The First Page of Google
The First Page of Google
The First Page of Google
Find out more about the First Page of Google here
When the Google spider visits your website it sees a slightly different website from what human visitors do. Google views the source code and picks out various parts of that code to build up data to be incorporated into it's vast index of websites. Whilst a whole book could be written on this subject we will try to highlight the important factors which are essential in ensuring that your website is ranked as highly as possible. Below are the key aspects that should be considered. Before attempting to edit your webpage decide what your primary keywords are that you wish to be ranked most highly and try to incorporate those when following the advice shown below.
Page Title - Located within the area of your webpage These are what the viewer will see at the very top of your browser and as the name suggests should be the title of the page. It is contained within the source code between the following tags YOUR PAGE TITLE WILL BE HERE. This page title should ideally contain the principle keyword or keywords for your webpage and these words are best placed at the very beginning of the title with perhaps your business name following on such as Steel Widgets - Smith and Jones ltdAll to frequently this title tag simply shows the company name or, even worse simply the phrase "Home"
Meta tag Keywords - This is also usually found within the area of your webpage and whilst Google states that it does not use them they are used by other search engines and, in our opinion should be used. The First one generally used lists the principle keywords for your webpage It can be found within the tags Keywords are generally separated by commas. There is no preset maximum number of keywords that can be entered but we would suggest between 10 and 20 keywords or key phrases and take care NOT TO Duplicate those words!
Meta tag Page Description - This tag serves as a description of the webpage when displaying search engines and is used by search engines to display webpage information when search engine results are displayed, Google generally does not use this (but usually displays the first line or two of text from your website) but other search engines do use this and again this should be rich in keyword but still reading well. (after all if your search results do appear you want to make sure that someone clicks on the result) Your webpage description is contained within this tag
Other Meta tags - There are many other meta tags that can be found such as Robots, Refresh and Revisit DO NOT USE these unless tag elements unless your website requires them as they will have no effect on your search engine placement.
Javascript - Frequently your webpage may use some kind of javascript and very often this is placed in the section of the website. These scripts can frequently be quite long which means that when indexing your website the search engine spiders will have to trawl through it all before getting to your actual page content. These scripts DO NOT need to be placed here and should be contained within a separate javascript (.js) file and simply called up with an entry such as [removed][removed]
Stylesheets - Your webpage will almost certainly have some kind of formatting associated with it and again, like the javascript this should be contained within a separate stylesheet file (.css) rather than being included in the of your website and thus avoiding the search engines wading through loads of superfluous lines of script. Place all your formatting within a separate .css file and call it with an entry such as
Page Body - Within the tags is the actual text contained within your webpage. Google tends to take more attention to the first few lines of text so do ensure that this is keyword rich without obvious spamming by duplicating your keywords needlessly. Perhaps the most important part of your web pages ia a page heading and this should be placed as near as possible to the top of your webpage and should be contained within the tag Your Page Heading Here The page title should reflect your main keywords as much as possible and can be repeated further done the page as appropriate although you may consider using the tags
etc if you wish to emphasise sub headings. Most browser have default font sizes for these headings but these can be changed by including formatting for the heading tags within your stylesheet as mentioned above. Textual page length does not especially matter and whilst there are many theories as to the ideal page length it is more important to ensure that your keywords are mentioned but not replicated too much. (ideally between 2% and 7%) It also helps if those keywords are tagged as or Including your keywords in the closing lines of your webpage is also beneficial.
Hyperlinks - Most webpages have hyperlinks to theirs and the linking text will have relevance on your search engine rankings. If trying to link to another webpage either within your website or as an external link try to again incorporate your primary keywords.
Images - Most webpages have some kind of images in them and those that are not simply backgrounds will again have an effect on your rankings. There are two important aspects to consider here. Firstly (and usually overlooked) is the actual file name of the images used. Most people simply use file names such as headre.jpg or similar but please note that Google and other search engines take note of that file name and much better to rename those files with keyword related names such as keyword-here.jpg or similar. If that image is renamed then this will get you that little bit more creditability with Google. In addition images should also be given an 'alt' tag which describes that image to those (despite being very few people) who have the 'download images' disabled. This is a remnant fro days when the internet was very slow and downloading images took a great deal of time. Today those 'alt image' tags are still used by search engines but more from those people using the internet with vision difficulties who may rely of an audible page reader. The image titles given in those 'alt' tags are referenced by google and can have a significant effect on your rankings.
Menus - Most websites have a navigation menu to guide visitors from page to page and there are two important things to remember. Firstly those menu items are actually hyperlinks and therefore the text within those links should be, as far as possible, keyword related. Secondly, many menus use flash or javascript and whilst the links may work for the user of the website, search engines many not be able to follow them! If you are using anything other than a straight word text link for your menu do place a second simple html menu on your pages. The text need not be prominent but should enable search engine spiders to link easily to every page on your website. This can be placed at the foot of each and every webpage. Another option is to rely on a sitemap.
Webpage Names - Like the image file names and 'alt' tags people forget that the actual web pages names can have an effect on search engine results. Whilst it is not so easy to change the name of your home page name from index.htm or .html or .php (This can be done suing a .htaccess file but is not something that we would recommend) the actual web page name can also have an effect. try to use html or php file names that include keywords and hyphenated and search engines will give you a few extra points! This very webpage is a good example ie optimising-your-website-for-google.html
Webstats - It is essential that you track the hits on your website even if this does not improve your position on Google. If you sign up for web-stat.com they will be able to keep you informed as to just how people found your website and many oher stats as well such as time on your website, pages visited, visitor locations and even screen size! They offer a 30 day free trial and costs after that are from only from $5 per month.
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