How to Improve Your Google Search Rankings

10 Proven Facts About How to Improve Your Google Search Rankings

Over the years I've seen, heard and read lots of stuff about how to improve your Google search rankings, some good, some bad, some misinformed and some downright devious.

I'm sure there are very few people who can genuinely claim to be Google Search Ranking Experts and I certainly do not attempt to assume that mantle. One thing I have learnt, which seems to be a fairly well accepted truth amongst those in the know, is that no-one can guarantee getting a top 10 Google ranking. Nevertheless, here are 10 proven facts about how to improve Your Google Search Rankings that I personally have learnt through years of hard experience.

1. Magic/Quick Fixes/Great New Schemes

Sorry about that folks, but forget quick fixes and avoid anyone who promises to improve your search rankings quickly and/or cheaply. Getting sustainable good rankings through good search engine optimisation is a long, painstaking task where it will take many months for you to see the results of your efforts.

2. The Significance of Keywords

Keywords are the basis of all search engine optimization and so working out the keywords which are most important for your business is vitally important.

Forget going for very general or broad keywords, for instance "insurance" because the competition for those keywords is so intense and, as a result, you will find it difficult to virtually impossible, to reach a top spot in Google.

You need to find specific groups of keywords or phrases which relate directly to what you do or offer. The terminology for these specific keyword phrases is 'long tail keywords'. These phrases obviously have much smaller search volumes, but firstly you will have less competition so it should be easier to reach a top position and secondly people who are searching using long tail keywords are more specific and serious about their requirement, so there is a greater chance that they will click through to your site.

As a case in point, a searcher may start out by looking for 'insurance' and be overwhelmed with response, so they refine their phrase to be more specific to what they are looking for, e.g. 'travel insurance'. They may continue this process until they find exactly what they are looking for, e.g. 'travel insurance for the over 60's', then 'travel insurance for the over 60's with a heart condition', which leads to 'travel insurance for a world cruise for the over 60's with a heart condition' and so on.

Finding keywords

There are lots of great tools out there but the best place to start is in the business itself. Brainstorm to find the keywords that your target customers are likely to use. Review your marketing material, your customers' words to you, your direct competitors websites and marketing material and so on.

Try to be original and think outside the box. Simply following the keywords your competitors are using will mean you end up simply following your competition.

Then use the free keyword tools like Yahoo, Google or, for professionals, the excellent Wordtracker. Yahoo, Google and Wordtracker also have tools to estimate search volumes and
likely competition.

Having established your keywords search them on Google. Firstly, look to see how many results there are. If there are millions of pages, perhaps your keywords are too competitive and you need to reconsider.

If you can spot phrases with 50,000 or less competing pages, then you could have found a 'killer phrase'. Visit your competition. Check out the Page Ranks of the top results for each of your keyword phrases in the search engine results pages, or SERPS to use the jargon. This provides you with an indication of what you need to achieve to get top placement within that phrase. You should also check how many links they have pointing to their website to establish how many links you need to get to the top position. To do this, either in the search box type link: www.competingsite.com and the websites that link to that domain will be displayed or try the Yahoo Site Explorer.

Bear in mind that this only provides an idea, the relevancy of those links and the ranks of those sites are also vitally important in achieving better results.

3. The Impact of Your Message

It's great identifying the keywords that your visitors, users or potential customers may search on to find what you have to offer but, unfortunately, that's not quite enough. You then you have to persuade them to visit your site and look at or buy whatever it is you have to offer.

Put it this way, if you've identified the keyword 'cheap travel insurance' as a potential keyword phrase, but your page description remains 'The best shopping comparison site on the internet for everything from Apple Macs to Xylophones' do you think you'll get a lot of people click through to your link?

The more specific a keyword phrase ('long tail keyword') you use, the more important this becomes. If you're looking for 'the best travel insurance cover for the over 70's' it's a very specific requirement so your message or page description needs to reflect that. Your description needs to show that this page deals specifically with travel insurance cover for the over 70's or the searcher will not click.

Having convinced the searcher to visit your page they will be none too impressed if the landing page then doesn't lead them quickly and directly to exactly what they want, in other words the best travel insurance cover for the over 70's, so your landing page has to be designed specifically for that specific a keyword phrase/long tail keyword, otherwise all your efforts of getting them to your page have been wasted and worse still they probably won't want to come back to your site again if you waste their time like that.

Having considered all that, you then need to think what exactly does 'the best travel insurance cover for the over 70's' mean? Is it the cheapest, the most comprehensive, the least exceptions or exemptions, the highest acceptance rate and so on? In other words you need to test out a variety of messages to find those that are most appropriate to your visitors, users or potential customers.

In other words, it's going to take you a lot of time and thought and which is why we at
Innovative Internet Marketing advocate the use of testing out these specific keyword phrases, alternative messages and landing pages first on Pay Per Click to identify those that are viable
to optimise for natural search. After all, its pointless going to all that effort building a large number of optimised pages for specific phrases that no-one searches for, or where your message isn't appealing to people or what you're offering isn't what they want.

In the short term you can test out these phrases and messages and identify the high volume/high conversion ones as targets for natural search optimisation and then either drop, improve or carry on with PPC activity those lower volume or lower conversion phrases.

4. The Importance of Title Tags on Your Pages

Google sees the title tag as the most important and relevant part of the webpage it retrieves. This is one of the few things you have any control over in Google's search results. The title tag is the underlined header for your result in the SERPS. It also appears at top of your browser window. Keep this descriptive and readable but at the same time include your newly found specific keyword phrases. Google will also highlight the keywords in your title that were included in the search query.

5. The Importance of Your Meta Description Tag

The description tag is the description of the webpage which lives under the title tag in the results. You need to use your keywords in here to reflect the search that the user has undertaken (Google will also highlight the keywords in here that match the search query)
but you also need to consider how you will attract the searcher to visit your page (see The Impact of the Message) and it needs to be descriptive and readable. A string of keywords, like I've seen in many descriptions, is not ever so enticing.

6. The Value of Domain Names & URL's

Where possible try and include your main keywords in your domain name, e.g. www.travelinsurance.com. Google will highlight them when they match the search query. This can give your ranking a little boost because it will show that your website is relevant to the search query. If you can't put those words in your domain try putting those words into the page URL, e.g. www.mywebsite.com/travelinsurance.html

7. How Significant is Content?

Content is vital. If you have ever changing fresh, unique content on your website relevant to your offering, Google will reward you for it and other websites will want to link to you. In return, this will increase your rankings, but surely you should be doing this anyhow? A website without constantly changing content is a dead one. Your content should contain your keywords, but don't fill your content with your keywords (this is called spamming or keyword stuffing). Use them at the start and end of your webpage and sprinkle them in-between. Also use them in your header text (H1, h3 & H3) and even in bold or "strong" tags as this shows Google that these words have greater importance.

8. What's the meaning of a Google Page Rank?

If you install a Google tool bar on your browser you'll see a Google Page Rank attributed to each page you visit. This suggests the relevant importance Google attaches to each page, based significantly on the number and quality of external links to it, and is a figure between 0 and 10.
As an example the Google.co.uk home page currently has a ranking of 8, the bbc.co.uk home page has a 9 and Adobe.com gets a 10. I'll leave you to contemplate why Google considers Adobe more important that the BBC or even itself, but if you haven't worked it out give me a call!

You must consider, however, that the page rank bar can be at least 3 months out of date as Google only updates it in a roughly 3-month cycle. Only Google knows your true page rank which changes all the time. Google regularly analyses (spiders or crawls to use the terminology) your website and scans for new content and links to show the most relevant content in its results. Therefore page rank can be somewhat inaccurate.

The other thing that people get confused about is that it is a rank of a page not a site. It is believed that if your website is assigned a page rank figure then it is distributed through all of your indexed pages, e.g., if your site has a figure of 5, then your home page may get
a page rank of 3 and your other pages a 2 or perhaps a 1 and so on. If these other pages also have links to them, this will increase their own individual page rank.

The chief advantage of the green bar on your Google Toolbar, imho, is for exchanging links. You can establish a basic feeling for a site's ranking and then decide whether or not to exchange links.

9. The Importance of Linking & Directories

Google has got wise to the old practise of link exchanges & link farms, so you should chiefly look for one-way links. However one-way links are consequently much harder to obtain, after all why should anyone put your link on their website without their being a payback? One way around this is by writing articles and submitting them to article websites, social media websites or your own blog. If you do always make sure to add an 'author's bio' block, a piece of text which details your name, business and links to your website.

Reciprocal links are easier to come by, but when you don't have a good page rank they can be more difficult to obtain. I would look for websites with good quality content which are relevant to your own. Firstly, if they are good, interesting, related and relevant to your own subject, they are excellent potential sources of good, quality traffic. Secondly, and this is something you should emboss on your chest, Google Rates Relevancy.

One other thing to consider is that some links can actually damage your search ranking. Google penalises certain links which results in a dropping of your own page rank. Try this great tool to check potential link partners to see if they are linking to bad neighbourhoods which could result in a Google penalty for your site.

The Open Directory (DMOZ)

One Directory you should always submit your site to is DMOZ and do it as soon as you can, because it can take ages to get listed there. Google sometimes uses DMOZ results in its natural or organic results sometimes and many other directory sites use DMOZ results, which in turn may provide you with more one-way links.

10. The Rising Popularity of Blogs

Weblogs or Blogs are basically an online web diary. Their importance has grown substantially as a resource for gathering and assimilating news, understanding special interest or niche subjects and communicating with special audiences, be they members of staff, customers, users, members or whatever. Blogs are often used by journalists as a source of information (in many cases they refer to them in preference to press releases) and they are also loved by Google and the other search engines, as they contain a lot of text and are constantly updated.

There are different schools of thought about where you should blog. One is to start one on your own website, the other is to use a third party site like blogger.com or Wordpress or use the social media sites like Facebook etc.,. There are for's and against's regarding both options so my personal suggestion is to have a blog on your own site and one or a number of different ones (on different themes or target areas) on external sites.

Write and include articles, stories, gossip and anything that's related to your website or business. If you make it interesting you will gain readers who will return to your site and you will also gain links from other sites who want to use your content.

Summary

As you've perhaps seen, I've only skimmed the surface on many subjects. The things you should take away are that improving your Google Search Rankings is not simple, it's hard work and you only get out of it what you put in. You'll also see that the majority of what Google is looking for is common sense and makes good business sense for you and your website. Don't try to trick it or use dubious methods to try to exploit perceived loopholes as it may come back to haunt you. At the very least Google will work out what you're doing and close the hole, at worst it will penalise your site or even ban your site, as it famously did with BMW.

For a common sense approach to getting more from your website and achieving your online objectives through natural search contact Innovative Internet Marketing Now .

Peter van Zelst is the Principle of Inovative Internet Marketing, a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.innovative-internet-marketing.com/

Search Marketing is Dangerous

Search Marketing is the largest and fastest growing form of online advertising. Search Marketing allows you to communicate directly with your target customers, wherever they may be, when they are in the market and close to buying your product and service. Search Marketing can eliminate a lot of wasted activity, communication and spend on promoting your products or services to people who don’t want, can’t or won’t buy them and is thus a highly effective and cost-effective form of advertising. So how can it be dangerous?


I like to draw the analogy of search marketing with a highly accurate, highly sophisticated rifle. If you know what your target is, are trained to use your weapon, suitably experienced and take careful aim you can hit anything you want with the minimum of expenditure. But, if you don’t know where or what your target is and/or don’t know what you’re doing, you could be lethal, for all the wrong reasons.


If search marketing is like using a rifle, blanket advertising is like using a machine gun. You’ve got a vague idea where you’re aiming and hopefully some of your bullets should hit the mark. A lot of your bullets will be wasted or hit the wrong targets but, heh, provided you’ve got a big enough budget and aren’t too worried about effectiveness, then it’s great.


Now think of a sniper, he’s only got a handful of bullets. He’s spent years training, is experienced in his profession and with his weapon. He spends a huge amount of time carefully selecting his target, taking pinpoint aim then wallop! He get’s exactly what he wanted for the minimum expenditure of bullets.


Most small to medium sized businesses haven’t got huge sums of money to waste on ineffective advertising and can’t afford huge blanket advertising campaigns. Consequently search marketing offers huge potential for most small to medium sized businesses. But using search marketing without correctly identifying your target market or not using an experienced, trained search marketing professionals to undertake and aim your campaign accordingly is like handing a deadly rifle to an untrained novice.


Put it in the right hands, however, and the only danger you’ll have with search marketing is the unexploded potential of your business.



Peter van Zelst is the Principle of Inovative Internet Marketing, a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.innovative-internet-marketing.com/

BT has seen the future – it’s called BT Web Clicks!

A good friend of mine forwarded me a BT email on Thursday announcing a new product that ‘will carry BT's advertising portfolio forward in the next few years’.


BT, apparently, aims to move its marketing packages away from paper, to much more interactive methods of generating business leads. I wonder if this is part of it’s 21C initiative?

They’ve realised that:-

• 86% of the UK’s population visited a search engine in February 2006!


• That the UK Paid Search market grew by 65% during 2006


• And that paid search marketing is by far the most popular online advertising format, accounting for 57.9% of all online ad spend in 2006.

BT says that Search marketing is a proven way of generating leads directly from both major and local search engines, however getting it right and running a search campaign to generate quality leads can be both time consuming and costly. That’s spot on, BT!

They say that it takes 30 hours to set up your campaign and 10 hours a month to maintain your campaign. Only that much, I must be going wrong somewhere!

BT Offers (and I quote):-

• A Fixed budget – you can choose the budget so you know exactly what you will spend each month.


• Guaranteed leads – for the package you choose they will send you the agreed number of leads


• Advertising text – BT use professional (mmm… I wonder if they really do - see later) online copywriters to create a text ad for your website to attract customers


• Keyword generation – their team of experts analyse your website and current usage on search engines to choose the keywords that are going to generate you relevant leads to your site


• Leads direct to your door – when a customer clicks your sponsored link they go straight through to your website, wooooarh! (I wonder how much they paid their advertising & marketing consultants for coming up with this)


• No admin – their automated systems connect directly with the search engines to bid on keywords and upload your sponsored links

Well, they don’t say BT is at the cutting edge of what’s happening for nothing. Just how long have they been thinking up this devilishly clever new scheme?

Oh yes, and they’re so confident in the product that they ‘will guarantee the number of clicks your website will receive in twelve months and give you your money back if the agreed figure is not reached’. Sensational, eh?

But it gets better!

For only £80 per month they will guarantee 480 clicks per year and for just £200 per month you can have 1200 clicks per annum (I suppose there must be a volume discount in there somewhere).

Now, before you rush off to sign up, there’s one thing they’ve forgotten to mention in their very attractive presentation. Yep, Quality of clicks. And as you know that’s the only thing that I think is important. Any idiot can get traffic to your website, what matters is the quality not the quantity.

Now, much as I’d love people to pay me £200 per month to deliver 200 clicks to their website (in fact I’d even do it for half that), if you’re focussing on just clicks you’re missing the point, and the huge potential of targeted search marketing.

A lot of people can set up a PPC campaign (though, admittedly, quite a few can’t), many people can even ‘professionally’ write Ad Copy, some people can even research & develop a keyword list, but the point is that BEFORE you do any of that you have to develop a proper marketing plan (I’ll omit the phrase strategy if it sounds too pompous but hopefully you get my drift) and, with respect to BT, you can’t do that for £80 per month. Even if you paid them £400 per month, I doubt BT would have the calibre of people, at this level, to develop a proper marketing plan for your business.

Once you’ve properly crafted your marketing plan (and I use the word carefully and deliberately), developed your keyword list, written your copy and developed your landing pages (something BT forgot to mention in their presentation and probably one of the most important factors), then you have to properly and actively MANAGE the campaign, test out different approaches & strategies, find out what works and what doesn’t and develop a proven viable model.

Even if you’d paid BT £2,400, would you really be able to say you’d developed a proven formula based on just 1,200 clicks (that’s 23 clicks a week or just over 3 a day)?

Ah yes, one more thing on the BT bashing front. As BT acknowledge, it does take at least 30 hours to set up a campaign and 10 hours per month to manage it. I make that 150 hours per year. Now if BT are going to charge you £80 per month and promises to deliver 480 clicks into the bargain using PPC routes, one presumes they’re going to have to pay Messrs Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, et al something for those clicks. Now my simple maths works out that would mean you were paying BT less than the national minimum hourly wage rate, so either they were subsidising this grand caper or something was up.

Anyway I’m now off to design a new product that will allow people to pay me a lot of money for doing & achieving nothing. I think I’ll call it Web Chicks!

Peter van Zelst is the Principle of Inovative Internet Marketing, a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.innovative-internet-marketing.com/

Online Consumers – Do You Fit The Stereotype?

I saw an article the other day talking about the importance of brand in online marketing. It argued that the recognisability of brands was most important to e-commerce consumers. Picking, rather unfairly, on this article, it did get me thinking about how much I read that talks about internet consumers or online users and the generalisations that are pronounced upon them.


Surely most people are now using the internet in some shape or form, so making generalisations about people who use the internet is like making generalisations about people who drink water. A broad brush statement like ‘internet consumers prefer this’ or ‘online shoppers do that’, is rather like saying that all women like pink. There are literally so many online users out there, that there will literally be some that do most things, just as there are some women who like pink, some women who like red, some women who prefer blue and even some who are colour blind!


Some internet consumers use the web for research. Some buy online to obtain the best price. Some use the internet to find things that they can’t find local to them. Some use the web for convenience and so on.


Let’s say you want the latest Corinne Bailey Rae album. Do you get into your car, go down town and buy the CD from WH Smith, buy online from Amazon in a fraction of the time for less but have to wait 2-3 days for delivery, or download it for even less from iTunes and be listening to it before you’d even been able to park your car in the first alternative. Tricky one. So that’s ‘the convenience of the internet’ option.


You’re not sleeping well at night and waking up with a bad back, so decide you need a new bed. Do you go to the nearest shop and buy the first one you see, trail around all the bed shops in the area, testing them out and comparing prices, or browse the internet for recommendations and guidance. Then find the best price from all the available sellers for that particular bed. And then, to be extra sure, find out the nearest stockist and test out just how good this bed, haggle with the shop assistant before buying the best price bed you could obtain, either online or offline. That’s the ‘using the internet for research’ option.


You want to try this amazing new natural soap that you’ve heard removes strong odours naturally using the wonder mineral Zeolite but you can’t get it in your local Boots the Chemist or anywhere for that matter. Do you drive to your nearest stockist who may or may not be 200 miles away or search the internet to find an online store that will deliver your wonder soap the next day? That’s the ‘using the internet to find things that you can’t find locally’ option.


You want the latest Nokia N95 that you’ve see in the high street and your friend’s got but want to find the best deal. Do you take what’s on offer at your local providers shop or compare the prices of the handsets, tariffs and offers from all the online mobile providers to get the best deal? That’s 'using the internet for comparison shopping'.


So we’ve just identified 4 different behaviour patterns of how people use the internet and, to be honest, I use them all. I’m sure you do too. And, as I’m sure you realise, we’ve only just started to explore how individual people use the internet. You can’t say people just use the internet for bargain hunting, or for convenience, or for research or whatever.


What you can do, however, is identify areas where you, as a business, can score strongly with consumers, where you can demonstrate that your product and service satisfies a particular want, need or desire for a particular group of individuals, where what you have, what you do with it, how you sell it and so on is valued by consumers more that the offer of your competitors. Once you have done that and found that particular group of individuals your business will fly...


Peter van Zelst is the Principle of Inovative Internet Marketing, a practical online marketing company. If you want practical help to make your business or e-commerce venture fly visit http://www.innovative-internet-marketing.com/