How to position websites?
What is website positioning?
Website positioning deals with elevating a position (placement) that a website holds on a search engine result page. Carefully administered website positioning helps websites reach top 10 spots in search engines like Google.
High placements in search engines in turn, help attract a large percentage of all users looking for similar products using services like Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask and others.
How to position websites?
Effectively, of course. But, to understand how to position websites one first needs to learn what is website positioning and website optimization. If you are not completely familiar with the idea of website positioning or SEO and how they differ from SEM, then please read: the difference between SEO and SEM.
What is needed for website positioning?
- computer
- website
- basic knowledge of HTML, however this can be substituted by relying
on a good webmaster (most companies have an in-house webmaster
or a freelancer, who monitors their site) - basic understanding of proper White Hat SEO techniques
Below, we will attempt to describe website positioning methods that utilize White Hat SEO techniques.
Step 1 - prepare a keyword list
Prepare a list full of keywords and phrases that describe your site. Try to think of keywords that you think internauts use to find sites like yours. Come up with phrases that consist of 2-3 or 4 keywords.
Once you have your list ready, pick the phrases that you can easily include in your content. Leave the rest of the phrases for later, or consider using them in a SEM (adwords) campaign.
Step 2 - clean up your code
This step is also part of a website optimization process and requires a little bit of HTML background. Go through your site checking that all of the pages have clean code. Make sure to get rid of:
- unnecessary notes
- inactive links
- bad redirects (you should use 301 - permanent redirects,
not 302 - temporary) - get rid of unnecessary Flash
- make sure that you don't have duplicate content (two pages
with the same text) - verify your HTML code (you can use this site)
Prepare content
Because content preparation is so important in SEO, it requires much attention. Writing content is easy, if you have experience in copywriting. If you manage your own site then with time, the more pages you add, the easier writing new content will become.
To effectively position websites, you must have something to position and optimize on that site. That is why content is arguably the most important element in website optimization.
Take your keyword list and go through every web page checking, which keywords are suitable for which page. Try to assign two or three keyphrases to every web page.
Next, start editing your content by adding assigned keyphrases to appropriate pages. Include keyphrases everywhere it makes sense - this is the key step in website SEO.
However, refrain from stuffing your content with keywords. You don't want to discourage the reader by writing redundant text like: "best car tires online. Visit our car tires site to buy car tires for your car. We sell the best car tires from all car tire resellers, offering car tires at the lowest price".
Transform keyphrases into active links
Everywhere you place a keyphrase, try to change it into a link that directs to a page related to that phrase. So, with our "car tires" example, if that phrase is on a page dedicated to windshield wipers, have it become a link directing to a page that has solely "car tires" content.
The more informative content your site has with active links, the easier your job of search engine positioning will be. Also, write articles and briefs about your services and products directing them to your readers. This way you will:
- improve the search engine position of your website
- create content that will help persuade the reader to act (buy)
Your website is made up of many sub pages. Each sub page should answer a specific question, or present a specific idea all the while persuading visitors to purchase. Remember that the goal of your website and the purpose of search engine optimization, is to increase your sales rather than solely increase the number of visitors.
Step 3 - Tags
Your next step in the website optimization process is to accurately fill out each of the Meta Tags assigned to every page. Meta tags are located within the code and are responsible for the following web page parameters:
- Title
- Description
- Keywords
Tags help search engines quickly figure out what your every web page is about.
Title
Try to title each web page using 4-5 of the most important phrases describing that page. Remember to separate each phrase with a hyphen or another symbol like: |. Don't stuff your title with excessive amounts of phrases as most search engines only pay attention to the first 25-35 characters. Also, make sure every page has its own, unique title (this will help you position many pages for many phrases).
Titles appear in SERP (search engine results page) as the actual links web users click to enter your site.
Description
In this tag you can write more about your page. Try to repeat some of the keywords used in the title as well as write a short description explaining what this page is about. Write in a way that will entice a web user to click on your link.
Descriptions are visible in SERPs under the title. Descriptions are practically the only text that web users read, which can invite them to click on your link rather than the competition.
Keywords
This is one of the least important tags, to which search engines pay least attention. Google almost wholly ignores information in this tag, because long time ago SEO specialists used to stuff it with dozens of phrases in effect skewing search engine results.
Nonetheless, even though Google practically ignores this tag, other search engines like MSN and maybe even Yahoo, still seem to give it some marginal weight. That is why it doesn't hurt to fill out this tag with relative keywords.
Keywords in this tag are not visible in SERPs.
Step 4 - Links (internal and external)
Your website positioning work is almost coming to an end. Search engines compute their results based on complicated algorithms that consider many variables, including:
- website's popularity
- content
- amount of links on a page
- amount of links pointing to the page from other sites
Remember that to improve your site's search engine position, you need to consider and enhance each of these variables.
Because Google has the lion's share of the search market (over 60%), we focus here primarily on variables that Google uses in computing its search results. One of the most important factors giving credence to some pages over others, is the amount of links that point to that page from outside domains.
So, it is best to contact with many similar websites to yours, exchanging links with them. The more similar the website to yours, the more credit the link you exchange will receive.
Don't pay attention to PageRank (Google itself admitted that from some time they no longer consider PageRank in their algorithm - this is easily verified by doing a search for any term and noticing that pages with low PageRank oftentimes appear above their high PageRank counterparts).
During a link exchange one should follow these rules:
- exchange links with websites that have less than 30 links on the page where yours will be included
- use relevant keywords in the links you exchange
- avoid adding more than around 30 links per week, as Google will consider such activity unordinary and not organic
- attract links to all of your pages, not only the home page
- continually increase the amount of links directed at your site (large corporations have thousands of links pointing at them helping them reach high SERP rankings for multiple phrases. You can too.)
Additional website positioning techniques
The above four steps are the basis of most website optimization efforts. However, there are other (legal) techniques, which you can utilize to even further improve your websites search engine position. We will describe some of them below.
Fresh content
Google pays most attention to content as it helps to determine what the page is about. That is why Google also pays a lot of attention to pages with new, or continually updated, content. That doesn't mean that you have to rewrite your website every week. However, it could be beneficial to regularly add new articles, or pages, to your website.
Domain history
Domain's history has a lot of weight in Google. Google seems to believe that the older the domain (the longer it is registered), the more relevant the website and its content are. Old domains tend to have robust (or at least built up) websites, significant amount of links pointing at them and are well indexed. That doesn't mean that every "old" domain will be always better ranked than a new one. It simply means that old domains are given an extra plus by Google.
If a website is well optimized, this extra plus can suffice to escalate it to the first position in SERPs. If your goal is to reach the first position in highly competitive phrases, then it could potentially help to buy an 'old' domain with a good history. You can then redirect that domain to your site and possibly elevate its rank.
Free services on the page
Our experience shows that Google also gives extra credit to pages that offer free, interactive services. By free services we mean:
- online dictionaries
- white paper databases
- online credit calculators
- information/news services
- updated financial market indices
It is difficult to determine how much extra credit Google actually assigns such pages. It may well be that their worth increases naturally and stems from the fact that they offer useful services that are popular and, to which other pages link to. Regardless, if you can include such services on your site, then you could feasibly expect to have its position raise.
Choose the right search engine
It is worth pointing out that one should carefully consider their SEO/SEM strategy and search engine choices. Choosing which search engine you will focus your SEO tactics on, isn't so easy. Even though Google has over 60% of the search market, that doesn't mean that in other industries, or countries, it still is the leading search engine.
Marketing research done in the USA around 2008, proved that internauts are more prone to convert (make a purchase/buy online) from pages that they found using Yahoo, rather than Google. Maybe that is something worth considering?
Also, regional and national preferences shouldn't be ignored. Even though Google is a world leader when all statistics are combined, it still lags far behind other regional search engines like Yandex in Russia, Seznam in Czech republic or Baidu in China.
So, while Google is the big shot, it may be worthwhile to check if in your industry or country, another search engine isn't dominating the field. If it is, then consider your SEO efforts in accord with it.
Blended Search
Lastly, search engines continuously strive to improve their search results and to do that, they utilize many forms of media:
- news briefs
- film/video clips
- music
- other multimedia
All search engines want to present search results that most closely answer questions keyed in by web users. That is the reason why the biggest search engines pay attention to all types of content that can enhance their results.
Google began including youtube video clips, images, PDF's and news in its search results, naming this type of broad search content "Blended Search". Google, Yahoo and MSN believe that content in these applications can be just as relevant and useful to web users searching for information online, as the content of a website.
That is why we recommend exploiting Blended Search and the multimedia possibilities that the internet offers. Where ever possible, create video clips, mp3s or images that relate to your content. Properly tagged clips/images/music will be given equal credence in search results, just as the page on which they appear.
Important last thoughts
SEO efforts in alternate search engines carry with them an additional benefit. Even though Google can attract the largest amount of visitors to your site, those visitors don't necessarily have to be ready to buy, nor easy to convert.
Other search engines can prove to attract less visitors to your site, however they will target visitors that are ready to purchase/convert.
Lets also remember that SEO in of itself simply helps you reach a high SERP position. However, positioning in of itself will not be of much use if it ends up attracting traffic to your site that is not really interested in your services/products. That is why it is important to plan out all SEO efforts ahead of time and remember that the key focus of SEO should lie in raising websales.
SEO Magma always recommends using SEO as part of a wider e-marketing strategy. SEO will attract traffic, but in combination with other marketing tactics it will help to convert that traffic into active users.
We encourage you to contact us if you wish to increase the amount of web visits and improve web conversion.
p.s. Google regularly changes and enhances its algorithm. Almost every quarter it rolls out significant changes to its computation methods. Such changes have impact on how it ranks pages and what results appear in SERPs. Be conscious of that when optimizing your own site and make sure you equally distribute your attention among all the SEO steps, rather than focusing solely on steps that have proved useful in the past.
You positioned your website and are wondering what to do now? Find out how to improve its conversion by website testing.