Improving your PageRank with Google

With millions of pages on the Web it can be difficult to get your Web site noticed. This can be especially difficult for entrepreneurs launching a brand new website. One of the first instincts for a new website owner might be to produce a website quickly and then register it with every search engine and wait for the visitors to come. However, this strategy can wind up backfiring if your site does not portray your company in the best way possible and if your site is not optimized to appear well in search results.

If you don't optimize your site it could be weeks before the friendly Google bot returns to reindex your site after their initial visit, causing you to lose customers before they even get to your site. It is now widely accepted that if you are not listed in the first 3 pages of results from a search engine then you will not be found by that potential customer. The majority of people will simply go to a competitor's site that does appear in those results or try new search criteria assuming that they have failed to find what they are looking for.

Before you register your Web site with a Search Engine you should enhance your Web site to make sure it displays well within Search Engine results.  According to Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (produced by Google) there are a few things you can do to enhance your search engine placement. Here are a few of their top suggestions:

Use Meaningful Titles:

All pages on your Web site need meaningful titles. Some search engines read only the title when indexing the Web site. The title is also what shows up in a user's favorites or bookmark list. Here is a set of title selection Dos and Don'ts

• Do choose a title that communicates the content of the page
• Do make sure your title is the first tag in the HEAD element of your page
  
• Don't use titles like “untitled” or titles that have nothing to do with the content. 
• Don't add unnecessary keywords in your title tags
• Don't use ALL CAPS titles.
• Do keep your title short (if the title more than 60 characters it may be shortened in the search results).
• Do minimize the use of stop words in your title (Words such as "and, on, a, the, for, to, about, are, that, were, by, of" and other auxiliary words are ignored by search engines)

Use META elements

You can use META elements to raise on your Web site listing with certain search engines. AltaVista, Excite, Inktomi and HotBot use them but some other search engines ignore them.

• META Elements go in the HEAD section of the document and let you specify information about the document that is invisible to the user.
• Common META elements are Author, Description, Keywords and Generator.

You should make sure to use the description META element and the keywords META element in your document. This description may be used in Google's search results (depending on the user's query) and the keywords element helps search engines classify your results. Here are some dos and don'ts for creating a good description for your web page:

• Do summarize the page's content completely
  
• Do keep your description within 160 characters
  
• Do use unique descriptions for each page of the site too. 
• Don't simply make your descriptions a list of keywords for the page or site.

Here are some dos and don'ts for creating good keywords for your web page:

• Do include keywords you want your page to be found under in the keywords list
• Do make your keyword list targeted and specific
  
• Don't use the same keywords on every page for your site
  

Google also recommends you improve the readability of your URls (words are better than numbers), use alt text and title attributes for your images and links, optimize your site navigation, and use best practices for anchor texts.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guideis an excellent resourse for entrepreneurs interested in improving their visibility on Google and other search engines. And it is free.

Labels: google, search engine optimization, website tips