Web Site Popularity

Google Page Rankings

Tonight I was asked to give a list of items that my client needed to provide to help make them a number one website in a very competitive market place. This is a very common question, and my answer is nearly always the same:

Google is in the business of remaining the Number One search engine. They have got there by giving their clients the most relevant, reliable, and quality search results on any given inquiry.

This means that Google will only serve results that have a “quality” answer to the question being asked.

How they measure “quality” is in the popularity of the site, the links or referrals to the site, the relevant information on the site, and the importance of the main keywords being searched for to the owner of the site. In other words the keyword being searched for needs to show up in the main headings, main paragraphs or picture captions to prove that it’s important enough to the owner of the site to be highlighted as a feature.

It is hard for a brand new site to have any referrals and links on day one, so we have to create reasons for visitors to want to come to the site, to return to the site, to reference the site, and for Google’s search bots to know what “key words” are important on the site.

Of course Google creates additional tests each year to weed out the sites that try to cheat the rankings, placing multiple keywords in a row, spamming key words, creating false popularity links, link swapping etc. Any cheat that one comes up with for today, you can pretty well guarantee that Google will have also figured it out, and will penalize/black list you in the next update.

Organic popularity is the safest for longevity, and it is created by building your site with great reference material, great content, and consistent updates. The goal is to make sure your site is the “Go To” site for the clients seeking information about the topics or products your are selling  or servicing.

I recently had a client tell me he was hiring a “Linking” Service for $600/month. They promised him lots of safe, and valuable links to his site, and hence a better Google rank. I told him that he needed to hire a writer first to create the content that the “valuable” links would want to link to!

I actually contacted the “Linking” Service owner and asked him directly what he planned to do, and after a good discussion, he totally agreed with me, that the content needed to come first, and that would be his recommendation too.

He has two writers on staff, so I look forward to seeing the results.

Content can be in the form of formal page content, informal blog content, case histories, or even white papers. But informative, interesting, relevant content is the key for the search engines to find, and to catalog for future inquiries!

I’m going to share an article below.

How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google

When I first started as a webmaster, there were numerous search engines around. Nowadays, though, we are, for the most part, left with only Google and Bing, with Google providing the majority of visitors to most websites, including thesitewizard.com. This article provides some tips on how you can improve the position of your site in the search engine results on Google.

Improving Your Site’s Placement on Google’s Search Engine Results
Google ranks a page according to a large number of factors. Exactly what these factors are is apparently a trade secret, although there are number of well-known things that contribute to the ranking of a page.

Links Pointing to Your Website
One of the factors that contribute to a web page being considered “important” is the number of links pointing to that page. For example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it, it will be ranked higher (in Google’s estimation) than one that only has 20.

But what are “quality” links”? These are links from other popular pages, that is, pages that have, themselves, many (quality) links pointing to them. (Yeah, I know. My definition is circular. And it’s possible that the search engine has other factors that determine the quality of a link.)

Anyway, in general, since Google ranks your pages according to the number of links pointing at your page, your site will do better if it has more links pointing to it.

Your Title Tag
Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the HTML <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like “New Document”, remember to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature. Otherwise, your site will only feature in the search results when someone looks for “New Document”.

Note: by “keywords”, I mean the words people will use when searching for your site. For example, if your site sells bicycles, then one keyword for it would be “bicycles”, since that’s the word you’d expect people to use when searching for bicycles.

Your Page Must Have the Words You Think People Will Search For
Besides the title tag, if you want your website to feature in Google’s results when someone searches for a set of words, say “Widget X”, those words must actually occur on your page. Think about it from the point of view of a search engine. If you don’t put the words “Widget X” somewhere on the page, how is the search engine supposed to know that the page deals with that topic? The search engine is not a human being who can draw inferences from the general tone and content of the page. Even if it can handle some synonyms, you’re going to compete with other sites who have specifically placed those words on their site.

I know this point seems self-evident (once you’ve come across it). However, from experience, many webmasters (me included) don’t seem to realise (“realize” in US English) that when they are first starting out.

Keyword-laden Links
According to a paper published by one of Google’s founders, if the links pointing to your page has some words in them, those words will be regarded by Google as an additional indication of the content of your page. For example, a link with the text “Cheap Shoe Store” pointing at your page will cause Google to think that your page is relevant when someone searches for “cheap shoe store”.

However, my recommendation is that if you think a particular set of words is relevant to your site, don’t rely on some random site on the Internet to link to you with those words. Put them directly on your page.