How can I get my website into the top 5 of Google search results?

Ladder to Sky

This is a question I hear often. More and more people are looking for solutions online and over 90% of them use Google to find them. Website owners are naturally anxious to tap into these potential customers.

The collection of techniques used to improve search engine ranking is referred to collectively as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The actual words that people type into the search engine are known as keywords.

Good SEO is Worth Money

Obviously good SEO is potentially worth a lot of money. So, if you don't want to pay, you'll have to go the DIY route to get quality. Not only will you need to develop SEO skills you'll also need some basic web building skills to both understand SEO and put it into practice. I've included a couple of links at the end of the article to help you on your way.

Are People Searching for It?

SEO is a time-consuming effort and there is nothing worse than spending a year optimising your site for keywords that nobody is looking for. It's pretty easy to get to the first page for "slavic tractor dancing" but it's unlikely that you'll ever get many (any?) people searching for that. You can check the search volume of keywords using Google's Keyword Tool.

What Does Your Customer Want?

Search engines work by helping people find what they are looking for. If you consistently had to click through 100+ results to find what you were looking for then you would soon be looking for a better way to search the web.

Thinking this through, something becomes obvious. To get a good ranking for particular keywords you need to build a website with information that people searching using those keywords will want to know. A surprising number of your competitors will overlook this step giving you an easy advantage.

Once you have a useful site then SEO can make sure your site's value is recognised by search engines. There are literally hundreds of factors that can make a difference but here are the ones that will give you the best return on your time.

External Links

This is a count of the number of sites linking to you and is the biggest factor in increasing your ranking. The more links you get, the higher you rank. Even better is when the link includes the keywords you want to be ranked for.

Good       
Harry's Tractor Emporium sells high quality
agricultural machinery.
(harrystractors.com)
Better Harry's Tractor Emporium sells high quality
agricultural machinery.

The most valuable links are those that your competitors can't get. A link in an online directory is fine, however your competitor could easily get listed alongside of you. Better yet is when people link to your site because of some interesting content, or a great experience they have had.

Website Trust

Website "trust" means that not every link is created equal. To increase the relevance of their results, search engines use algorithms to rank websites according to how useful they have been to previous searchers. If users go to a site from Google and don't come back that site has shown itself to answer the searcher's request and so becomes more trusted. Trusted sites have usually been around for a while with steady traffic levels. If you get a link from a website that is trusted that is worth much more than a link from www.dodgyspammers.biz.

Page Titles

Page titles usually appear in the browser's title bar. If your page is about tractor maintenance then "Tractor Maintenance Tips" might be a good title. A search engine will think this page is about tractor maintenance and will show it to people searching on tractor maintenance. Page titles are set in the page's HTML source code. Check your site and make sure you set these. A surprising amount of pages are left with default titles like "Untitled Page".

Keywords in Content

You should use the keywords you want to rank for in the content on your page. Typically keyword use should be about 2-3% of your content.

A temptation might be to engage in what is known as "keyword stuffing" (see image), basically making your page a huge list of keywords. A keyword stuffed page is likely to be fairly useless to searchers and so search engines will penalise your website as spam. Avoid this "trick".

What Does Your Customer Want?

That is just a small introduction to improving your website's rank. I'd like to conclude by reminding you that high website rankings are not the point. Your website needs to be able to provide your customer with an answer to the question "What's In It For Me?" The ultimate statistic to focus on is not search engine ranking, nor is it even website visitors but it is profit per visitor.