Get to the top of

A guide to the important, and not so important, elements of your website which can help your website to rise up through Google.

The way to ensure that your web site is right at the top of the search engine rankings is not magic, or pot luck. If you are willing to learn a few rules and understand how search engines operate you to can achieve that top spot in Google.

The main point to be aware of is that search engines use small search programs, which are often called spiders, robots or just bots. The spider will crawl your web site and inspect the content, it will then report back to the search engine what the content of your web site is, and using an algorithm (calculation) will rank the pages in order of relevance to the search words that real people use to find your services, your information or your products.

What you need to do is to create bait for the robot, e.g. to get them to your web site and then feed them with good robot food (content) when they are there.

The following points are guidelines to ensuring that your web site reaches the top of the rankings. This is not a definitive way and the search engine companies are always modifying their algorithms to improve the relevance of a search. So what I say today may not be true for tomorrow.

The guidance below is intended to help you understand how it works, we would always advise using a professional e-marketing company to help you to optimise your site. This is sometimes known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation and is often at an additional cost.

One point to remember is that Google’s key word is “Relevance” EG does your, keywords

The following is a guide for you to ask your web site supplier. Do the following when they build and optimise your site?

I have no doubt that you have received calls at regular intervals from businesses who claim to “Get you to the top of Google”

There are plenty of businesses out there who say they can achieve a high ranking, approach these with caution they may use techniques which are generally frowned upon in Internet circles and this could lead to your site being band from a search engines listing.

• Success on the web is about content, content, content and good content, and lots of it. Use the spell checker. Have plenty of pages with good relevant content.
• Ensure search engines can spider all pages in your site. Use a site map. And never hide important content in graphics always use text. Use the Google site map tools. You can find these through Google’s site.

• Research! Find out the most common key words that your potential customers will be searching with when they are looking for you. Use keyword tools on the internet to help you. Try word tracker. www.wordtracker.co.uk  

• Research more. Again there are plenty of keyword tools on the internet to help you. Find plenty of keywords and phrases that real customers use to find your site. Do it thoroughly, at least 20 words and phrases but up to 200 to 1000 relevant phrases is typical. You don’t need to use them all just the most relevant for the page/site.

• Make sure that the phrases are relevant, to you and the searcher. The algorithm that Google uses will rank your site higher if it is most relevant to the searcher. Google will also use the number of click through to measure relevance. Try to think as a customer.

• Research. Find your competitors, find out who is ranked highest and learn from their success.

• Organise your keywords into your web site text or copy. Try to organise into your produc