Increasing Your Site’s Presence

In the not so distant past, web search engines ranked potential web pages based on a match between the user’s query and the text content of the page. The idea went that if the user typed “dog” the page that had more occurrences of the word, dog would be listed before one with less occurrences. It didn’t take people long to realize that if they were selling “dog food”, they just needed to have a thousand entries of the words dog food on their home page. These were usually hidden in the comments of the HTML source.

Today the world uses Google to search the web, because Google uses a different technique for ranking web pages that uses textual context as well as back-references.

For instance, if your site was about bulldogs, and another web site that was also about bulldogs linked to your site, your site’s ranking would be higher. The idea was that if someone went to the trouble of creating a link to your site, that site must be more important than a site that no one knew about.

While there are ways of getting wrong answers, it works fairly well. And it illustrates a goal of most small business web sites… Get Linked.

Keep in mind that most of what I’m about to write is not a secret. Google actually publishes information about their ranking algorithm on their website… They also have an list of techniques you should follow when building your web site.

Tips to Get References

The first step in getting a link to your web site is to have useful content. If you are trying to sell dog collars, you not only should talk about dog collars, but also about tips to enjoying walks with a dog, where to get a dog registered, and other related subjects.

Having good content increases the likelihood that someone will talk about you by linking to that article.

Next, you need to “name drop” your site as much as you can. If you are part of any online communities, mailing lists or blogs, write constructive comments and have your web site follow your name. Now anytime someone goes to the online bulldog community, they’ll see links to your dog collars.

Better yet, if you write an article about “Walking Your Dog”, get on the online bulldog community’s web site and
mention your article along with the caution not to over-walk your bulldog. When you contribute to these communities with relevant information as well as useful links back to your site, the communities won’t consider your comments spam and delete them.

But people won’t be the only ones that notice these links, Google and other search engines that scour the Internet, will also notice, and put another ranking tick next to your pages.

Note: Keep in mind that if the links pointing to your page have the relevant keyword text in them, it will cause your page to be ranked higher in the results. For example, a link with the text “Bulldog Collars” pointing at your site will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for “bulldog collars” than if the link simply said “click here” (see the details).

Set Your Content Right

Google, and other search engines, place a high value on the title of each of your pages. The title of a web page is what shows up on your
brower’s window and what is the default name when you bookmark that page. Make sure that each of your pages has a title that is relevant to the subject matter. If a page is about bulldog collars, title it that, and not What a Little Bird Told Me.

The words that you expect people to type into Google to find your site is what we call keywords, and while it may seem odd for me to mention, you need to have those keywords on your page. For instance, if you had a page with a list of dog collars, you might be tempted to mention “dog collars” at the top of the page and then list the different types. In this case, a search engine would look at the page and wouldn’t be sure what the main topic was.

So instead of listing red, green, purple, list them as Red Dog Collar, Green Dog Collar, etc. This is called increasing your keyword density. But if you just had a thousand entries of the word “dog”, most search engines will actually lower your page rank. You will want to put as many keywords in sentences as you can.

A good adage to follow is make your page useful to human readers first, and then touch it up (just a bit) to make it more useful for the search engines.

Other Page Ranking Tips

Web sites that have content that regularly get updated and have new pages get higher page ranks. This is because Google considers new content more relevant than old content. Because of this, news sources, bulletin boards and weblogs (blogs), have an advantage over a regular web site.

You can remedy this by updating your “What’s New” section often… or you can even attach a blog to your site. If you do, don’t worry that users will be turned off from your site, as many relate well to sites with such a personal touch.

Know Your Rank

If you use Internet Explorer, you can get an idea of what Google thinks of how important your site is in general, by downloading the Google Toolbar. It has a button that shows the page rank of any page that you visit.

You can find out who is linking to your site by typing the following into Google’s field: link:www.yoursite.com

Search Engine Optimizers

Companies that help other improve their search engine ranking are called Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs), and while many of these SEOs have been selling virtual snake oil, they are not all illegitimate.

Most web design firms, like Opus 41, can help you improve your page ranking by offering advice, editing content, and working with your staff on keeping your site up-to-date. No SEO or web firm can guarantee a #1 ranking, if you want to make sure you place on the first page of a search, you should just purchase an ad spot on the right side, as Google’s rates are quite reasonable.

These are just a few tips of the web trade, but the best advice on increasing your web presence is to have content that people want to read.