Google Loves You: 10 Top Tips for a Google-Friendly Website

Many small businesses believe good Google listings are beyond them. This simply isn’t true. Find out how to be able to say “Google Loves You” and your website.

1. Domain Name

Choose a domain name that contains two or three keywords that are the most important keywords for your website or blog. For more details read Choosing a Domain Name.

2. Page Name/Post Name

Like your domain name, the name you choose for your page, post or article is very important. It has two components:

• The first is the page URL (e.g. for this page your are reading it is http://www.small-businessmarketing.co.uk/google-loves-you),  this tells Google and the other search engines what your page content is likely to be about, so it needs to contain the keywords main keywords for the page it relates to.
• The second is the page title. This is the title for the page that will be displayed to your visitors. This needs to tell your visitors what the page is about and is very likely to be similar to the page URL. (e.g. for this page you are reading it the page name is Google Loves You: 10 Top Tips for a Google-Friendly Website).

3. Text Content

After the domain name and post name above, the text on your page is the single most important factor in getting your page listed well by Google. Your page text should contain the keywords that you want it to be listed for.

There is a lot of discussion among web designers about keyword density, (i.e. the number of times a keyword appears per 100 words on a page). My view is that Google cares less about this than it does that the content is of value to the person reading it. In other words, I believe that so long as your chosen keywords are included within the text, you should write the page content to please the reader, not to please Google.

The detail of Google’s search engine algorithm is a closely guarded, but I’m convinced that Google Bot (the programme that crawls your web pages) is very adept at reading and can distinguish good, reader focused content from keyword density targeted nonsense.

In short, include main keywords in the text and write for your reader.

Always remember though that if you want your reader to actually do something once they have read your page then should consider skilled copywriting (i.e. it needs to be written with a specific end result in mind. That end result would usually be that the reader takes some specific action like phoning you, filling in a form, clicking the ‘Buy Now‘ button, etc. To find out more about our copywriting services Contact Us, or telephone us on 01263 722764.

4. Inbound Links and Social Bookmarking

Google places a lot of importance upon inbound links so inbound links are good, but not all inbound links. For more detail about inbound links this read Inbound Links: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Social Bookmarking and Social Networking in a Nutshell and Google Hates Links Pages. Ignore inbound links and Google will ignore your website. Why? Because Google figures that other people saying your website is good (by linking to it) is much better than you saying your own website is good.

5. Keywords Meta Tag

Google pretty much ignores the keywords meta tag. To find out more read Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search by Matt Cutts, (one of Google’s  own software engineers) and watch the video it contains. Other search engines do still use the keywords meta tag, so you should, but for most purposes Google will completely ignore it. The keywords meta tag should include the keywords from your text content at point 3 above and any common misspellings, or variations of them. Never use any word more than 5 times in the keywords meta tag on any given page (keyword stuffing) and above all, remember Google ignores the keywords meta tag anyway.

6. Description Meta Tag

In the Matt Cutts video as mentioned above, Matt clearly states that Google does use the description meta tag. The description meta tag should clearly and concisely describe your page content and in doing so, include your main keywords for the page. In total, including spaces the description meta tag should be no longer than 160 characters and it should be as informative as possible to a potential visitor – remember it may be the one thing that convinces them choose your page over your competitors’.

7. Un-Crawlable Content

Google loves text and there is no substitute for text. Search engine crawlers or spiders will read your web pages in order to decide how they should be listed in their search results. Crawlers can read text, but cannot read any of the following:

• Images

  If you use images be sure to use the alt tags properly to give a concise, textual description of what those images contain.

• Videos and Audio Files

  Include text on your page to describe the content of the files, or better still, a full transcript of the video or audio.

• Flash files

  Unless you know how to optimise flash files properly for search engines, simply don’t use them. If you must use them include a fully descriptive text transcript of their content in the page and never use them as stand-alone page content (i.e. graphically attractive, animated home pages with little or no text).

• JavaScript

  Most crawlers cannot read JavaScript so keep it to a minimum on your pages. Better still don’t use it at all.

8. Page Load Speed

Google has recently changed its search algorithm. Google’s new search algorithm ‘Google Caffeine’ includes among other things a test for page load speed. Google believes that pages which load faster give the user a better search experience and therefore Google now says page load speed is an important factor. Find out more by reading Introducing Page Speed at Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

9. Blogs

Google loves blogs because blogs contain lots of fresh, new and unique content. Adding a blog to your website and then writing new posts regularly will keep Google Bot coming back. Make sure the posts are relevant to the content of your website. Then, if you have followed all of the steps above, Google will list your blog posts well and before too long you’ll be getting lots of new visitors from Google who are interested in what you have to say and what you have to sell.

10. Cloaked Links

Many bloggers in particular like to cloak their affiliate links from readers. They do this to turn what is very obviously an affiliate link into one that doesn’t look like an affiliate link at all. They do this for various reasons, but mainly to increase click-through rates and therefore boost their own affiliate income. Google takes a dim view of this practice. Make your links look like what they are regardless of their purpose.

To finish up, it’s worth mentioning that changing a whole website to encompass all the above points might take you some time. Don’t be daunted by this. Set out a careful plan of things to do, prioritise it and then make lots of small, gradual improvements over time. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in day! This approach will allow you to get on with what you do best while improving your website too. 

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