SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - How to get your site on Google's First Page

Google (and other search engine ranking) is quite an art/science/magic/fiddle (delete as appropriate!). There are many companies who will take your money to boost your ranking either by making changes to your site, advising you on what you should do, selling you software or using 'black hat' techniques.

I have yet to find a company that I can trust. One of the problems with this this is the 'black hat' techniques. These are against the 'rules' of Google et al and will lead to your site being black listed eventually.

Black Hat techniques include:

• Spamming
• Keyword stuffing
• Cloaking
• Hiding text
• Link farming

If any designer promises you Number 1 by employing any of these techniques then find another designer!

My 'secret' is:

• Good Relevant Content that is regularly updated
• Good site statistics that shows how well you are performing
• An extensive site report that shows how well your site is set up for SEO. Updated regularly.
• Good links to your site from other RELATED sites with good SEO ratings
• Good Meta descriptions (Key words are becoming less important)

I have a grading method that I trust for my site that will indicate where the faults are in the content and make recommendations about what needs to be done. I'd be happy to run your site through my methods and produce you a report. It has seen my ranking move from 52% to 95%. Mine was at 52% when I first measured it but the site had been live for a couple of years and was already designed with SEO in mind. Other sites I have worked with started as low as 2% up to 30%.

The 'secret' to SEO is really all about content and links. Your content needs to be relevant to the search words that you are targeting and needs to be regularly updated. You need links to your site from other sites in the same field. (Many of the aforementioned companies will promise thousands of links but they are given little weighting by Google because they have no relevance).

You will hear a lot of talk about Keywords and description. These are less useful now because the Search Engines use better methods. However, the description is important because this is what real people see when they see your result in the Search Engine.

Of course, your site needs to be 'seen' by the Google 'spiders'. For this you need to submit your site to the various search engines.

You also need to measure your success. My metrics are useful in measuring if you've done all the right things but you need to see that translated into improvements in your traffic. For this you need to have traffic statistics set up for your site. This should be included in your host package.

If you would like me to go ahead and review your site and give you recommendations then I will charge for one hour of my time at 20 Euro + iva. It takes longer but 20 Euro is a fair price. I will identify what needs to be done and recommend how it should be done. You can then go ahead and implement the changes yourself or, if you prefer, I can do them. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

If you haven't started your statistics then this really should be the first thing to do so that you can see the fruits of your labour.

Web Design