The 16 things to do to get your website to the top of

GoogleClayton Wehner

This presentation can be found at: http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/schmooze

Background stuff about Search Engines

What is a search engine? A web search engine is a tool designed to

search for information on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia)

Search engines exist to deliver the best possible search results to the user, for any given keyword combination.

Search engines use complex algorithms to index and rank web pages programmatically using ‘robots’ or ‘spiders’

The big three search engines in Australia are…

About Google Brainchild of two college friends, Sergey Brin and

Larry Page Their search engine was originally called BackRub In 1997 it became Google, a play on the word

"googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros

Google became the world’s biggest search index in June 2000

Google’s ascent as a ‘second mover’ was remarkable – it eclipsed the likes of AltaVista, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos

Today Google is a frontrunner in mapping and satellite technology, operating system software, office applications, mobile computing and much, much more

Why is important to optimise for Google? 93% of consumers’ worldwide use search

engines to locate web sites. (Forrester Research)

85% of qualified web traffic is driven through search engines. (WWW User Survey)

75% of search engine traffic never scroll past the first page of results. (WWW User Survey)

Google is the number one website in Australia (Hitwise)

Don’t settle for second best… The first result in Google gets as many

visitors as position 2-4 combined The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample,

almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."

Result number 10 gets 143% more clicks than result number 11 The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of

page 2 to the bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic.

Chitika Report - http://chitika.com/research/2010/the-value-of-google-result-positioning/

Paid Results

Organic Results

Are you in Google? site:www.yoursite.com

Displays a list of pages from your site that have been indexed by Google

link:www.yoursite.com Displays a sample of external pages that link to your site

cache:www.yoursite.com Displays the cached image of the website that is currently on

file at Google. info:www.yoursite.com

Displays information that Google currently holds about the website.

related:www.yoursite.com Displays pages that are similar to your website.

If you are not in Google, submit your site here: http://www.google.com.au/addurl

Are you awake – pop quiz, hot shot…

Who owns YouTube?

How many characters can a tweet contain?

What does RSS stand for?

Facebook emanated from which US university?

Who owns MySpace?

The 16 things you should do…

#1: Undergo a mind-shift Web 1.0 = ‘brochureware’ – static and boring Your website should be an important

component of your business strategy - a living, dynamic ‘channel’

Interactive, two-way discussion with prospects and existing customers – this is Web 2.0

If you adopt these principles, search engines will love you

#2: Add great content regularly Search engines are simply a means to locate

great content Does your site have great content? Add content that people want to read and will

pass on – top ten tips, ‘how to’ guides, free white papers

Text should be in short sentences, compact paragraphs, be well punctuated, and contain headings to break up the text

Pages should not scroll and scroll and scroll… One page per topic (optimised for that topic);

granularity

#3: Choose the right keywords A keyword combination is used to obtain

search results from a search engine Web pages can be optimised for particular

keyword combinations Before optimising a website, it is necessary to

identify the best keywords to optimise for…

Example Consider these search terms for an online

accommodation website Hotels Cheap hotels Hotels in Sydney Last minute Sydney hotel deals Sydney serviced apartment deals Bed and breakfast on george street Sydney Grand Mercure hotel Darling Harbour Sydney

Keyword Advice Optimise each page for a different keyword

combination (yep, every single page) Don’t choose single keywords – 3-5 word

combinations are best Don’t choose generic keywords - be specific Don’t choose hotly-contested keywords Use geographic qualifiers – ie. Canberra Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes Choose keywords that align with a ‘buying’

state of mind

#4: Employ the 2-click rule Your navigation structure and accessibility is

critical for search engine rankings – search engines need to be able to access your content in order to index it using ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’

Employ the 2 click rule (3 click rule at most) Use textual links from your home page Use a Sitemap which can be accessed from

your home page Employ inline / contextual links – links within

your page copy

#5: Unique, descriptive TITLE tags The TITLE tag on a website page is perhaps

the Number 1 factor that Google uses to determine the relevance of a page

Include your chosen keywords within the TITLE tag – preferably near the start of the tag

Try to keep it to 70 characters Must be relevant to the page content Very important - each page should have a

different TITLE tag

This is where the TITLE tagappears in your browser

#6: DESCRIPTION & KEYWORDS tags DESCRIPTION

Include keywords close to the start of the tag, but don’t repeat more than 3 times

Try to keep it to 150 characters Must be relevant to the page content Each page should have a different DESCRIPTION

tag

KEYWORDS Less important than TITLE and DESCRIPTION, but

still worth including Up to 10 individual words, separated by commas

#7: Optimise the BODY text Google loves original, high quality textual

content Body text is extremely important for search

engine rankings because this is what human users come to see

Keywords, synonyms and variations of the primary keyword combination should be included in the body text, but not so that it reads ‘artificially’. It should read naturally.

#8: Include keywords in URLs URLs that contain keywords are better than

those that don’t Quite easy to do if your website is static, a

little more difficult for database-driven sites Don’t make the URLs too long because this

will be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search results

Good and bad: www.mysite.com/hotels/sydney/hilton.html www.mysite.com/search.asp?hotelID=435&locID=

32

#9: Use HEADING tags Heading tags – eg. <h1>, <h2> - within the

HTML identify headings within the page copy and break up the text

They are used by search engines to determine page content

Use keywords in these tags, but don’t overdo it.

#10: Keywords in link anchor text The ‘anchor’ text contained within hyperlinks

provides Google with an understanding of what the linked content is about

Every hyperlink on your site should have descriptive anchor text, NOT ‘click here…’

Contextual links are best: eg. Blue Train Enterprises offers a free white paper

on how to optimise your website for the search engines

#11: Get great inbound links These are links on other websites that link to your

site Good quality inbound links serve as a ‘vote of

confidence’ for your site – if a good site links to your site, then by association, your site must be good, too

Try and get links from ‘authority’ websites to your site Thematically-linked sites High ranking and well-known sites Government (.gov.au) sites Educational institution (.edu.au) sites

It’s not the volume of inbound links that is important – it’s the quality

#12: Get listed in directories Being listed in major directory-based websites

can boost your rankings considerably http://www.dmoz.org – aka The Open Directory

Project - a difficult one to get into http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html http://www.google.com/local/add - a very important

one that will see your business plotted on Google Maps

http://www.yellowpages.com.au/awu_freeListing.do http://www.hotfrog.com.au http://www.aussieweb.com.au http://www.truelocal.com.au http://www.bigroo.com.au http://www.webwombat.com.au/submit/index.htm

#13: Employ social media Google loves this content and you should

employ it where appropriate Blogs – use Wordpress! Online video - YouTube Micro-blogging - Twitter Social networking – Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Content sharing – Slideshare, Flickr, etc. Social bookmarking – Digg, Technorati,

Delicious etc RSS Podcasts

#14: Embrace Google tools Set up Google Analytics on your site and

monitor key stats - http://www.google.com/analytics/

Set up Google Webmaster Tools - http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Set up Google Alerts for your business - http://www.google.com/alerts

Try out Google Adwords pay per click advertising using a trial offer - http://www.google.com.au/contactadwords

#15: Techie stuff Remove multiple ‘instances’ of your site with a

Permanent 301 redirect to elminate dilution of your website standing

Implement a robots.txt file Implement an XML sitemap Ensure that your pages load quickly by streamlining

your code and optimising your images Ensure that your site’s server has close to 100%

uptime – if it isn’t live when the spider arrives, your rankings may be affected

Make your site W3C compliant – http://validator.w3.org

#16: Things NOT to do Use hidden text – ie white text on white

background Employ keyword ‘stuffing’ Display duplicate content Cloaking – displaying different content to

visitors and spiders Use heaps of Flash, DHTML, Javascript

particularly for navigation elements Use Frames

A final thought If you employ one of the strategies mentioned

in this presentation, you will get some benefit in the search engine results pages

If you employ a couple, you will get much greater benefit

If you employ all of them properly, then you will most likely go to the top of the results

The little things count and, when you employ them together, they can make a big difference to your site performance