Website Rankings Simplified

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d e ďŹ i l p Sim

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Drive more traffic to your website!

The Number One Spot Showing up on search engines is still one of the most vital ways to promote yourself, bring in website traffic and grow your business.

The placement of your website in a search engine for a particular search is known as your ranking ie. first result, second result...

A website with a high ranking for a lucrative search result is far more likely to be visited than a site with a low ranking. This is why competition can be extremely fierce to secure the top spots and increase your rankings.

Who decides the rank?

Every search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. have their own specific criteria and measures that they use in order to determine the relevance, popularity and quality of the websites appearing in their search results.

To keep an even playing field and also due to the intense desire from every website to rank as high as possible, these specific criterias are kept a secret to prevent abuse and foul play.

So what is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the term used for refining and tweaking a website to enhance it’s chances of attaining a good ranking for the search results that you wish to rank high for.

It is often misunderstood as something that a web designer or SEO expert can do on their own and within a short period of time, websites will rank exceptionally well in all related search results.

In reality it can require a lot of research and planning from both the SEO expert and the client.

It can also take long periods of time to see noticeable results and can require continual work to maintain high rankings if competition is fierce.

How does a search engine work?

A search engine scans the internet (known as crawling) and discovers websites along the way. You can also submit websites to a search engine to help it take note of your website.

Once the crawler arrives on your website, it will start to analyse and read your websites code and content. As it crawls through your website, it will look for specific things that help it understand what your website is about and the quality of your content.

It will then decide which pages are of interest and should appear in search results. This process is called indexing. A crawler may only index a selection of your pages that it deems worthy.

This crawling process is repeated continually. Pages previously indexed may be removed in future and non indexed pages may become indexed based on the search engines criteria (known as it’s Algorithm) which changes constantly. Websites that are frequently updated will see crawlers come by their website more often than websites that remain unchanged for long periods of time.

What does a search engine look for?

Now that is a question! Depending on how far into the future you are reading this, many things I could discuss may have already became irrelevent.

The problem search engines have is that SEO teams are continually experimenting to work out what appears to have a positive effect on rankings (the site climbs) and what causes a negative effect. (The site drops or gets banned) Due to this mass experimentation, once something appears to work, vast numbers of people will then start using this technique and the search engine must make the decision of whether to disallow this technique if it appears to be the exploitation of a loophole that allows poor quality websites to appear high on rankings.

Interestingly enough, despite not revealing the nitty gritty specifics of its Algorithm, Google does tell you what it requires of your website in order to rank well and this is the most important thing to remember when it comes to developing your website.

Google’s Official Quality Guidelines • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.

• Don’t deceive your users.

• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee.

Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users?

Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

It boils down to the fact that search engines like Google are businesses serving customers. People come to Google to find exactly what they are looking for and Google’s responsibility is to deliver them the most relevant, interesting and valuable content for every search term. Simple.

It is not in Google’s best interests to be delivering high rankings to sites that aren’t valuable for users or have cheated or paid the most money to get them to the top.

Effectively Google resents over optimisation when the line is crossed between making your website valuable to your visitors and treating it like a video game trying to look for shortcuts or cheats to become number one. Your website will face the equivalent of a real life interview by its crawlers to determine if your site is the right candidate for its search engine rankings.

What constitutes cheating a search engine?

When categorising techniques to help improve your website, they fall under two distinct titles...

White Hat Techniques

Black Hat Techniques

...are tactics that search engines agree with and don’t violate their rules and regulations. With white hat techniques, your website has the power to become top of the class. As long as you are prepared to put in the time and effort to get there.

...are unethical tactics that break the search engine rules and regulations to acheive higher rankings by exploiting various aspects.

The web works just like real life and school, although on the web you are permitted to pay to let other people do some of the hard work for you.

These techniques do work, sometimes exceptionally well but only for a limited period of time and the penalties for being caught are severe and in the worst case your website can get black marked or banned from search engines completely. A business disaster.

White hat techniques are all about providing your visitors with the most value and nurturing your website naturally to become worthy of what a search engine strives for in its results.

These techniques involve tactics like using invisible text full of keywords, fake pages, repeatedly writing lists of keywords, buying links, deceptive page content and many more.

t s o M e h T g n i k n a R r u o Y t c e ff A t 4 Things Tha

1) Your Content 2) Link Building 3) Key w ords 4) Webs i te Stru cture

1) Quality Content The first and foremost, in fact the best technique you have to attain great rankings is to have quality content.

Here is a basic example of what quality content is...

Imagine two websites going head to head for the search term ‘camera equipment hire’.

Website 1: Has a few pages that contain a few paragraphs of text letting you know that they do camera hire and they have an email address and phone number to call for more information.

Website 2: Has 50 pages describing in detail what camera brands they stock, the range of lenses and lighting units available, the costs, articles on how to get the most from the equipment and photography tips, the maintenance services they provide and a list of frequently asked questions about hiring camera equipment.

Which website would you expect to appear first in the rankings based on the value it offers?

As Google states “Make your website stand out from others in your field.” Website 2 provides more value to the user over and above it’s equipment hire duty.

They have put in a lot of work to provide the users with engaging content that will interest and educate the traffic that they receive and this is a big part of what search engines are looking for. Never skimp on your content if you want better rankings.

Looking for content help?

Not everyone is gifted with the ability to write inspiring text, utilising relevant keywords and delivering them in a manner which informs people and sells your message.

The solution is not to copy your competitors text, doing so won’t make you rank the same as they do because a search engine knows who the original content creator was, it can detect similarities between text and it will still favour the original creator, even if you changed some words.

If they didn’t, all businesses would be using the exact same text and you wouldn’t be making your website stand out from others in the field.

The solution would be to enlist a copywriter. It is the job of the copywriter to take the basics of what you wish to say and to write it in a way that effectively portrays your business and encourages people to purchase or contact you.

You may be lucky enough to have a website designer that will offer this service. Choose a website designer with an understanding of marketing and expertise in SEO and have copywriting built into the website design costs.

External marketing agencies will also specialise in copywriting. Not only will copywriting enhance a website’s search performance, but more importantly it engages the visitors on your website and can futher encourage them to buy.

Inbound Links

A site that links to you but you don’t link back.

2) Build Quality Inbound Links

Outbound Links

A site that you link to but does not link back.

Reciprocal Links

When you and another site both link to each other.

Video game blogger getting linked to from the Sony Playstation site = Very high value Video game blogger getting linked to from a local florist site = Low value

A really important step to getting well regarded by a search engine is link building. Unfortunately it can be one of the most difficult processes to work on as it relies on other sites and people linking to your website.

Despite the difficulty, if you manage to achieve high quality inbound links from well regarded websites that are relevant to your content, your website rankings can increase substantially.

You may be wondering why links are so great. Think of them in their basic form as recommendations, any site that links to your website is saying to its visitors ‘this website is worth viewing’. An inbound link is what you strive for, when you link back to the site it becomes reciprocal and loses some value.

Sadly inbound links are not all equal. Each link has a value. Unpopular websites do not carry as much weight as popular websites do and links from websites that are relevant to your business industry or topic are of much more value than unrelated links.

It is an age old belief that using a links page and trading links with other websites you are in contact with is link building. Some people argue that search engines barely pay any attention to those links pages anymore, especially if none of the links are relevant to your sector.

The main benefits always stem from other relevant websites linking to you and this is what you should work on accumulating.

How do I build links?

Building links takes a lot of time and they depend on an external website making the effort but there are things that can be done to either encourage or secure an inbound link.

Create shareable content: Start writing a blog, article section, product spotlight, case study or any other type of content that can be promoted and hopefully encourage people to share.

If you regularly create content like these examples and build up a good quantity of shareable content, not only do you have more quality pages for search engines to index but there is more chance of people linking to one of your pages.

Tips: Content should be planned carefully and well written, people won’t link just because you produce content on a regular basis but they will link if you produce original and valuable content. Always promote your content across your social media and email marketing channels.

Reviews & Bloggers: The web is abound with people who regularly write reviews and blogs and many build up very impressive followings on their websites and social channels. You can contact and submit your website or products to these writers in return for a mention or article/review about your business. Always request that they place a link to you or your products on their own website and you have just secured yourself an inbound link.

Repeat this process as part of your link building work.

Tips: When someone links to your website, you will gain more link power if they link to a specific page of your website rather than just your website address. Another way to increase the power of the link that they give you is to avoid creating a link that says ‘click here’ or ‘visit the website’.

Instead, request that they include keywords in the actual link such as: “For more information on hair care and styling products visit Sally’s Salon website.” This further increases the effectiveness of your inbound links.

UK Directories yell.com qype.co.uk freeindex.co.uk thomsonlocal.com localmole.co.uk touchlocal.com bizwiki.co.uk scoot.co.uk hotfrog.co.uk 192.com 118.com yelp.co.uk

Social Media facebook.com twitter.com linkedin.co.uk plus.google.com youtube.com flickr.com pinterest.com

Submissions: One of the quickest ways to gain links are from submitting your website to sites that are designed to provide links. By submitting a press release, if the publisher decides to use your news they will in most cases provide a one way link to your website.

There are also a great number of directory websites that allow you to enter your business details including your website address. Many of these directories are free, some require a small fee and whilst a lot of these links may not count as valued inbound links (because anyone can create them) they have an important added bonus of increased exposure.

Directory websites tend to be very well optimised and will populate a few of the first page ranks when people search within an area. This is an excellent opportunity. Often, and especially the newer they are, websites find it very hard to hit the top 10 ranks on a general search such as “cafes in glasgow”. There may be more than 10 cafes in a major city. When looking at a search like that, you may see Yell, 192, Thomson Local, Google Pages, Freeindex and other directories appearing and when you click on them they show a list of all the cafes they know of in Glasgow including their website addresses!

A directory site being listed on the first page of a local search, even if your website is lagging well behind in the ranks, will offer you the chance to be found by more people. Not only that, often a suprising number of your competitors may not be listed, they don’t have a website or their profile hasn’t been updated to include one.

Tip: Perform searches of your business area and enter local town and city names such as ‘plumbers in glasgow’ , ‘glasgow plumbers’ , ‘plumbers near glasgow’ and so forth. Look through all the results and anywhere you see a directory site, register and add your contact details to the listings.

You may be suprised to see that a lot of sites already have you listed, in these cases they have found your details from a database and occasionally there may be errors. Look for an option that says ‘Business owner? Claim your listing’ You can register and make changes to the exisiting details and in some cases add in photographs, opening times and much more.

By taking the time to complete these listing and provide as much information as possible, your listing will stand out from the rest. In some cases, directory sites prioritise listings that are more complete than others and show them first on their list. Another great way to score some points over your competitors!

3) Keywords Keywords are often assumed to only be the list of words that you place in the meta code of a website. Whilst this is true and those are called keywords, in terms of writing content for a website, keywords are words and phrases that you think people will use in a search engine to find your site and you should be using them appropriately throughout your website content.

To simplify keywords, if someone is searching for ‘piano replacement parts’ and you offer this service but on your website you rarely mention those words or close variants of those words, it won’t be likely that a search engine will assume your site is the best match for that person.

This reflects back to the first point about quality content. Your website content should be using key words and phrases throughout the full site in the page titles, meta data, headers, main text, alternative text, title tags and links.

A misconception about keywords is that writing a keyword or phrase once or twice will make you rank well on a search engine for that result. This is very unlikely unless the word or phrase is obscure enough that no other site is using it. Your site will be evaluated by a search engine based on all the keywords you use and the number of variants and frequency of those words throughout your site. Your top keywords should all relate to what you really wish to target.

Some websites encounter this issue when they wish to target a particular keyword but this keyword is only mentioned once in a bullet point list of their services. Lets assume it was Archery in your local area. To redress this balance you could designate a page entirely devoted to archery with great content on the page. You could also create an archery tips section and create articles on archery until the balance is redressed and archery becomes one of your top website keywords. On all searches you wish to rank high on, you need to demonstrate your website is worthy to be there.

piano replacement parts

The challenge with keywords The difficulty with keywords is being able to identify which keywords you should be using. There are tools and websites available that will evaluate keywords based on the number of searches and how competitive your keywords are.

A mistake often made is to aim too wide with your keywords and feel disheartened that your website does not feature. A basic example would be to imagine a business that sells exotic pets such as geckos in Manchester.

Aiming too wide = “Pet shops” - Even though people may be performing this search in huge numbers, it’s too vague for the business and pursuing this search would be almost impossible without a seriously well developed website and a lot of time. Would these people be looking for a reptile in Manchester? Unlikely.

Narrowing the search = “Pet shops in Manchester” - This search will be competitive amongst general pet shops in the area. It will see less volume, but will be more valuable to target than ‘pet shops’. Step back and think if people searching for just pet shops would be looking for reptiles or exotics? Possibly a low to moderate number may be interested but lets add one more word...

Getting specific = “Exotic pet shops in Manchester” - This keyphrase will see less volume, but by adding in just one more specific word - ‘exotic’ - the keyphrase is more likely to be bringing in people who are looking for you and what you sell. The percentage of people searching this keyphrase and clicking on your website should be the highest out of the three even though it sees the least searches.

This is called Click Through Rate which is the measure of how many people out of everyone performing a search will click on your website.

Exotic pet shops in manchester

Get specific and target the right words and phrases and the click through rate will be high. Once you identify keywords that are successful you can use variants of the phrases and words over time and monitor to see if your variations are more successful than your original versions.

4) Structure your website properly Unless you are a website designer or you are working in a content management system, this tip may not be relevant as something you could do yourself. It should be taken care of if you utilise a good website designer.

The structure of a website relates to keeping your website code tidy and organised in the manner set out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This basically means that there is a set of rules and standards that should be adhered to when building websites to help ensure that the website performs optimally for both the machines and the people that interact with it.

If you haven’t seen what a website looks like behind all the graphics and visuals, it boils down a long list of code. Below is what the 10 Downing Street website code looks like. This is only about 10% of the total code but it allows you a snapshot of a website barebones.

The text in blue is what is known as the metadata. This text is not visible to visitors, it’s all kept behind the scenes for search engines to read to help them understand what the page is about. Search engines used to pay a lot of attention to this text which resulted in a lot of keyword stuffing and abuse of the metadata purpose. Now search engines pay slightly less attention to metadata and increasingly more to actual page content but metadata is still a vital part of optimisation.

The text in pink is the text that visitors will be able to see located on the page. This includes all the content and the page title.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”> <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en-GB” lang=”en-GB”> <head> <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8” /> <title> Prime Minister David Cameron | Number 10 Downing Street - The official site of the British Prime Minister</title> <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Number 10 News” href=”http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/feed/” /> <link type=”text/css” href=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/styles/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css” rel=”stylesheet” /> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/jquery.1.4.4.min.js”></script> <meta name=”description” content=”Prime Minister David Cameron - Number 10 Downing Street. The official site of the British Prime Minister&#039;s Office”/> <meta name=”keywords” content=”Number 10, British, Prime Minister, Office, Number 10 downing street”/> <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.number10.gov.uk/” /> <script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/jquery.ticker. js?ver=3.5.1’></script> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/jquery.ui.1.8.9-ui.min.js”></script> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/jquery.ticker.js?ver=3.1.4”></script> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/PT_Serif_Caption_400.font.js”></script> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”/wp-content/themes/numberten/scripts/PT_Serif_400-PT_Serif_700.font.js”></script> </head> <body> <!-- main wrapper --> <div id=”wrapper” class=”main”> <!-- header --> <div id=”header-wrapper” class=”dl980p”> <h1 class=”access”>Number 10 Downing Street</h1> <div id=”slogan”> <p>The official site of the British Prime Minister&#39;s Office</p> </div> <div id=”cookies_link”> <a href=”/privacy-policy/”>Cookies</a> </div>

Metadata Advisory: Metadata is one of the aspects of your site that you should be very careful tampering with. The impact metadata changes can have on your website if done correctly but even moreso if done incorrectly, can be drastic. Handle with care, if you’re unfamiliar with exactly how it works enlist some help from someone who deals regularly with website development and understands the current trends in SEO. Your website designer should be able to take care of this for you.

Troubleshooting your rankings If you are shooting for the top but missing the mark, there are some other things to consider outwith creating valuable content, bulding powerful links, optimising for the best keywords and structuring your website properly.

The following things may be holding your website back...

Your website is in the ‘sandbox’ If you have just registered a brand new domain name, you will likely face Google’s sandbox for a period of around 6-8 months during which you may not see great rankings. The sad fact is that there isn’t really anything that can be done apart from being patient.

The reason why is actually very important.

Referring back to the search engine as a ‘business serving customers’ mindset, their goal is to only serve high quality sites to their searchers. They don’t want people having the ability to launch and become overnight search engine dominators if their website is spam or may only be around for a short period of time just to cause havoc, offend or deceive visitors.

By placing this test period on all new websites, search engines can monitor and evaluate each new domain, learning to trust it over time. This ensures that junk websites don’t keep popping up and clogging their rankings.

An unconfirmed solution...

Apart from waiting it out, unless you have a domain with some age behind it the only option that is thought to be somewhat effective in speeding up the sandbox period is to build great quality inbound links to your website. This is a trust thing, if other popular and trusted sites are linking to you it gives the impression that your website has high value and that’s a good sign.

The competion is extremely well armed No business wants to settle for less than appearing in the top 10 results for their targeted searches. When you step into the battlefield to reach that goal, depending on how competitive your market is you may find your competition are the equivalent of the special forces.

Armed to the teeth with great links, a high value website with content written by copywriters and an SEO team working continously to push forward.

It may feel like an overwhelming task to gain a foothold with these rival websites but with determination, hard work and time the possibility is always open.

A solution...

Find their weaknesses, it would be unlikely that your competition rank high for all possible searches, think of what makes you unique and think of searches that you could target where your competitors arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t active.

Pay Per Click campaigns, also known as Paid Search and Adwords. This is when a search engine features your website in the sponsored links section adjacent to the main search results for your chosen search term.

This gives you first page exposure alongside other websites that dominate that particular search.

Each time someone clicks your website, a fee is removed from your account balance, hence â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pay per clickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This can be a very effective method to boost relevant traffic to your website.

Poor website design A search engine canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually look to see if your website design is good or not. People will have different opinions on what appeals to them and what looks bad.

However, they will monitor visitor behaviour and from analysing visitor patterns they can work out if people spend a lot of time on the site or if they leave quickly.

People who leave your site without looking at any further pages after the page they landed on are considered to have bounced. The measurement of this activity is called bounce rate.

This can be caused by a mixture of possible faults that include overall design, excessive page loading times, confusing navigation structure and low quality content. Think of them as a chain. If one area is weak, the full website can suffer and cause high bounce rates and low average time spent on your website.

Unfortunately the bounce rate is not a perfect indicator of poor design as people often bounce sites reading articles, looking at images and also if they find exactly what they were looking for on the page they landed on.

It is still something that should be monitored though.

Remember...

Your website design is the key to selling yourself on the first impression. Capture your users interest at the first instance and search engines will learn that people seem interested in your website and spend a healthy amount of time on it.

Lack of promotion A website can (and many do) perform perfectly well as a build and forget project. It sits in the background capturing online visitors and selling yourself to them, often growing traffic over time as your website ages and becomes more trusted.

Remember this guide is about driving more traffic and this involves a more aggressive approach. As well as having a website, you need to be pushing it in areas that can be beneficial to bringing in traffic. The website is just one of the many tools available for promotion.

When used in conjunction with social media, email marketing campaigns, on & offline advertising, printed promotions and more, you can filter in more visitors. By showing search engines your website is popular with people within and outwith the search engines, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be looked upon more favourably.

Remember...

Have your website address mentioned on everything from your email signature to your radio adverts. Find numerous ways to encourage people to visit your website.

Social media is an area search engines are taking increased notice of. The more popular and engaged you are with real people on social media, the better perceived you will be to a search engine and this can have a knock on effect in your search engine rankings.

Always encourage people onto your website!

Allow time It can at times be frustrating watching the pace that a website grows at. This guide is aimed at reducing the time spent waiting for the traffic to come flowing in.

If you launch your website with quality content and a professional design, continually work on building high value links and get busy promoting your website as part of your marketing strategy you can pull in relevant traffic at a much faster rate.

Remember...

Search engines are designed to build trust with the websites they index and this requires time, but prove to them that you are actively working hard to demonstrate your website is worthy and you should earn trust faster.

Website Checklist Here is a handy checklist to help your website stand out from the crowd.

Analyse your competitors, identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Consider Pay Per Click campaigns for traffic boosting.

Look for improvements to textual content to add increased value.

Spell check all content, headers and page titles.

Find ways to make your website more valuable to users.

Research and identify which keywords and phrases to target.

Use your keywords and keyphrases appropriately.

Encourage relevant websites to link to your website.

Seek to build inbound links, not reciprocal.

Share and promote your website whenever you can.

Submit your website details to all the major directory websites.

Claim your Google Places business listing.

Build an active and engaged social media community.

Ensure your website is structured properly.

Check your navigation makes it easy to browse your website.

Allow time for your website to outgrow the sandbox.

This guide was written by Paul Nimmo of PN Design PN Design is an Ayrshire based creative business specialising in website design, graphic design & photography. Helping businesses acheive their marketing, branding and promotional goals both online and offline.

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