Getting Noticed, Google, etc.

This article rocks! Especially if you’re a budding web entreprenuer. Aside from that wonderful article, a comment from the reader provided real wonderful tips on how to make your site rank higher to google search. I have copied it here for the benefit of those who are interested. Just click on the “more” link.

Posted by Brad Hill:

It sounds like everyone is interested in SPECIFICS, so I will share some practical knowledge with interested readers.

When most people think about getting their website noticed, they think about ranking well in the search engines. The importance of ranking well cannot be understated — since people who enter keywords into Google, find a site, and then visit that site are essentially pre-qualified customers. That is, they have already stated an interest in what your website offers.

But how do you get to the top of the list? The short answer is good text on your webpages and good links to your site. And by “good” I mean text pages that the search engines (the most important being Google) will decide are most relevant for a given set of search criteria. This of course begs the question “how do I make my pages relevant?”.

When a visitor enters a few keywords into Google’s search box and clicks the “Search” button, Google ploughs through its database to find pages that have the most RELEVANT match to the keywords. While the exact method of determining the relevancy score is a closely guarded secret at Google (as it is at all search engines), it is well known to be heavily based on two key factors. 1. Key word density, and 2. Link Popularity.

Key word density follows that a document is considered a good relevancy match if the keywords entered into Google are used frequently and match closely the words on a webpage. Also, the location of keywords matters to some degree. Keywords found in HTML tags for headlines and page titles tend to add more weight to the ranking than keywords found in paragraph tags or in footnotes.

Link Popularity says that if many “high quality” sites link to your site, then your site must contain valuable information. In Google’s view, “high quality” links are links from other popular sites with good content.

So, to make use of this info… the simplest way is to decide on 5-10 keywords that people are likely to type in to Google when searching for topics relevant to your site. Then write good copy, and use your keywords generously, but not in a way that looks like you have “stuffed” your text with keywords. Make sure keywords end up in page titles, section titles, and throughout the text — again, in a way that supports the overall flow of your information.

Next, find several sites that are complementary to yours, that also have good content. Preferably ones that are already ranked well on Google for specific search terms. Propose to these sites that they link to yours. You might approach customers, suppliers, or other sites of relevance to your own. It is recommended you stay away from “Link Farms” — pages that just provide piles of links to other sites, but offer no real content.. Google is well aware of these sites and the rumour is that in some cases it will diminish your site’s ranking in the eyes of Google.

I hope these few pointers will help improve your rankings and help get your site noticed.