Web Site Design By Web Site Designers

How To Rank High On Google

25 Great Tips Everyone Should Know To Boost Your Search Engine Rankings - Part 2

Part 2 of our 25 great tips for search engine rankings continues with a few more tips to help you on your way to search engine success. Part 1 - of this article can be found here 

SEO Tip 13 - Avoid flashy websites

Flash websites are so 1999. They might look good for the first 10 seconds but after that they’re pretty boring. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point to avoiding too much flash on your websites (or complete sites that are built in flash) are because search engines cannot, or find it very difficult to read the content within the flashy graphics. Search engines are basically complex screen readers. They’re built for content, not for looks. So if you’re keywords are built into the graphics or flash, kiss bye bye to your SEO and say hello to page 16 on the search engines.

SEO Tip 14 - Make a site map

When a search engine visits your website they have to know how to get around it. Sure, they can find their way around it by checking all of the links, but it’s far easier and better to make a sitemap and submit it to them. It will also help get your website listed faster. Start here

SEO Tip 15 - Don't make pages too deep. Link them within 2 links of the home page

Your pages shouldn’t be too deep within your website, where nobody can basically find them easily.  They should be linked to either on the first page or the second page. Some search engines take this into account and will not rank these pages appropriately if they think that even you don’t consider them important.

SEO Tip 16 - 300-500 words. Not too little, not too much

There is no golden rule to the amount of content you need to have on each page, but certainly you’ll need a few hundred words for it to be considered a worthwhile read and to be able to throw in your main relevant keywords into the content.  However, don’t over do it with too much content, over saturating your content will make your keywords lose their value if you stray too far from the topic of the content or if you spam your content with too many keyword repetitions.

SEO Tip 17 - Submission to search engines and directories

Avoid software that does it for you. Submit only once and wait.  How many times have you come across SEO software that claims to submit your site to 1000’s of website directories and search engines?  Well, if you don’t care what kind of inbound links you receive then give it a try. Remember, its relevant inbound links that work for you, not links from dodgy websites that sell medicine. Also, if you submit your site to the search engines, you will go onto the waiting list. Submitting it again will only put you to the back of the list. So be patient.

SEO Tip 18 - Use bold text two or three times on your keywords in your content make your content stand out

Keywords that are bolded are considered to be more important, so make some of your keywords bold. But don’t over do it. Three or four times within a 500 word page should be enough.

SEO Tip 19 - Different titles for different pages

If your website features lots of different products, services or content, it’s important to have a different title for each individual page. After all, it’s what people will see when they are skimming the search results. A lot of people copy over the meta information and titles from one page to the whole site. If your site is all about DIY, then don’t use the title ‘DIY Tips your husband should know’ make each one individual to the content, i.e. ‘Gardening for granddads’ or ‘wallpapering for wallys’ or something. Remember, its all about relevancy. Einstein would have been right he had come up with that.

SEO Tip 20 - Avoid link farms

Link farms are a no go. Stay away from them.  Link farms are a group of websites that link to each other in order to boost their website rankings. Google and other search engines do not like this method and considers it black hat – a technique that is used to try to dupe the search engines. This means if you do it, it will do more harm than good. So stay away. You’ve been warned.

SEO Tip 21 - Keywords in your URL

Ok, so your business is called Non Metallic Metals and you manufacture little painted miniatures. Therefore your website should be called www.nonmetallicmetals.com right? Well, not quite. If you are just going for an informative website to accompany your brochure then that’s fine. Go for nonmetallicmetals.com.  However, if you are looking to sell your product to the world and going for an online store, then you want to try and one up your competitors. Therefore you should go for www.littlepaintedminatures.com it’ll be an extra important keyword that Google will rank you for, and it’ll be more tempting for the visitors to click on your site when they see you within the search results as it means more to them.

SEO Tip 22 - Multiple Domains

Following on from the tip above, it’s good to focus a domain on a keyword phrase. But you are called non metallic metals and some people will search for you that way. So buy the domain nonmetallicmetals.com and point it to your site. But don’t make it the main domain for the whole site if you can get away with it, leave that for your best keyword phrase. Point it to your company info page instead.

SEO Tip 23 - Use a spellchacker - avoid spelling errors

 

Bad spelling can cost you dearly if your main keywords are spelt wrong. It’s a quick simple tip that can save you lots of wasted time and energy if you get it wrong. Additionally, misspelled keywords might be beneficial if you are targeting a niche market that might sell products of an unusual name. For instance, if you were selling ‘guillotines’, it’s worth checking the misspelled alternatives like ‘gillotines’. You’ll be amazed at how many people can’t spell!

SEO Tip 24 - Use web analytics – optimize your keywords over time

 

It’s good to see how many visitors your website is receiving, or where they came from, which pages they liked and which pages they didn’t. But it’s even better and more beneficial to know how they got there in the first place. Are your ads on Google Adwords working or is it your keywords on the search engines that’s bringing them in? Perhaps its quality inbound links that’s working for you… more of them please! Either way, its good and very important to know how your visitors are finding your website so that you can make better use of your keywords (ditch the ones that aren’t working) and lose the adverts you place that don’t bring you in any hits (i.e. that ad you placed in the classifieds last Tuesday which cost you over a hundred bucks only brought in 4 visitors, yet the half hour of inbound links you worked on over the weekend brought you in over 50, hmm, you do the math).

 

SEO Tip 25 - Research your keywords

 

Keywords take time and effort. Don’t steal them from your competitors, because the keywords that they use are already being used by millions of other websites. Keywords that are used a lot but have low competiton are the key. How you find them is up to you. There are various tools that you can use, which are not free or you could hire an expert search engine optimizer.

 

BONUS TIP -  Hire an expert search engine optimiser

 

If you are overwhelmed with all of the above and do not have the time to do it yourself, then hire an SEO Company like SmartFolio.co.uk to do the work for you. You can complete the this form for a quote request. SEO is not an easy task and takes a lot of work, knowledge and experience. Better to leave this to the pros unless you really have the time to learn about it and work on it.

 

Part 1 - of this article can be found here