How to get on the front page of Google (Part 1)

Friday, 19 March 2010 09:50

Experts can tell you what to do to get yourself in the first page of search results.

Preferably at the top, if not in the top five.

Problem is - a lot of other people know these techniques too.  Some will have more resource to throw at it than you could hope to.

So how do you beat the leaders?

This is the first of a series of posts about search optimisation for the really determined.

First things first

We are talking about organic search, not paid Ad Words listings (the sponsored links at the top and right hand side of search results pages).  You can be at the top of these if you are prepared to pay for it.

Organic search are the results in the 'main' list (under sponsored links).  You don't pay Google or Bing for these.

google search resultsThe advice you'll find all over the net is generally good.

So, with that in mind....

Let's start with the basics

This series is not intended to go into these accepted techniques in depth as lots of people do it in other places, but let's recap:

1. Fresh content. 

Google loves content that is new.  Update your site as often as you can that is practical for your business. That's why a lot of people recommend blogs - it's something that can be legitimately updated every day easily (if you have the time!).

2. Fresh content - and lots of it too.

Volume matters. The more good, relevant content you have the more keyword density you can achieve without stuffing, but (probably more importantly) the more people will link to it from their own site or blog (see point 6).  It also helps with conversion rates and user satisfaction although that doesn't relate to search optimisation specifically.  And by content, we mean text.  Not flash (intro's or otherwise).  Not video - although this is useful in another way to do with driving visitors.  And no frames.

3. Use metatags

Do the right thing with your tags- specifically your title tags and description tags.  Make sure they include keywords and benefit statements.

4.Use keywords

Include keywords everywhere else - particularly headers, image alts, anchor text, file names etc.  This is on the basis that those keywords are ones your audience uses.  Do your research first!

5.Page names

Use search friendly page names. Ones that make sense to the user and the search engines. Ones that have keywords in them in a way that makes sense!

6. Back links.

Very important, but success can take a while and even then it is an ongoing activity.  But vital and a topic of many articles and blog posts!

7. The devil's in the detail

Have custom error pages, directory structures with keywords, ensure your navigation is textual (not graphical), have flat file structures and site maps.  Have 'clean' code. Use permanent (301) vs temp (302) redirects.  Have internal links.

Coming up...The next post in the series: 'Yeah - then what'?

 


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