Why Are The Top Search Results More Search Results?
Done much searching on Google lately? Of course you have. That’s how we find things. OK, maybe you didn’t search Google… Bing? Yahoo? One of the other myriad of search providers? It doesn’t matter, the effect is the same.
More and more top search results are just links to more search results on other search engines.
Why is this?
There is a wave of search engines hitting the search scene. They are not particularly new but they are gaining in popularity. These are search engines that don’t necessarily crawl the web like the big guys do, they are very targeted and in some cases you have to apply and be accepted before you make their results lists. The idea is that though you will get less results, you will get better quality results.
That’s all well and good, but how does that get them to the top of the search rankings?
The same way you should. They construct their results pages to be full of relevant key words and key phrases. The programs they use to build their pages make sure that the title, key words, key phrases, description and URL all are loaded with the search terms you entered. When creating your content, you need to keep these things in mind also. If you are using WordPress, then you should install a plugin like the “All in One SEO Pack” which lets you set all of these things for every post and page that you make. Other Content systems should also have a similar ability. If you a hand coding your pages (does anyone actually do that anymore?) then you need to look at each page and make sure your page includes these items.
If you know of other SEO plugins for WordPress or any other content management systems, let us know in the comments and what you think of them.
An Introduction to Social Bookmarking
This week I was going to do a little more on selecting effective keywords but I’ve had a couple of requests from people who are after information on social bookmarking. So this week I’ve decided to ramble on a bit about that.
So What is Social Bookmarking?
From a Search Engine Optimisation perspective (SEO), social bookmarking is a way to get the link for your website out there on the web so you can increase your search engine ranking. Basically, social bookmarking “is a method for internet users to share, organise, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.”1
On your web browser, you bookmark sites that you like so you can access them later. It saves you having to remember them an it’s easier than losing lots of scraps of paper. The downside of bookmarking on your computer is that when you go to another computer you don’t have any of your bookmarks with you. It can be a pain when you’re over at a friend’s house and you’re trying to remember a really great site but can’t remember the address or even what you were searching for when you came across it.
Enter social bookmarking. Now you have the ability to store your bookmarks on-line so you can access them from any computer anywhere in the world.
OK, so what on earth does this have to do with improving my search engine ranking?
Why Should I Use Social Bookmarking?
Apart from the benefit of being able to access your favourite websites from any computer there is a very good reason to bookmark. Before I let you in on the secret, there is something you need to know about search engines. Search engines rate your site on a number of factors in order to determine where you fit into the search results. There are the obvious ranking factors such as site content and keywords (we’ll be covering these in other posts) but search engines also look at how popular your site is. One way of doing this is they look at how many links there are back to your site. Social Bookmarking is one way to increase the number of links to your site.
Now you are probably wondering how creating an online bookmark can make any significant difference to your ranking. Well it can’t. What can make a difference is creating a lot of bookmarks on different social bookmarking sites.
BUT…
Just throwing out a lot of bookmarks around the web can be time consuming and reap very little rewards if you don’t approach it the right way.
So what is the right way?
A little more on how search engines like Google looks at links. They don’t just look at the quantity of the links but also the quality of the links. Now, Google “trusts” some sites more than others. The more trusted a site is, the more value it places on the links it contains, so the trick is to place quality links on trusted sites.
Don’t worry, it’s actually not as complicated as it sounds.
So How Do I Do It?
The first thing you need is a decent description of your site. If you read my post on keywords2 you should have created a decent description for your site by now. If not, write a description that contains your main keywords whilst still sounding like real english.
Next, you need to access some of the more “trusted” social bookmarking sites. These are the ones with a higher Page rank. Page rank is what Google uses to rank a sites level of importance. It is a scale from 0-10 with 10 being the highest. Anything 2 or more is considered good. I’ve compiled a list of well ranked sites3. There are 100′s of others and more springing up every day.
What do I do once I get there? Well each site has it’s own rules and regulations so you need to check them out on a site by site basis. What you will need to do though is to create an account for each site. Now on many sites when you create your account they will offer to send you newletters, digests and some will want to install toolbars. There is no need for any of them so don’t bother unless you are actually considering using them to bookmark other sites.
Once you have an account you will have the option to create bookmarks. Many sites give you the option to make your bookmarks either public or private. Choose to make them public so other people can find them and click on them. You never know, they may add your bookmark to their links.
Depending on the site you will have a few options. Some sites will only let you add the link and then get the description, some will let you enter your own description and some will let you add extra information such as keywords and categories.
A Couple of Points to Remember
- Some sites are only after news stories. If you come across one, leave it alone. If you try to concoct a news story for your site, you may get your site marked as spam.
- Getting a good ranking isn’t achieved overnight so don’t try to create huge numbers of bookmarks straight off the bat. Try to put up 5-10 a day for a couple of weeks and pretty soon you’ll have over 100 links from trusted sites back to your site.
- Social bookmarking is just one of a number of factors that can affect your search engine ranking. It will not help if your website is poorly constructed and hard to navigate.
References
Something About Keywords (part 1)
When creating a web page, you hear a great deal about keywords and getting them right. So what are people talking about? Now, to give you an in depth understanding on keywords would take a very long time and there are some very good (and long) books on getting your keyowrds right. All I’m going to do here is, hopefully, give you some basic information that may help you understand what they are talking about when other people bang on at length about them.
OK, so what are keywords and why do I need them?
A keyword is effectively a word or phrase that someone will use when looking for your site or a site like yours in a search engine. Most people searching for something on the web won’t know you exist, so you want a way they can find you. Typically, they will go to their favourite search engine, type in a word or phrase and click search. They’ll get back a list of sites that match the terms they’ve entered. If you have built your site around the selected keywords, then you have a better chance on being near the top of the list.
Where do I put these keywords?
Your site is built around your keywords, so it’s a good idea to work them out before you start building (we’ll be looking into this in Part 2). Now there are a number of different places that you want your keywords to appear. Some important ones are (in no particular order):
- Your page title:
This is the little strip of text that sits at the very top of the browser. You want your title to not be too long (a dozen words or so) and it should contain what you consider to be your main keywords. - Your URL:
This is your web address. You won’t always be able to get your main keywords in your web address because someone may have got their first but it can help to have a main keyword or two in there. Say you are providing aged care services, you could try to have an address like www.aged-care-services.com or something similar. - Your keywords meta tag:
Huh? Don’t worry if that sounds technical, it isn’t really. It’s simply a piece of code stuck in the heading section of your website that contains all of your selected keywords. Below are the keywords used in the Illawarra Consulting home page.<meta name=”keywords” content=”website, web, website design, web design, hosting, web hosting, website hosting, wollongong, illawarra, shellharbour, web design wollongong, web design illawarra, web design shellharbour, business services, web maintenance, website maintenance, website health check, health check, small business web site” />
- Your page description:
This is another piece of code that sits in the heading of your web page. This is a description of your site. It’s important to get this right becuase often this is the text that search engines will display below your link. This too needs to contain your main keywords. Here’s the one from the Illawarra Consulting home page.<meta name=”description” content=”Website design and maintenance for small businesses within Wollongong, Shellharbour and the Illawarra. Web design services to get your business on the web. Illawarra Consulting, bringing the world to your door.” />
- In your page test:
Surprisingly, this is the one that most people get wrong. They go to some trouble to find the right keywords for their site and then don’t use any of them in their page text. It’s important that your keywords and phrases are used in your page text.
Why do I put my keywords there?
Simple really. That’s where search engines look when deciding whether your site matches the entered criteria or not. These days the search engines look at all of these factors (and a whole lot more) and compare whether they are consistent with each other. Get them right and you could see your page appearing on the first page of search results.
Join us next week when we look at some ways you can select effective keywords.
Blog Posting
I was wondering what to put in this weeks offering. Should I put something in about getting the front page text right or maybe something on page titles. I was very undecided just what pearl of wisdom I would share with the world. That was until I was bombarded with comments to this very blog. So I thought I’d share with you my feelings on blogging etiquette.
For those of you writing a blog
If you are maintaining a blog, I recommend that you make sure all comments are moderated. That means you get notified every time there is a message and you get to choose whether to it gets posted or not.
“But that could take ages to look after!”, I hear you scream. Yep, it could, but the down side if you don’t is you get offers for cheap Viagra and bodily organ enhancements as comments on your blog about how to code CSS or your astute political observations. It kind of reduces the tone and quality of your efforts. You see, there are a lot of unsavoury types out there that are after as many back links to their site as they can get. Back links help to increase search engine ranking, thus increasing traffic and hopefully increase sales. Sounds like a noble endeavour but do you really want to turn your site into an advertising site for the undesirables.
In order to maintain the quality of your site, you want to make sure that any comments posted are relevant to your site and any back links posted are to clean and relevant sites. If one of your readers clicks on a dubious link and ends up with a nasty infection, it doesn’t do anything to help maintain your readership.
Most blogging software allows you to easily moderate your posts. I’m using WordPress and it allows me to look at all the pending comments, quickly approve the ones I think will support my blogs aims and then delete or mark as spam the rest of them. It takes only a few minutes a day to do. When I find a post I’m not sure about I check the site link out. If it is rubbish then the post is removed.
For those of you posting comments to a blog
We understand the need for cross promotion to improve your website ranking. After all, the more links to your site you can get out there, the better your chances of being page one on Google is. Well in theory at least. Search engines are getting smarter, they are now starting to look at the relevance of the links you post. Posting a link about curing acne to a blog about website tips (yes, I’m using an example from this very blog) just doesn’t cut it. Put out enough of these useless posts and you will find your site vanishing from the rankings as most search engines do not like spam. You may be able to get your site quickly to the top but it will vanish just as quickly. Then you’ll need to start all over again. Is it really worth it?
Please keep your posts relevant to the topic at hand, don’t post abuse at other posters and make sure your links are to sites that are related to the post in some way. I run a blog to support my clients, and help promote better websites and internet practices. I really am not interested in cures for acne, cheap ugg boots, discount “legal” drugs or dating Russian babes.
Keep it relevant or stay away.