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/