Google is by far the world's most popular search engine, more people use it than all of the other search engines combined. Google have acheived this status by consistently returning 'relevant' results to any search term you may type in. When you 'google' you will notice that the same sites tend to rank very highly (page one) over and over again. Why is this? How do they do it? Well, we're about to tell you!

Google makes fortunes from advertising. When you search, the 'organic' listings appear on the left hand side of the page, the paid-for results appear on the right hand side. To encourage advertisers, Google has to give the searcher relevant results, otherwise there would be no point in using it, right?

So, how does Google decide which websites are relevant to your search? More importantly, how do you make your website rank more highly with Google? In this article we discuss some common-sense, tried-and-trusted methods of organically rising up those rankings.

We consider organic search engine optimisation to be 'Pull' rather than 'Push' Marketing in that you are pulling in already interested clients to view your wares rather than pushing the message out to those who are not. Organic SEO takes time, requires patience and is not for the faint of heart.

For faster (more expensive) results consider using Google AdWords. We can help with this too!

The Website Age

Vitally important. If you have only just registered your domain then you may have a tough few months ahead. The age of your website builds apparent trust, if the site has been up for a number of years then it is assumed that you have an established business.

Domain Hosting Quality

Where is your site hosted? If it is hosted in a different country from that in which you trade, then move it. Cheaper domain hosting packages are on shared servers, that means hundreds of websites on one server. If one or more of them are spam sites, your ranking will suffer by association.

URL Structure

Your URL structure - the bit that comes after the 'http://' for your pages - should be descriptive and not filled with random character strings like some e-commerce, CMS or blog sites.

Design

KISS - 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' is a great phrase when it comes to web design. An over fussy site with flash, too many colours and images will not only look unattractive to the first time visitor but will take longer to load on your screen. A slow-loading page will rank poorly by comparison with one that loads quicker with the same content.

Content

Vitally important. Consider keywords but ALWAYS write your content for humans, NOT for search engines! Your site needs to be of value to the visitor and contain relevant plainly written content. By all means intersperse your text with the right keywords, but first and foremost concentrate on giving a potential human visitor what they want. This policy will encourage other sites to link to you, thus building your site's popularity and ranking.

Internal Links & Navigation

The pages on your website should link nicely to each other. Test all these links to make sure everything is in order as a broken link can have adverse effects on your ranking over time. Visitors (and search engine robots) should be able to quickly and easily navigate the site.

Confidence

Do you have a telephone number and postal address prominent on your site? Make it easy for customers to contact you and remember that not everyone will send an email or fill in a form. Seeing a contact name, number and address builds confidence for the visitor. Too many websites seem to go out of their way to avoid giving this basic information. Staff photos (if they are willing!) also build trust as the caller feels an instant connection.

Keywords

We professionally research the common phrases entered by potential customers into the major search engines to find your products or services. Then, we optimise your pages or product descriptions by including these key phrases. Images can also be optimised, as can videos. You may think that you 'know' the relevant keywords to your business, but a little bit of our research will take you by surprise!

Bounce Rate

If Google sees that the majority of visitors leave your site after a couple of seconds then this will effect your ranking. Engage with cliients, give them something interesting to keep them on your site for that little bit longer.

Outbound Links

Include only 100% relevant links to your site. Too may links will lower your ranking and links to frivolous sites that have nothing to do with your business are a no no. NEVER link-swap unless the other site is of 100% relevance. Link exchange programs are detrimental to smaller sites, do not use them.

Inbound Links

Firstly NEVER BUY OR EXCHANGE links. Do not do it! Once your content is relevant and of quality then other quality sites will want to link to you. Consider writing informative articles of relevance to your business and them submitting these to news sites - a sure fire way of building your ranking position and making it bullet-proof from competitors.

Here at Planting Solutions we do quite a bit of stuff that can help bring enquiries and new sales into your business. Ask us about:

• Email and Viral Marketing
• Search Engine Position Reports
• Website Traffic Reports
• Competitor Analysis
• Ethical Search Engine Optimisation
• Link Building
• Content Writing
• Website Design
• Data Capture
• CRM Software
• Lead Management