I Wanna Be #1 on Google!

We hear this a lot. And it’s a worthy goal. But do you know what it really takes to get there? Here are some of the considerations for getting high rankings on Google.

Preliminary Note: You don't have to go through Google to get places on the internet.

We've observed a lot of people go to Google, then type in their own web site and wait for Google to bring it up. Then they click through to go the web site. Some newbie web users think you have to go through Google to get anywhere on the Internet. Others have not grown comfortable with the address bar in the web browser window. Sometimes we audaciously suggest typing in the web site address directly and saving it as favorite for a one-click visit in the future. More than once we've heard, "No, I like going to Google." I must say we don't understand this, but we've observed it too many times to pretend it is not a real behavior.

Having valid, quality links to your site is the most important thing you can do to get good rankings on Google.

h3. Search Engine Primer: How do I get in a search engine?

Each search engine has robots and spiders that are software programs crawling the web. They follow links from web page to web page and then index or file what they find into massive databases. You want to build your site so that it is accessible to these automated programs. And you want to build your private web areas so they are not accessible to these programs.

There are over 8 billion pages on the internet.

A July 2000 Cyveillance' study estimates that the Internet is growing at a rate of more than 7 million pages per day.

It takes time after your site has launched before the bots and spiders will find you and store you in their databases. Be patient! Or go directly to Google to submit your site.

First: How do you want to be found on Google?

Google is a search engine. You type one or more words into the search bar and Google returns any number of guesses for what it thinks you want. Those words you type in are called "search terms" and/or "keywords." Some search terms are incredibly competitive, as there are many businesses who want to be number one for that phrase.

Think about "home mortgage." Then think about how many web sites are in the business of selling home mortgages. Then think about the budget some of them have to pay to get top rankings on Google. Depending on your search term and the size of your business, it may not be realistic to expect top rankings for very generic, very competitive search terms.

Second: What search terms are within your reach for top rankings?

All is not lost! You can aim to be found by your company name, especially when combined with a local search. Let's say "ABC Home Mortgage" and "Albuquerque." Those are more specific, and would be a much better search query if say, someone heard you speak at Rotary and wanted to check you out, but did not have a business card or did not know your web site address.

You'll want to have your company name mentioned in real text on your home page and you'll want to have your City and State and/or geographic service area also listed in the home page text.

Third: What if that still isn't working?

Google is an incredibly competitive space. Even when you do things "right," you may not make it on the first few pages. It may be you have a common name in a crowded space. It may mean your site is too small to get noticed. It may mean the structure of your site prevents Google from easily finding you. It may mean your site is too new for Google to have found you yet and placed you in its database.

Fourth: What are the most important things for you to do to get on Google?

• Make sure your site structure is inviting to the search engines. You can listen to our podcast on the topic here.
• Aim for at least 50 pages on your site. Content is king and the more you have, the more the search engines will pay attention to you. The more current the content, the better. The more specific the content, the better.
• Be sure to list your company name, your keywords, and your geographic location on the home page.
• Look at your site statistics and see what search terms people are using at Google to get to your site. Then be sure to add those phrases to your web site content. Obviously, you have to get some history on your site before this tip will be useful.
• Generate high quality links to your site from other sites. This is easy of you start commenting on related blogs and web sites, write articles about your specialty for other web sites, and ask others in your industry to mention you on their web sites. Having valid, quality links to your site is the most important thing you can do to get good rankings on Google. If enough people link to you, you can have very few pages and break a lot of the other rules because Google looks at what other people value when deciding how to rank you.
• Update your site so it is using the newest Web 2.0 software, enabling your site to "ping" other sites when you post new content. You can learn more in this podcast.
• Register your site with Technorati and consider adding Technorati tags to your pages, as I have done at the end of this post.

When You're Ready For Professional Help

We've helped many companies get top 3 listings on Google and Yahoo for very competitive search terms. You can read more here about our services.

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Google Buys Urchin

Google announced late Monday afternoon (March 28th, 2005) that it had reached an agreement with Urchin to buy the web analytics company. We can’t wait to see what the power and deep pockets of Google have in store for our favorite web stats reporting software.

Here's one of my favorite articles on the purchase.

Over the years, we at Bare Feet Studios have tried many web site traffic analysis packages. They've run the gammut from free packages like Webalizer that are provided or installed by most hosting providers, up to the true enterprise-level packages such as WebTrends and Urchin. In the early days, packages such as WebTrends required that you add code to each and every page on which you wanted to gather statistical information. While that in itself was quite a pain, the real problem came when the WebTrends servers were down or responding slowly. See, the way it worked was that each time a user requested one of the pages on your site, the code that you had to paste into each page actually had to connect to the WebTrends servers and "log" a hit as well as gather additional information about the visitor, their browser, what page or site they had previously visited, etc. Much like the same problems with ad tracking sites like DoubleClick, when the servers that tracked these hits were busy or down, your web page would fail to load.

This never really made any sense to us. The web server software, Apache is our web server of choice, keeps a very detailed log of all access and activity. Other packages on the market at that time, like Urchin and FunnelWeb (it was an early stats package that ran on Macintosh servers) instead were installed on the server, or on a server in your local network, and would read the contents of these server logs into memory once a day (or as many times as you want to configure them to) and then spit out a very detailed and expansive series of reports that could be sorted and viewed in almost any way imaginable. Very early on we decided to go this route and to not leave our client's websites at the mercy of some other server out there and just hope that it wasn't too busy at the moment to deal with our hits. WebTrends did see the problem and moved to create a series of packages that could be purchased and that will run on your local network. But we found their products to be very unfriendly, unweildly, and expensive for what you actually got.

So, for the past 5-6 years we have been offering enterprise-level Urchin statistical website traffic reporting FREE to our clients who host with us. We feel that understanding the traffic patterns on your site are just as important as getting good placement on the search engines. It doesn't matter if you have a top 10 or top 5 placement on Google if your visitors can't find what they are looking for when they get to your site. Helping our clients understand the traffic patterns that develop on their sites is one of the important and surprisingly educational services we offer.

You might know how many hits or sessions your site registered yesterday. Do you know if your site visitors found what they were looking for?

Use Site Structure for Better Search Engine Results

Problem:
Not being found is a particular problem with sites that are built all in Flash, or that have a lot of images and not a lot of HTML text. You may see words, but the search engine robots won’t if they are actually images. Be sure that you can select specific words with your cursor to be sure your content is readable by the search engines.

Solutions:

1. Have a descriptive page title that starts with your company name and can then be followed with other key descriptors, such as location, industry, and/or key services. This title is the one that shows up in the title bar at the top of your browser window. You will need access to the "code" of your pages to change the page title information. It's good practice to pay attention to your page titles. Plus, the title is what shows up in a visitor's Favorites list - so make it easy for them to know who you are.

1. Have at least 100 words of HTML text as high up on the page as possible. Listen to how we helped our client, www.herecomestheguide.com get a consistent top 3 position for a very competitive search term, "California wedding locations." Be sure to include your company name and your geographical location. Local search is becoming hotter and hotter...but we'll discuss that in a future BizzyCast!

1. Use the title tag and the alt tag if you have a lot of flash or images on your web pages. Be sure to include your company name! Don't just say title="company logo" but instead say title="My Company logo." Or go even further with something like title="My Company logo call us for professional web services in Hawaii, New Mexico, and California." It's invisible unless the user rolls over the image, so it's a great way to extend your messaging.

Want help? We offer you at least two choices. One, we recommend hiring us for a Web Site Analysis. We'll look at your rankings and your site structure to see how you can improve your search results. Two, you can hire us for Online Marketing services.

It takes more time to write useful title tags for every image and search engine-friendly page content, but that's one of the things we think you should expect when hiring a professional web developer.

To hear more on this topic, listen to our BizzyCast!

Click Fraud and the Search Engines

It seemed like such a good idea. Choose the best search terms that fit your business, bid on them at Google, then pay only when a user clicks on your link and comes to your web site. Until your competition finds your link and runs up your account. Costing you wasted money. Keeping customers away from your web site.

Unfortunately, as of yet there is no way to prevent strangers from clicking on your pay-per-click links.

The problem is gaining more attention though, as the size of the industry increases.

You can read more in this AP articel dated February 15, 2005:
Click Fraud Looms as Search-Engine Threat

Key points:

Click fraud may represent as much as 10-20% of pay-per-click transactions, which is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Search engines themselves are getting scammed. Seen all those blogs and sites with Google AdSense on them? Google delivers text ads to match the content on the page. The site gets paid for the clicks that come from it. But at least Google has the technical and financial resources to detect the fraud and bring charges. Your typical small business does not.

Click fraud is even being outsourced! Some companies are hiring overseas workers to sit at computers and click their competitors' paid links.

The price of keywords has only gone up. The article reports that the current rate for what you might think is a very obscure term—mesothelioma—is $51 per click. What is mesothelioma? The type of cancer that is related to asbestos contamination.

Our Position

We have generally stayed away from pay-per-click advertising, due to the uncertainty, and our general skepticism of untargeted advertising. We love the internet, but that doesn't mean we love everything about it. We'd rather see your effort go into quality content, a well-designed site, and generating substantial cross-linking.