I am often asked, "How can I improve my website's ranking in Google?" There are lots of possible answers to this question, and a wealth of search engine optimization information on the Internet, so much that it can be intimidating for website owners or those unfamiliar with the topic. I thought it'd be useful to provide a compact guide that lists some best practices that website owners & webmasters alike can follow that could improve your websites' crawlability, indexing and inevitably your websites rankings.

No matter how much some people claim the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry is a den of snake-oil salesmen, and there is an abundance of scammers in the SEO market, there are still definite ways website designers and website owners can improve their Search engine page rankings and thus their visibility in search results.

You should start with Google's SEO Starter Guide is now available on the web. This covers 98% of the global Internet audience according to the company.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

"We hope that webmasters and website owners around the world can use the guide to improve their sites' crawlability and indexing in search engines," says Brandon Falls of Google's Search Quality Team.

If you are unfamiliar with Google's SEO Starter Guide, it is a "compact guide" that lists best practices according to Google that you can use to improve the indexing of your website.

The guide focuses on areas like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, backlinks ... etc.

This isn't a manipulation game. Google, and all the major search engines, absolutely despise the manipulation game and will punish you for it which is exactly what the darker element of the SEO world sells - black hat SEO. If you have a website for any length of time you will eventually be spammed with seemingly "free" offers to analyze your website promising first page rankings on Google - they are scammers. By the time you figure out they are not doing your website any good you will have already shoved a shoebox full of money in their direction and very possibly doing your website great harm. Good Search Engine Optimization is made up of smart, user and search engine friendly techniques involving good keyword rich content, good navigation and site structure.

That being said, there is an abundance of good things webmasters and website owners can do to help their sites perform better in the search engines. Here is a condensed list what I think are the top strategies for better search engine placement. Particularly for Google:

1. Title tags

Title tags are one of the Big Three (tags, links, and text), we put title tags at the top of the list. The words in the title tag appear in the link that pops up in the search result. This is where you tell the search engine (and the would-be visitor) as succinctly as possible what needs to be known: company or publication name; relevant, targeted keyword or keyword phrase taken from the text of the page. Each page should have a title tag as Google ranks each page individually, not the site in its entirety.


2. Content

Not enough can be said about good keyword phrase rich content for your website. Content is KING!  In this case, you probably understand that content should be quality, however that is defined, but it should also be rich in the keywords you are targeting to drive search traffic. Keyword use and keyword variation should be natural and not overstuffed. For the visual text part of the page, focus on working in the relevant words and phrases you want people to find you for.


3. Backlinks (inbound links from other web sites)

There are few things that have the power of good quality backlinks in increasing your search engine ranking. Backlinks, links to your site from outside sources and directories - other domains. Links are a vote or recommendation for your website. If nobody's recommending you, or the recommendations seem phony, then it won't work. Authority links are weighted most heavily, of course, so try to get industry related authority sites to link to your site.

This can work to the disadvantage to web site owners that are working with a limited advertising budget.  Those with a greater budget can buy their way to the top of Google simply by purchasing more backlinks from web sites of authority almost regardless of their content quality differences with their competitors websites.  So ... just because a web site is on Google page one link 1 , 2, or 3 doesn't necessarily mean they have better content.

There are, however, ways to get around this dilemma.  Check out my article here for some ways you can increase your traffic without spending a cent.  Click here!


4. Quality Links

High quality links are by nature more difficult to get, so you'll have to start somewhere else unless you already have the brand recognition you need from square one. Many propose "link-swaps" or "link exchanges" and it used to be common trade to buy and sell links. But as Google demonstrated last Fall, you can't buy Google's love that way. In fact, you'll get the opposite of love. So, try to get as many links as you can from industry peers the good old-fashioned way – by promoting. Submit links to respected directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, as well. A large quantity of low-quality, non-authoritative, or bad-neighborhood links, though, can do a lot more harm than good; so keep things natural. 

Many have tried the "link farm" method to no avail.  Link farms are web sites that list pages and pages of unrelated links, sometimes for free and sometimes paid for.  Link farms have little value and will do little to help your search engine rankings. If identified by Google they can hurt your rankings. Pay particular attention to the rank of the page that your link appears on.  The ranking value of the page your link is on is passed down to your web site page.

5. URL

Search engines don't like too many parameters in the URL (easy to confuse the spiders with & and ?) and people can't read those long URLs and tell what they mean at a glance either. This may be difficult and close to impossible for dynamically generated content or content that is pulled from databases. Keywords in your URL are a good idea.


6. Spider Food

Search spiders read HTML, not Flash. They read text, not pictures. Make the spiders happy with HTML and lots of text.


7. Site Architecture

There's a lot to consider here, but the goal is creating a site search engine spiders can easily access and crawl, a site that tells them where to go and what to index. Sitemaps are vital for this purpose, as is proper use of Robots.txt. Good page navigation and internal linking stucture is important too. Fancy Java Script or Flash navigation is ok if you have good text links elsewhere on your page for the spiders to follow.  Also, for your users and the serach engine spiders, try to make sure that the content your trying to guide your users to isn't to many clicks away from your home page.  The more clicks away their destination, the greater the opportunity for them to get lost.

If your website is using a calendar system - block search engine bots from it if you can afford to do so as calendars provide links for search engimne spiders to go forward and backward in infinity in time. Sometimes you cannot afford to do so as in event calendar web sites. But here is the dilemma: Many search engine bots get lost in them plus you want the search engine bots to spend time indexing more of your other content rather than lost in a never ending loop of links pointing to months & years into infinity.

8. Frequently Updated Content

You could start a site, slap some content on it, and let it sit there in cyber space. It'll be indexed, most likely. But you really expand your credibility as a devoted, relevant source if you update your website regularly. In addition to search engine spiders, it gives people a reason to come back, too.


9. Start a Blog

A great way to establish yourself as an authority voice on the Internet is to start a blog about the industry you're in. Maintaining a blog means another entry point with regularly updated content that eventually with some authority helps pull up the main site via targeted links to the site, or specific pages within the site. It's not a spam blog, which will be zapped eventually, if there's useful content on it and legitimate linking.


10. Don't Forget People

There's an art to designing a site that is friendly to both Search Engine spiders and the people you ultimately want to attract to your website. Without people, what's the point? So first design for them, and then tweak to please the search engines. 

If you are a website owner, work with your web guy.  He should know the techniques that will get you good results in the search engines.  Listen to his advice and above all - educate yourself and ask questions - so you will know the difference between good advice and when your getting a snow job.