On a daily basis, I am asked the same questions. “How do I increase my page rank?” “How do I achieve higher rankings?” Or “What do I need to do to get more hits on my website?” And on a daily basis, I try my best to explain my understanding of optimization and give them the best advice I can to help them get to where they want to be.
Search Engine Optimization is as much a science as it is a case-by-case method. Every expert and every company has their own take on what the best ways are to optimize websites and while some of them do work, most don’t.
Think of your website or blog as a resource. You write content to inform your users of what ever it is that you find interesting, or that you think your users will find interesting. Every page has a different name, and I would hope, different content. Yet, even if you do all this, your rankings will be less than satisfying. And the question is, why?
Why is it that my website can have so much content and keywords and links and pages but yet Google still won’t recognize my “importance?” The answer lies within the question. If everyone would focus on just those four points and less on their toolbar page rank, they would achieve rankings beyond their wildest dreams.
First: Content
Focus less on “optimizing for search engines” and more on the writing the content. Open up a blank word processor document and begin. Start with your home page’s content. Write it as if you were speaking directly to your site’s visitors and write it in language that makes sense to the audience you are trying to reach. Don’t worry too much about adding high amounts of keyword strings made primarily for speaking directly to search engines.
Speak normally (without bolding) and with a constant tone (keeping the same size throughout), just as you would if you were speaking face-to-face with your site’s audience. Writing without Google in mind doesn’t mean forgetting about search engines altogether when writing your text, but it does mean focus less on how many times the word “real estate” is on your home page and focus more on welcoming your visitors and showing them the way to achieve what they came to achieve.
Second: Keywords
While keywords shouldn’t be your main focus, they do play an important role in websites both in meta data and in content. Please, by all means, do include all relevant keywords in your meta tags. But try to manage the amount of meta keywords that you choose to include. Keep it under 20 and choose wisely. Don’t forget to back up your meta tag keywords with your content without relying on finding and replacing, be aware and try to write friendly content.
Third: Links
Links play an important role in how well a website ranks on search engines. Make your links visible and clickable and make sure to never misspell them. Try to keep the majority of your links in-house. What I mean by in-house is that most of your links to your informative (original) content should be held on the same website as from which your linking. If there’s an article you just have to link to, first try and see if you can have the author’s permission to display it on your website (with the appropriate crediting, of course).
Fourth: Pages
Separating your content by relevantly-titled pages is the key to your content’s success. While I would agree with putting as much informative, relative content as you aesthetically can on your home page, try to break up the rest of it to their own respective pages. You don’t normally see a company put their mission statement, staff profiles and investor relations all on the same page, do you? So it should be the same way with your content. Give your pages appropriate titles, and don’t make any two pages have similar (or even mirrored) content as this begins to hurt your rankings.
“What if I have a page of content for screen-readers and then the same page of content for people who are going to print the page?” Use your robots.txt file to disallow crawlers to hit both pages. Hint: Allow the one for print, as the layout is most likely more clean compared with the one for screen-readers.
To Link or not to Link.
Linking is important among smaller websites, but who you link to and from should be important to you. After all, rankings are still heavily decided by a sort of “Voting” system that links have put in place.
For example, Bob has a real estate website that serves as both a resource and way to generate new clients for the area of San Francisco. Joe has a gambling website. While Bob has a Page Rank of 0, Joe has a Page Rank of 5. The reason being is that Joe has prepared many “ghost pages” that are filled with nearly (or completely) invisible content, which in the short-run increase the perception of importance of his site. If Bob decided to exchange links with Joe, he has done himself a disservice although. First, because Joe’s website is participating in unsupported optimization methods. And second, because Joe’s site and content are completely irrelevant to Bob’s.
I can see why people have a hard time understanding the concept of “voting” and how it pertains to them, but it’s something I can’t stress enough to people to try to understand. Otherwise, people will continue to participate in linking “free-for-alls” that help in the short-run but might even get them banned by the search engine entirely in the long-run.
KISS.
When it comes to just about anything that’s business related, my dad’s long preached method of “Keeping it Simple” continues to prevail.
When I sit down to begin a new web design project, I almost always begin with a list of goals that my client wants to achieve, and I begin to integrate them into my designs. On top of that, I always do my best to add just enough color and graphics to make it interesting, but not so much that the site loses ease-of-use.
The less images, the better. The more informative and original content, the better.
Focus on rich, informative content, backed by a strong linking structure and a solid understanding of efficient keyword use, and you won’t have to worry about keeping your eye on your browser’s built-in Page Rank viewer.
If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
