Many people ask us 'How can I be number one in Google?' We all want to know don't we? And there are many companies out there who will guarantee it... as longs as you part with your hard earned cash of course.
The truth is, NOBODY can guarantee you a number one placement in the all important Google rankings... not even those nice people at Google themselves.
But what we CAN do is abide by the rules and monitor your rankings for results... and make changes as necessary.
Websites are like plants when applying SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques. Without enough attention they wither and die, but with tender love and care and enough attention, they flourish!
So, what are the techniques we need to apply to see results then? Well, the bad news is, there are over 200 of them! But the good news is, we don't need to apply every single one to see great results...
So, here are the first 3 (in our opinion - as Google produces next to NO guidelines on this - but more about that in a later post)...
1. Copy and Keywords
GREAT copy (text and content on your page) is priceless. The best thing you can do to optimise your site is to fill it with informative text that makes the nature of your site very clear. When Google sends out 'spiders' to crawl the web (ie when it's software inspects the pages of new and old websites) it looks at text. In fact, the spiders pick out key words from the text and gages there and then what your website is about.
The best thing you can do is research your keywords - and really research them. If you have a shop selling shoes in Brighton, you need to know how your customers will find you. Will they all type 'shoe shops in Brighton' into Google? Will some type 'Shoes Brighton', 'mens shoes brighton', 'ladies shoes brighton'... will some have bad spelling 'mens shows briton'...?
There are various tools online to help you select keywords, Google themselves have a great Adword tool which suggests alternatives, and tells you how many people have searched using specific terms each month - check it out here
Optimise different pages for different keywords, and make sure that your keywords make up between 2 - 3% of your overall page text.
2. Tags - Title, Images, Keywords, Description and Headers.
These tags are what any good web developer will include on each of your web pages.
They should contain your keywords. Include them in your page title and your header tags. Do not repeat keywords in one tag.
The Keyword Meta tag doesnt carry as much weight as it used to, but its still good practice to include it.
The image tag should describe the image but if you can include a keyword or too in there (as longs as the text still makes sense) then all the better.
3. Links
It is very important to get other relevant websites to link to yours - especially one way links.
Think of the Web as literally a spiders web, with every website linking to each other so that the spider can crawl from one website to another.
It is valuable to have your keywords included in the link text that comes back to your page. I.E rather than just a 'click here for more', have 'view shoes in Brighton here'. Get it?!
This is just a small part... we will touch on more great SEO tips in a future article. In the meantime, check out our great SEO rates on our website.
Feel free to ask us any questions! :-)
