Website Design & SEO Tips

Current discussion regarding Google’s new real-time search seems to suggest that Google will rank Tweets in a similar way it ranks websites currently.

Website pages are given credit by Google by looking at the external links to that page and looking at the relevancy of those links taking into account the keywords for that page and the importance of the websites linking to that page.

For Twitter this will work slightly differently.  For websites inbound links are seen as votes for the page, in Twitter the number and type of followers will be seen as votes for that account.  The type of follower you attract will govern how Google views you and again it will be based not just on the number of followers but also the relevancy of those followers to what you do.  As with websites we cannot directly control who links to us or follows us but we can indirectly control this by making sure the content of your Tweets is relevant to our business, and then hopefully the RIGHT people will follow.

With Google’s algorithm for websites, the reputation of the websites that link to your website is important.  Google takes into account the popularity of the linking website ie its PageRank and who links to it and, in addition, looks at the relevancy of the content on that website in relation to your own site.  With Twitter it is thought that Google will not only look at how many people follow you but also will look at how many followers they have and how closely their “content” is relevant to yours.
Therefore it is not just a question of the number of followers but the quality too.

Remember too to be mindful of who you follow, that too indicates your content or “theme”.  In addition, if you have a good number of followers and start to follow someone with very few followers you are passing some of your credibility to that Twitter person.  Question whether you want to pass that amount of credibility to them.

Spam is obviously something that Google needs to take account of in its algorithm and it is thought that hash tags # will be used as a possible indicator of spam.  I have written a post on hash tags in another blog.  Google I understand are studying hash tag behaviour and no doubt over the next few months many changes will be made to adjust to the spammers ability to find loopholes in any spam minimising tactic by Google.

It is thought that geo-location data will also be used to refine search results to ensure that the most relevant tweets are shown in the search results.

Although I have just talked about Twitter here, Google will no doubt be applying the same or similar principles to real-time results for blogs, news and press releases.

On saturday I exchanged twitters with Matt Cutts of Google.

twitter exchange with matt cutts

You will see that when I said that Google is moving towards honesty ie not artificially gained links, he agreed.  This makes me happy as I think the only links that are important are those made by other humans who look at what you have to offer on you website and think right I like this and I want visitors to my website to see this useful information.

I will be very glad to see the linkbuilders gone, the ones that promise you links to high ranking sites.  That is artificial and it looks like Google are taking this into account in search engine results.

Getting links to your website is good but not all links or all link-building methods are good.

Search engines adjust their algorithms constantly to try and ensure that the search engine results are relevant to the search term entered.  The easiest way to get into the head of the algorithms is to imagine yourself as an honest internet user.  If something regarding a particular website fools or confuses you, you would not have confidence in that website and that is how the algorithms feel also.

If you, say, went onto an apparently reputable photographer’s website looking for someone to take some nice pictures of your children you would look at the quality of his work, read any client testimonials and may decide he would be perfect but would you feel the same way if you saw a link to a soft porn website on one of his pages?  Obvious links on his website are easy for you to see, but to see who is linking to him is a little harder.  I am sure you will appreciate the website owner has no control necessarily over who links to his website but if he has used bad practices ie buying links then equally well you may feel some level of doubt as surely if his business was good enough he would not have to pay websites to “like” him!

And this is the crux of the matter, if you would feel more faith in a company because human beings have freely decided they like that company then so will the search engines. 

Honestly earned links are what you want – links that human beings have added to their website because they like what you have on offer and are happy to be associated with you.  The search engine algorithms are modified continually to exclude dishonest practices.  If a website owner buys links from other websites then it is trying to fool you that it is more popular than it is, the algorithm will therefore penalise websites that do this. 

A website that has a few good quality links from respected websites will do better than a website with numerous low quality links.  Too many unrelated low quality links added very quickly to a website will flag the website as being a spammer and there is a real risk that the website could be removed permanently from the index.  Links from relevant websites, ie websites that are perceived as related in some way to your business (and reputation!! remember my analogy of the family photographer and the porn site) are far more valuable than high page rank (PR) links from unrelated websites.

Honest Ways to Build Links Include;

• Fantastic, well written, informative content that is regularly updated, that other people WANT to link to or bookmark so that they can come back to see what else you have to say.  If your website content makes visitors want to come back for more then the search engines will want to too.  Earn public votes of approval and you earn search engine votes.
• Draw other people’s attention to your content using Digg, Twitter and Delicious to point out new content on your website.
• Have an FAQ or news page and add an RSS feed.
• Your business is your expertise – give other people the benefit of that by answering queries in forums.  This will give you extra mentions in searches and, if you are good, people will start to follow you.  Always make sure you put a good signature into your posts with a link to your website.  Fill out your forum page with useful information about you and your business.

Build an honest, knowledgable, helpful reputation and you will earn valuable links without ever having to worry about it!!

SEO4all is a new website providing vital hints, tips and courses for the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your website.  Optimising your website so that it appears higher in search engine results should not be an expensive business.  If you are prepared to spend some time you can improve your website’s search engine result position yourself.  Look at our SEO hints and tips, reports, plus training and advice are available from SEO4all.

You should remember however that the most important thing is to optimise your website for the visitors.  Make sure your website is easy to use with no confusing menus or links that do not work.  Ensure that your website is useful and interesting so that users want to bookmark it and keep visiting.  If you can encourage visitors to come back time and time again then the search engines will also keep coming back for more which means that your website will be indexed often and perform better in searches.

See our new site at Women’s History

One of the best ways to increase your internet visibility is to sign up with Twitter, Facebook etc and to create interesting informative posts that help others find useful information plus of course to make plenty of backlinks to your own website where hopefully you have made sure there is useful information for everyone.  You can after all be the expert in your own field.

Also ensure that you write informative articles that you can desposit on internet article sites and as press releases.  Don’t forget the importance of Forums – find one related to your industry, make sure you have a good signature and keep posting.

These are just snippets of information, I will write in length as to how you properly carry out these things in due course.