Google My Site

Google my site - a 5 minute tour of search engine optimisation

How do I google my site?  It’s a commonly asked question and an important one, given that most people in the UK find websites via search engines and Google in particular.  Google accounts for over 80% of all searches in the UK, so you want to appear high up in their search results.

There are whole books written on search engine marketing and many businesses specialising in search engine optimisation - trying to get your website higher up Google’s search results.  But it can be a very expensive business, with a fast changing landscape and no guarantees on success.

The following brief tour of search engine marketing takes you through the basics to help you start to "Google your site", yourself.

How do search engines work?

Google and other search engines, such as Yahoo, Ask, AOL and MSN, send "spiders" (or "robots") to crawl across the internet analysing websites’ content.  It stores the pages in huge databases of keywords, so that when you enter a search term (the "keywords" you enter into Google’s search box), it can return all the pages containing those words, ranked in order of the most relevant.

The way Google and other search engines work out which sites are most relevant is a complex and closely guarded secret, but there are three crucial elements in the equation: Keywords, Links and Recency.

Keywords.

Google ranks the sites according to keyword relevance.  This includes the number of times the keywords appear, how densely they appear (what percentage of the words on the page are keywords), how close they are to each other and so on.  If the keywords appear in page titles, headings and near the top of the page, Google assumes this page is more relevant than one where the keywords appear at the bottom of the page, hidden in paragraphs of copy.

Links

Google sees links to your site from other sites as recommendations for your site.  The more popular the other site, the more weight their reference carries.  It’s rather like peer reviews for scientific papers.  Google reckons that if everyone else wants to link to your site, it must be good.

Recency

To Google your site, ensure your content is relevant and up to date.  Google downgrades sites which haven’t been changed for ages - logically, it assumes they may be out of date.

Google adwords

Keywords, links and up to date content will all help improve your Google rankings in "natural" or "organic" search.  That is, the Google search results which are free.  In addition to these, there are spots you can pay for - at the top and to the right of the Google search results.  These "paid for search" results are called Google Adwords and you only pay when the searcher clicks through to your site.  You basically pay for your "advert" depending on the number of people bidding on the word - just like an auction - and how often your link is clicked (it’s a little more complicated, but that will do for now).  You can set an absolute amount you are willing to pay per Google adword or you can say you want to be top of the list and pay whatever it takes.

What should I do?

There are many things you need to do to Google your site - far more than we have time to go into in a five minute guide.  The best thing to do is write good content for your users.  If it is good for them, it is probably good for Google.  But do also keep an eye on:

1. Your keywords.  Pick some keywords and make sure they appear frequently throughout your site.  To "Google your site" or "optimise your content" as it’s really known, put your keywords in your page titles, headers, opening paragraphs etc.
2. Your links.  Encourage relevant sites to link to yours.  Write articles and press releases highlighting your site.  Register with some online directories. Always include your www website address (URL) in your marketing literature and promotional material. Quality is more important than quantity with links, so target sites with good pageranks.
3. Your website navigation.  How easily can your users (and search engine spiders) navigate your website?  Is it easy to use? Are there any broken links?  Check it regularly - and if possible, seek independent, expert advice on how to improve it. (See Webb Strategy’s Webb Site Reviews.)
4. Fresh content.  How recently was your content updated? Is it still relevant?  How detailed is it?  In general, the richer your website content, the better your Google ranking.
5. Your code.  Search engine spiders such as Google like good clean code and prefer sites designed with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  They find certain programmes difficult to read eg. Flash, Javascript.  But they do read HTML page titles and image tags, so make sure they contain keywords where appropriate.  In short, make sure your web designer understands search engine marketing as well as good design.
6. Local information.  Increasingly, Google and other search engines are looking at geographical information and returning results in that area.
7. Google adwords.  It may be worth buying a few keywords to test your market.  This is the easiest way to Google your site, but it comes at a price, so set yourself a budget and stick to it.  For more information, go to www.Google.com and click on Advertising Programs.

To note

Google’s spiders don’t visit every site every day.  If they find a site is not updated very regularly, they will drop the frequency of their visits.  They will also blacklist sites which they think are "spamming"(cheating) eg. by stuffing the site full of keywords that shouldn’t be there or by using link farms.  Be aware of the search engines, and use good practice to help them crawl your site.  But don’t become a Google slave.  And don’t expect instant results - you will have to wait for them to visit again to start seeing the difference.

Facts and figures *

1. Only 20% of searchers look at sponsored links.  The rest look only at organic search results.
2. Searchers read fast, choosing which link to click within 5 seconds.
3. Nearly all users look at the first 2 or 3 organic search results but less on those below.
4. Over 80% of searchers will only scroll down the page if there is no relevant result in the top three.
5. In a search result, you have the the title in blue (eg.Webb Strategy; Free advice; Google my site), the snippet (the bit of blurb underneath) and the URL (eg. www.webbstrategy.co.uk/Free_Advice/The_Wider_Web/Google_My_Site.html) under that.
6. Within each search result, searchers spend half their time on the snippet, 30% of time on the title and 20% of time on the URL.
7. Of those who don’t click from the first page, most will enter a new query rather than going to page 2 of the search results.
8. Fewer than 2% of searchers click on organic results on second and third pages and very few venture further than the third page.

*Sources:

The Guardian newspaper
Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt.