What Google likes on your website
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We have recently attended a seminar on how Google ranks a website and lots of interesting tips. We just thought we would share...
What Google likes on your website*
The content - To get higher on search results, relevant words or terminologies which people would use as their search terminologies to find you should be included within the web-site and within the text. However, over usage of such words, i.e. no more than 4% of the total content of the website can results in Google thinking you are dishonest or a spammer.
Site navigation - All areas of the website should be in an easy to use format ideally with most areas of the web-site being found in 2 -3 clicks
Page names - Pages (urls) should be named with relevant words which relate to the searches you want people to use to find you. For example if you have a hotel in devon, you could name a page - hoteldevon, for example: (yourwebsite).co.uk/hotelindevon
Meta data - should be relevant and informative in an easy to read text
Domain Age - the longer you are running the more you are liked
Site Evolution - what you update and how many times. A simple rule to follow would be Content is King and Simplicity is Queen...
Links:
Quality and related links coming in and out of your website, which have been built at a steady rate.
If you build links at an excessive and quick rate then Google can penalise you for this. Ideally links to your site should be now and then rather than 20 in one week. Do this and they can mark you as a spammer. Be careful of also putting your web-site as a link on a dodgy, spammy or even non-relevant site, as again you can be penalised for this. Quality rather than quantity on this. If you can get a link from a government body then this is good.
For example is you are a Environmentally friendly hotel, you would aim to get a link to relevant websites such as Environmentally Friendly Hotels.
For accommodation providers useful links to include on your web-site could be to Visit Britain (http://www.visitbritain.com), Discover Ireland (http://www.discoverireland.com), Visit Scotland (http://www.visitscotland.com), English Heritage (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk), The National Trust (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk), B&B News (http://www.bandbnews.co.uk), Foreign Perspectives - aimed at ex-pats (http://www.foreignperspectives.com) ... in fact any web-site you deem is of interest to your guests and people viewing your web-site - just ensure they open in a new page!
* The above will add value to how Google rates you and positions you for searches
Page Rank
Named after Larry Page, to measure the relative importance of the web-site on the www. Pages that receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results and that is why we, as owners of websites should find this important rather than as some sort of web status!
Recently Google has cleaned up on Content farms, where people just put info on to get the website around and to try to dupe Google and get themselves a higher ranking and exposure. This process has meant that lots of websites have lost their Google ranking (approx 12%) and on the proverbial naughty step we would guess.
Check here to see what yours is: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php.
Admittedly PageRank is not as important as some think, hence why its not on the Google Webmaster Tools section anymore, as some thought it was the most important metric to track, which is simply not true, however it does give you an idea of how the web-site is ranked or viewed with the gods @ Google.
THE BIKER GUIDE summing up...
We hope this article will help you in certain areas of your website and hopefully to help you choose wisely what information is included, where you exchange links and how your web-site is developed. If you already knew all of the above, please accept our apologies and welcoming you to our world of seo geekness!
Resources
Environmentally Friendly Hotels
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