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Get Your Website Listed in Google

One of the most common questions that our client’s ask us is “How do we get our website listed in Google?�

This question not only comes from clients who are about to launch a brand new website, but is asked by site owners that bring us their third-party developed websites which may have been live on the web for anything from a few months to a number of years, but are nowhere to be seen in Google’s index.

If you fall into either of these two camps then there are a number of things you can do to firstly make sure that your website gets spidered by Google’s search engine robot (which is called Googlebot as a point of trivia) and then included in its index.

This article aims to offer some guidance to website owners who feel the question of “How do we get our website listed in Google?� applies to them.

Are you in with the In Crowd?

The first thing to do is check that Google does not already have your website listed in its index. Google generally finds most sites that have been live on the web for any length of time under its own steam, so it’s worth checking to see if your site is listed first. Clearly if your site is brand new or has only just been launched, then you can skip this part.

Check to see if your site is already listed by going to Google’s search page and search using the following term:

site:www.yourdomain.com

(The “yourdomain.com� bit should obviously be your own site’s domain name)

The results will either present you with a list of pages from your site that Google has already indexed – in which case it can be said Google has indexed your site. If no pages are presented then a message along the lines of the following will be presented and as such, you should read on:

Your search - site:www.yourdomain.com - did not match any documents.

Set Your Stall Out Ready

Getting your site indexed by Google’s bot is relatively straight forward and shouldn’t prove too problematic for many site owners; however to make sure you don’t fall at the first hurdle, it makes sense to ‘set your stall’ out ready.

By this we mean; make sure that the design and construction of website doesn’t put up any barriers to Google’s spider bot or doesn’t make it difficult for it to spider the pages of your site. Here’s some tips;

>> Group the pages contained within your website in a clear hierarchical structure with text links from one page to another.

>> Offer a site map to your users with descriptive text links that point to the main parts of your website. If the site map is larger than 100 links, break the site map up into separate pages.

>> Make sure the pages on your site actually contain useful and relevant information that is of value to your site’s visitors. Google favours such pages and will place a high level of importance to them.

>> Think about the keywords users would type into Google in order to find your site’s pages and make sure that body copy on your site includes those words within it.

>> Wherever possible use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Google’s crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images or Flash animation. If you want to use such techniques on your site, ensure you provide text equivalents on the page.

>> Make sure that your page TITLE and image ALT tags are descriptive and accurate and contain keywords relevant to the page.

>> Optimise the “Meta Tags” of your site, particularly the “Meta Title” and the “Meta Description” tags.

>> Check for broken links and stick to good HTML coding techniques. This means keeping your code light and page sizes quick to load. If you need to use JavaScript, reference the script in external files; don’t embed it into the page

>> Make use of good page structure, using keyword rich H1, H2 and H3 etc tags within the body-copy of your site’s pages.

>> If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e. the page URL contains a ‘?’ character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static i.e. non-dynamic pages. If you do use dynamic pages on your site, offer keyword rich and search engine friendly page URLs using techniques such as Apache mod_rewrite.

>> Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

>> Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for more information about robot.txt files and how you can use them.

>> Add a Google SiteMap to your site. Such files help guide Google’s crawler through your site and are said to make the job of getting your site listed a lot easier. This other article on our blog, gives more information on why you should have a Google SiteMap.

>> The people at Google have developed an entire section called Webmaster Help Center which offers lots of information to website owners. Study its guidance and you won’t go far wrong in making your site compliant.

Once you’ve done the above and made sure you adhere to Google’s guidelines, then you’re ready to submit your site to Google.

Here Comes the Easy Part

Submitting your site is the easy part and may be summarised in a few simple bullet points each of which will get your site noticed by Google’s spider:

>> Manually tell Google that your site exists. This can be done by submitting your site’s Home Page through the form on the page here.

>> Add a link to your site from a third-party website that Google already has within its index. Such a website can be web directory such as Yahoo Directory, DMoz or one specific to your industry. In addition ask your supplier’s, customers and associates to provide a link to your site from theirs. If you have an account with a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace; providing a link to your site from your profile will also pay dividends. Avoid the use of link-farms as these break Google’s guidelines. As the third-party site you are linking from is already indexed by Google, it’s just a matter of time until Google respiders the site; at which point their crawler will also find its way over to your site. Simple!

>> Add a Google SiteMap and submit it Google (see the points above on this one).

If you do all the above, then your site should get indexed by Google’s spider and will be included in it’s next update. This process should take between a couple of days and six weeks depending on when Google first finds your site.

Good luck!

 

Yesterday, Debbe and I took time out of the office to attend a seminar up in the wilds of North Yorkshire.

We often attend these short, one off seminars as a means of keeping our skills and knowledge up to date in a specific field of expertise or skill-set.

This particular seminar concentrated on the concepts of direct marketing with an emphasis on postal mailings and email marketing. The event proved to be useful with many of the techniques being of actual practical use (which makes a change). Added to this the whole thing was FREE (a concept close to my heart)!

All in all it was a good session particularly as the presenter had a good style of delivery which helped what could have been a very dry subject, bounce along quite merrily.

Subject matter aside; one of the great aspects of these sorts of seminars or events is that a whole cross section of business types tend to go along. This in turn gives rise to some great business networking opportunities.

Many a client we’ve managed to acquire from such events. For example I can recall three clients we picked up from an exhibition I once attended at Wetherby racecourse some years back. However, these three clients weren’t other attendees at this exhibition; they were three of the exhibitors. Funny how these things work isn’t it?

Another client we acquired (one of our largest to be honest) was picked up during my now brother-in-law’s Stag Night some 2 years ago. One of his friends is the managing director of a large engineering group who was unhappy with his company’s current web designers and wanted to change. Just shows you where you can meet people.

Back to yesterday.

Any sort of interaction with other business owners, whether it is at a training event, seminar or exhibition; should always be perceived as a potential business networking opportunity which could lead directly to some new business, a new supplier or an ambassador for your business.

Like any networking event planned or unplanned, you should always go equipped with an open mind, a pen, a smile and a willingness to listen to other people. Oh, don’t forget the essential pocketful of business cards.

So it always astounds me why, like many of the attendees at yesterday’s seminar, people don’t take a supply of business cards with them to a potential business generating opportunity.

Do you Have a Business Card?

There were some interesting businesses there yesterday offering services that I or my associates/clients/friends/family may need now or if not now, in the future. However if I don’t have a point of reference such as a business card, to jog my memory when the time arises; how on earth am I going to remember who they are, what they do, or how I may contact them again should I suddenly decide that they may be able to help me with something, unless I have one of their cards in my drawer?

The mind boggles.

Whether this is done out of naivety because no one’s said “take your business cards with you� or whether it’s stupidity I’m not sure (I suspect it’s the former). Either way, the moral of this story is “always carry your business cards�. Even to the supermarket – you never know who you’ll be standing next to in the checkout queue!

In the world of bricks and mortar retail shopping the location of a shop is quite often the key to its success if it’s going to benefit from passing footfall. Similarly some types of businesses such as factories and distribution centres, understand it is essential to locate themselves close to a motorway junction in order to keep their deliveries flowing freely.

However when it comes to trading online, many of these real-world concepts fall by the way side as Google places little importance on where a business is located when considering how to rank its website in its search results. What is important however are “keywords� and “relevancy�.

To understand what this means and why it is important for your own website; it is helpful to try and understand why Google is so popular as a search engine and why in only a few short years, it has come to dominate the web as the search engine of choice for most people over the old stalwarts of Yahoo and MSN.

Back in the mid 1990’s before Google came along, when a search phrase was typed into one of the popular search engines of the day the results that were presented were often poorly related to the search phrase being used. This resulted in the searcher having to trawl through pages and pages of irrelevant results before they actually found a web site that was worth looking at.

Then along came Google who use a different method of measuring the importance of a web site to a particular search term and as a consequence, began to deliver meaningful results to people who use its search engine. Word quickly spread about this new search engine that actually presented ‘useful search results’ and subsequently Google rapidly became so popular that today approximately 87% of all searches made on the web are done through Google.

So what does this mean to you as a web site owner? Well quite simply, you need to make sure that your web site is relevant to its subject matter and contains text with relevant “keyword phrases� that are important to your customers. So for example if your business sells or makes “plumbing equipment� then you need to make sure that the text on your pages contains phrases or terminology that are centred on this basic concept, as these are the phrases that your customers are likely to use when searching for your business.

In this instance, such phrases as “pvc pipe fittings� or “radiator valves� might be some of the important “keyword phrases� to use across your website. Time spent identifying what these phrases and then re-writing the normal text on your web site’s pages to include them, is time well spent and will make it easier to get your site ranked in Google. To help you, use Google’s own Keyword Generator Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to help you identify phrases that are relevant to your business and its website.

Jaimie Dobson is a director of Heckmondwike based digital marketing agency Keyclicks UK Ltd

Note: This original article by Jaimie Dobson was orignally published in the Business Matters section of The Weekly Press Newspaper on the 22nd August 2008

The Fading Attractions of Office Life

O2 (the mobile telecoms company) have recently surveyed small businesses about their working arrangements so I read in one of the nationals earlier this week.

The article made interesting reading and reported that O2’s survey, conducted amongst 530 small businesses, found that 50 per cent of the companies contacted; do not work in a formal office environment. Of this 50 per cent, 24 per cent did have an office but spent most of their time working remotely or from home. A further 18 per cent had made the transition to this style of working within the last few months.

The survey also found that almost two thirds of companies that are still working from fixed offices, plan to give them up and move back home within the year.

The main reason apparently is the credit crunch, spiralling fuel and therefore commuting costs and the rising cost of office space.

Who can blame them?

Give the availability of low cost technology include high speed broadband, WiFi, VoIP and mobile internet I’m not surprised this is happening. Couple a home based business with a professionally designed web site which is suitable for small businesses and hey presto; who’s to know (or care) where a business is based so long as it delivers a professional job to its clients.

We as a company maintain a number of virtual workers who base themselves at home. Regular readers of our blog will also note that we have one employee who splits her time 50/50 between our Heckmondwike office and her home: although this is for ‘childcare’ reasons and not the ‘credit crunch’.