At the last networking event for Edge Networking, we invited Patrick Depriest, an Internet marketing specialist to give a presentation on search engine optimization. The full audio presentation will be available shortly on our website. In the mean time, here is a summary of the key points he presented.
There are 5 key factors that determine how well a site is ranked on Google:
Domain name: I remember when I first registered my domain name (tanveeramin.com). I felt like I was on top of the world. I had my own ‘footprint’ on the World Wide Web. I was even happier when I searched my name on Google a few months later and my site appeared on the first page of search results. Now, I was really in business! The problem is that aside from soothing one’s ego, it does little to generate traffic. Aside from my circle of contacts, few people will search for “Tanveer Amin” on the web. If my objective is to rank high on Google for people searching for articles on entrepreneurship, it is much better to register a domain name like “www.entrepreneurshipresourceguide.ca”. Be sure not to use any hyphens in your domain (a big no-no).
Some might object to using such a long domain name, but most people will find you by searching for keywords in Google, not by typing your URL. To determine which search terms are popular, you can use free research tools like Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends’. You can even refine searches geographically.
Another option (which is the one I will soon adopt for my blog) is to keep the original domain name and register a second more SEO friendly domain, which will be the ‘landing page’. When people enter a search term in Google, the landing page will appear. Once at the site, if they click anywhere on the page, they will be re-directed to your original site. This way, you get to keep the original domain name while generating more traffic from the landing page. However, if you are going to use this method, be sure to do a permanent 301 re-direct when someone clicks on a link on your landing page (your web guy will know what that means).
Age of domain: Search engines tend to like domains that have been around for a while. They are considered more ‘trustworthy’. You can search for aged domains on canreg.com. If you can’t find an aged domain, don’t stress too much. Follow the rest of the recommendations and you’ll be fine.
Coding errors: Search engines will spend less than a second ‘reading’ your site. If there are too many coding errors, it slows them down and they eventually stop trying. You can use a free tool called W3C Validator to check the number of coding errors on your site.
Content: Be sure to put relevant content on your site and update it regularly. If you can’t add new content everyday, do it once a week or once every two weeks. However, the key is consistency. Adding relevant content every second Sunday is much better than adding new content for 5 days straight and then nothing for the month after. Here’s another tip: upload the content at the exact same time every interval (e.g. every Sunday at 12pm). Believe it or not, after a few times, Google becomes aware that you upload new content every Sunday and visits your site more frequently during those times.
One warning with respect to content. Some ‘smart’ programmers will often try to trick Google by hiding keywords on their various pages (e.g. they will change the font to white and paste the keywords hundreds or thousands of times across the screen). This might work in the short run, but will fail miserably in the long run. And remember: once you get caught by Google doing something sneaky (e.g. hiding keywords, link farms, etc.), they might permanently put you on their ‘ignore list’. From that point on, you can forget about optimizing your website since it no longer exists for Google.
Links: The greater the number of sites that link to your site, the higher it will be ranked. However, be careful not to use ‘link farms’, which is another sneaky trick Google dislikes. A link farm is any group of sites that all hyperlink to one another for the purpose of increasing web ranking on search engines. Links must be genuine. For example, you can ask a company that sells gym memberships to link to your site that sells sports accessories. Link submissions can be very time consuming and it’s something that you can outsource to companies like the one where Patrick works ( SEO Internet Marketing). Over the course of several months, they will strategically post link submissions to increase traffic to your website.
The key think to remember, as Patrick pointed to me after his presentation, is that there are no secrets to search engine optimization. There are also no shortcuts. Do it right and get it right the first time. It will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.
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