Increasing your google rank

Summary

To be at the top of a google search is a goal shared by millions. You need to spend time to create quality, unique and correctly formatted content to rise to the top.

Research

You can only hope to achieve a high google rank for 1 or 2 keywords or phrases. You need to research which keywords you want to target:

Which keywords will potential customers type into google to find a product or service for your business offers? The quickest way is to ask your current customers.
Which keywords will bring the greatest benefit to your business?
Use Google’s Keyword tool to view the search volume and other keyword suggestions.

Once you have a list, pick 1 or 2 keywords. Picking more than 2 keywords will dilute your results, making it extremely hard to rank high.

Website Design

Ensure your website is easy to use and navigate. If you have a high google ranking but a poorly designed website, people will leave your site immediately.

The following points will help increase your google ranking:

Choose a domain name that contains your keyword – eg www.bakery-website-design.com
Place your keywords into the “Title” of each page
Use keywords in your URL – eg www.ibakesoftware.com/website-design-baking-industry

A bad example would be www.ibakesoftware.com/index.php?id=001

Create a sitemap
Do not use flash – search engines cannot read flash

Website Content

Your content must be of high quality, useful to your target market and unique. People will not come back to your site if the content is of no value to them even if you rank high in google.

Follow these points when creating content to help increase your google ranking:

Use header tags which contain keywords (H1, H2, H3). Make sure your headings are short and to the point.
Bold keywords and important phrases. Do not overdue, only bold when relevant.
Your content must be unique – do not copy and paste from another source.
Content must be high quality and relevant to your target market.
Only link to external websites when relevant

Links and Anchor text

Getting other websites to link to yours is the most effective way to increase your google rank. The website that links to your site should be of high quality, be similar or relevant to your target market and use anchor text.

The higher the quality the website linking to your site, the higher google ranking you will achieve. Do not go out and get 1000 links to your website from low quality websites or directories as this will not improve your ranking. It is best to get 1 high quality website to link to your site then 1000 low quality sites.

Use keywords in anchor text when linking to your site – examples:

Straight link to your website – www.ibakesoftware.com - bad example

Anchor link to your website – Website Design for the Baking Industry - good example

Posting informative comments on forums and blogs and provide a signature to each post (use anchor text to link back to your website). This will help your link building but also build your status as an expert.

People will link to your website on their own accord if you provide high quality content that is relevant to them. Having a website that offers valuable content is your best tool for link building.

Review

Review your website stats once per week. Your statistics program will be able to display how many people have visited your site, which search terms they used in google to find you and how long they stayed for.

If your search terms are not doing well, start the process again using different keywords or reducing the amount of keywords.

Conclusion

Build a website thats easy to navigate, quality content and relevance and website masters, bloggers and forums will start to link to your website, ensuring a high google rank.

This article is written by Sam Steele, project manager at DeboSoft - a website and graphics design company

Debosoft