search algorithm. So when someone searches on “potatoes”, for example, and your site has “potatoes” 20 times but has a Page Rank of 2 and your competitor has “potatoes” 20 times but a Page Rank of 5, your competitor’s site will show up above yours in the search results.

Depending on your business, one way to increase your Link Popularity is to seek out associates, organizations, schools, magazines and other websites related to you or your business, and, if available, request a link to your website. This will help build up the number of websites that link to you and ultimately contribute to developing a higher Page Rank. This is by far the hardest thing to do, and the one that takes the most time to establish. Basically it takes at least 50 links to your site to get to a Page Rank of 1 to 3. It can take a few years to achieve a Page Rank of 5. Very few sites ever receive a Page Rank of 10. If you have a Page Rank of 4, you’re doing really well, according to Google.

Page Rank only applies to Google, and even sites with a Page Rank of 0 can still do well in Google, depending on the search terms and the number of other sites competing for those search terms. For example, if you have a niche product, like Braille Paper, you may rank #1 in Google for the term “Braille Paper” because you’ve used the term well on your website and you have few competitors.

Site Submission Services and the Promise of Higher Ranking

In the early 1990s, when the Internet was a much smaller place, search engines allowed you to submit your site to have it indexed. Today that is rarely the case. While there are a few sites that still accept submissions, including Google, none immediately add your site to their index. They leave it up to the Bots to find you, which takes roughly the same amount of time (and some times faster) than their waiting list of sites submitted for indexing. In other words, there is no longer any way to speed up the time it takes to get your site into the search engines. Typically expect to wait six months from the launch of your site before you get into Google.

There are many companies out there promising to submit your site to 500 directories and boost your rankings in Google. You should be wary of such claims. Google is not a dumb company, and it is very wise to the many ways that companies try to beat the system. And Google will penalize and even de-list your site if it discovers that you are using what it deems inappropriate tactics. Getting listed on sites that are unrelated to your business will hold little value to Google. You may rank well for awhile, but eventually your rank will drop.

Sitemaps

A relatively new feature that Google has introduced is called sitemaps. A sitemap is basically a single page that lists all the pages of your site. The sitemap tool is part of a suite of webmaster tools that Google provides to help you better evaluate the traffic coming to your site. As part of that suite, the sitemap helps Google to learn which pages are most important to you and how often those pages change. Google will then crawl those pages more frequently. The set up the webmaster tools and sitemap may require the assistance of your web administrator, but once your account is setup, you can login to learn how to make your site more Google-friendly, see how Google views your site, diagnose problems with broken or missing links, and analyze the traffic coming to your site.

Online Advertising

Another tactic that you can employ to drive traffic to your site is to invest in online advertising. Google offers one of the best programs, called Ad Words. Ad Words appear on the right hand column in the search results. With Ad Words, you first establish a budget of how much you want to spend per month on your ad campaigns. Then you can research keywords and phrases that you think will be used to find your site and see what the cost per click (CPC) is for each. CPC is the price you pay every time someone clicks on your ad from Google's search results. Ad Words will show you how much you have to be willing to pay per click to achieve the top listing. Your position, however, is not just determined by how much you pay. Your ad has to achieve a higher percentage of click throughs than any of the other ads that will be listed under the same keywords in order to maintain your position. In other words, you not only have to be willing to pay for the position, your ad has to be good enough to maintain a high click through rate.

Rates for ads vary from under $1 to several dollars per click. You can choose to have your ad show up nationally or only within your local area. When you reach your monthly budget, your ad stops appearing until the following month.

Other Things You Can Do

You've probably heard of You Tube, an online service for hosting video files. While you might think of YouTube as a time waster or entertainment outlet, it's also a good way to garner some attention. You Tube is awash with original, funny material that circulates virally in a matter of hours. If you create something that becomes popular, it will serve as a vehicle to bring more traffic to your website.

Another strategy to is participate in public forums, especially ones related to your business. Most forums allow you to include a "signature" at the end of your messages, which can include a link back to your website. These links will help contribute to your Link Popularity and may also help your search ranking.

Why Doesn't My Site Show Up When My Competitor's Does?

This is an often asked question with not really a clear answer. There are a few possibilities: 1) Your competitor took the time to structure his website with keywords he felt potential customers would search for; 2) He updates his site regularly with content that continues to emphasize those targeted keywords and instructs Google to index his site more frequently; 3) He got his site listed on other sites, which raised his pagerank in Google; 4) He hired an SEO firm to do all that for him.

In short, there's no ready, set, done when it comes to maintaining your website if your goal is to rank well in search engines. You need to be committed to updating your site, adjusting your keywords, analyzing your traffic and thinking of creative ways to keep your name out there in order to stay ahead of your competitors.

There's No Free Lunch

While the internet does open up a world of opportunity for many businesses, there is no easy or fast track way to get rankings in search engines. The best advice for most companies is to concentrate on your content and actively seek out relevant websites that will link to yours. There are several professional Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) that for a price – typically $300 per page – will analyze your website, access your market and optimize your page content to make better use of keywords. Many will guarantee that you will rank well in Google, but generally it is for very specific keyword combinations, which may be very niche and not the ones you had in mind. If you really believe that the livelihood of your business depends on ranking well, then seek the services of an SEO.

Many companies tend to take a too hands-off approach when it comes to setting up and maintaining their website. But just like any other aspect of your business, your online presence requires active participation, monitoring and adjustment. Google has many online tools that can help you determine what keywords visitors are using to find you, what page they typically enter your site on and how long they stay. This is vital information if you plan to compete for search engine eye balls. It can be time consuming; but unlike in the movie "Field of Dreams", merely building your website will not "make them come."

Where to Go From Here

If there is anything mentioned in this article that you would like to have implemented on your site or if you have any questions, please contact me.