From-Tags-To-Riches

The top listing on Google is the “Holy Grail” for any site developer. Not only will it gain you the most visitors, but also prestige and ensure you appear an authority on a particular topic. 

 

Getting to the top cannot be achieved overnight (without paying a fortune) but may take from anything between 3 months to a couple of years depending on the type of site and the amount of time and knowledge you have available.

 

Below are 10 tips that will ensure you have as high a listing as possible.  

1. Don’t deploy an incomplete website.

You may well be tempted to release your website before it is ready. Before you deploy anything look at your site and decide whether it depicts what you want your final site to be. If it is a shop don’t deploy it with no products, for informative sites ensure you have at least 50-75 articles.

 

2. Create internal links.

Ensure you can navigate to every page in your site from any start point. It is well worth spending time choosing different pages and measuring how many links you have to click on to get to different pages. In your articles link to other related articles, or other articles a reader may find of interest. Do not however fill each page with links as Google may interpret this as spam of a “Gateway page”.

 

3. Domain name

Previously sites with keywords in their name were seen as authorities in a particular market, this is no longer the case. Not only is it easier to find a “brandable” domain name, it also makes your site more memorable.

 

4. Keep generating “Fresh” content.

Search engines love active content. Do not build a number of articles and then deploy the site, the site will become stagnant and start slipping down the rankings. Aim to generate 5-10 new articles a week.

 

5. Allow active content.

Sites with forums or the ability for users to add comments are often higher up in Google. Allow this type of content on your site. Ensure users don’t simply use it to add links to their sites and that any links that are  posted are relevant.

 

6. Submit the site to Search Engines and Web Directories.

Obviously Google is the most relevant, many sites offer the service to submit your URL to thousands of web directories, this is worth doing but ensure you submit it to the main ones (Google, Ask, AltaVista, Yahoo etc).

 

7. Analytics.

Use an analytics package (my preferred choice is Google Analytics) to track traffic and to see which pages are viewed the most, which pages are not viewed often, which leads lead to sales etc, this can be extremely useful in boosting traffic to pages.

 

Look out for spiders on the analytics package; check they are able to reach every page on the site. If they seem to be missing certain pages, link these into to pages that are being crawled.

 

8. Use original good quality content.

Search engines often ban sites that plagiarise content or violate copyright. Ensure all content on your site is original. Content must also be well written with correct spelling.

 

9. Ensure your site is well designed.

Build your site to ensure simplicity to read both by users and search engine crawlers. Minimize the use of script and Flash as crawlers have trouble reading these formats. Ensure all content that is likely to be searched for is written in clean html. Validate the html.

 

The content to tags ration of your site is important. Content should outweigh the html tags ideally by at least a ratio of 2-1. Use style sheets to remove the quantity of html formatting tabs.

 

Try to ensure page size is below about 10k, the smaller the better for many search engines but also many surfers around the world are still using 56k modems (a few even less).

 

10. Do not try to con the search engine.

Search engines are constantly trying to improve the way they rank sites based on the keywords searched for. Consequently they are eliminating “unethical” methods some sites use to try to improve their page rank. Ensure any means you use are genuine methods; if unsure ask yourself if what you are doing is going to help someone find the article they want to view.

Follow the above points and in six months see where your site is, if it still is not on that fabled first page

Traffic is a key factor in monetizing any web content. Many of the same principles apply to making a profit from a website as to a high street shop. 

Obviously the volume of people in your "shop" is important, but perhaps more important is the quality of traffic. It is imperative the traffic into your site is from people who actually want to buy (whether it is goods, services or information), and not just passers buy. It is however, useful to make your site appealing to these "passers by", as in the future they may require the services your site is offering and if they remember your site providing a good level of service, they are likely to return. Below are a few methods of generating traffic to your website. 

1. Search engine optimization. If a site is even partially optimized for search engines the site will have a higher ranking. Page names, link names, correct use of HTML tags and even page titles can have a dramatic impact on the ranking. Most users will only click on a link on the first 2 or 3 pages on Google, after that they tend to refine their search. 

2. Generate links. Sites that are linked to by other sites are seen by search engines to be a greater authority in a particular field. The quantity of links is important, but also the quality of the site that links to you. Google calls this PageRank.  

3. Online forums. If people have a question about something and cannot find the answer, they post the question in a forum, if you can provide an answer to the question by providing a link to a page on your site, the link will not only be followed by the person who asked the question, but also by anyone else searching the internet for the same question. 

4. Social networking sites. There are over a billion subscriptions to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace etc. Setting up groups and links on your profile for your site will generate traffic.  

5. Web directories. Before the Google era, websites were categorised and searchable via web directories. Do not waste too much time on small directories as they will not generate much traffic; use the bigger directories or those targeted to the genre of your site. 

6. Email advertising. Gone are the days when you could send emails to millions of email accounts, with the development of more sophisticated mail filters and anti-spam software, less and less spam is filtering through to our email accounts. People are also becoming more aware what spam is and choosing to ignore it. It is better to pay for space on newsletters and e-shots that people subscribe to. 

7. Become a Blogger. If you do not currently have a blog, start one. Blogging has become increasingly more popular. I read 4/5 blogs daily on a variety of topics. A lot of the information I find while Googling is from other blogs. I always try to comment where I have found an entry interesting or useful.

8. iGoogle. Provide a gadget on iGoogle. Allow this gadget to provide daily information, or special offers, ensure it links back to your site. 

Do not forget the real world, believe it or no, there are still some people who do not automatically turn to the internet for information. 

1. Advertise in local/national press. This is a great source of potential custom. I have listed many of my eCommerce sites in papers to reasonable degree of success. I discovered the key is to use a special offer to get potential customers to visit your site. In my experience, business driven from press usually is repeat business. The costs of press advertising can be quite reasonable if bough last minute. 

2. TV/Radio advertising. Obviously do not spend a fortune on TV advertising if you don't expect to make it back. TV/radio advertising is another excellent method to get people to visit your site. 

3. Word of Mouth. Shout about your site to anyone who will listen (or even if they wont), ensure as many people as you can know about your site, you will be amazed how many people can find out about your site this way. If you tell 20 people about your site and they tell 5 who tell 3, that is 300 people who know about your site, you will be amazed how  many of these will actually visit your site even just out of curiosity.