There's no point forking out hundreds on a website or teaching
yourself how to knock one up on the cheap if no one can find it.
Most people will be looking for a business like yours through
Google. It's the most popular website in the world. You need to
know how to get your website listed on Google - and as near the
front page of results as possible. This is what search engine optimisation
(SEO) is - ensuring that search engines like Google find your
website and put it near the top of search results.
1. Research your keywords
First, you need to decide what your keywords
are. Keywords are the words people will type into Google to find
your site. A lot of these will be common sense. You can then check
which ones you expect to work using Google's Keywords tool, which will also suggest
other similar phrases and show you which phrases are the most
popular.
You want phrases that are highly searched for, but have low
competition. This will probably mean choosing ones that are not the
most highly searched for but still get a fair amount of traffic.
Choose about 10 for each page of your website if each page is
selling or advertising different products. If you only offer one
service, just focus on the same 10 throughout the website.
2. Fill in your meta data
Meta data is words describing a web page that aren't visible
when you're looking at the site but either Google or people
searching on Google can see. It helps Google understand what your
website is about. You can access it from your website's CMS or
wherever you edit your content from. Ask your hosting company if
you're unsure.
Your 'page title' and 'page description' are the bits that
appear as results on Google. Make sure your title makes sense and
has at least one keyword in it, and your company name. Don't go
over 66 characters or it won't disply in full. So if you're a
garden tools retailer, for example, try something like:
'Buy garden tools and cheap garden
forks: Green Gardens' for your page title. The keywords
are in bold. Then in the description underneath list even more
keywords. Don't go over 159 characters. You also need to fill in
meta tags - just put in five to 10 of your keywords.
3. Make sure your meta data matches your
content
Right, that's the complicated bit over. Now you just need to
make sure the text on each page matches up with your keywords and
meta data. Make sure any headings have keywords in and aim (very
roughly!) for a density of about 2% keywords in text on the page.
Make sure everything is in normal sentences, too - Google likes
this. An extension of this is aiming to make sure you repeat the
title of a page in the main text. So if your heading says 'Buy
garden tools for less than £20', make sure you have a paragraph
somewhere saying, 'We want to make gardening fun and easy, so here
you can buy garden tools for less than £20'.
4. Make sure your homepage is updated
regularly
Google likes knowing that you're putting lots of new information
up regularly, so either update offers on your homepage or start a
blog that shows new titles on your homepage to keep things
fresh.
5. Get other sites to link to you
The more other websites link to yours, the more Google trusts
you, so the higher it will rank you in search results. Ask any
relevant websites to link to yours (you'll be surprised at how
obliging they are!). The bigger and more-used the website is, the
more Google is impressed. So go for quality links, not just
quantity. You can track how many sites are linking to you on Alexa.com. Set
targets to improve this figure month by month.
Find out more from our advice on
SEO.