Ever wondered why your website goes down the page on Google – Why a rubbish looking, new or smaller website is doing better than yours?

 

I want to help support start-ups with some insights for your new website, so here is a blog with some information.  Please feel free to share this page on your own Twitter, Facebook or social media pages for all to see.

The last two customers for whom I have made websites were really keen on SEO being responsible for making the phone ring. Something I needed to reiterate was that it will not be an overnight success.  

One was a new website and the other also a new build, but the old website will point to the new one, once they are happy with the one I have made.  Google will come along and have a peek, coming back a while later, slowly looking, gauging, poking and analysing your website and deciding if you’re worth recommending for the search terms your website mentions.  The website being pointed to from the old one will have a far greater impact.  The new build will need submitting to Google (done automatically when I buy the domain) then the ranking process starts for both websites in their new forms.

Google has massive data storage facilities, indexing and saving every click, journey and experience you have once you have been sent off from its search engines – EVERY click and how long you spend on a page is stored.  Even if you have not come from Google’s search, it’s fairly certain that the website you are on will have Google analytics’s code farming your visits, journey, experience and route.  This is a good thing as website owners and developers can see this information in our Analytics’s log-ins and make our websites more relevant – To save you being sent on a bum journey, refining the experience of using Google for you.

For instance, if someone searches “Trampoline net” and Google sends them (initially) to your website because you mention that you “supply replacement trampoline nets”, and they do not find what they are looking for and leave your website, the next time someone else searches for the same phrase and does not stay, Google will not show your website as high as it did before in the search results it gives for that term (you go down the page) as it’s learning by experience that people do not find what they are looking for (yes, it saves all this information for all those clicks, every day, on every website)

I used to spend £36k p.a. on Google Pay Per Click (the sponsored results on Google search, normally three across the top and the ones down the right hand side) for my kitchen business and got away from this, listening, refining and honing my skills to what Google now needs of me as a website developer.

Some of the important factors are now (it seems!)

• Links to your website from other relevant websites,
• Relevant, updated content,
• Clear and well made site architecture and structure,
• Short, punchy top level information.  Place the pages with the ‘deep stuff’ further in,
• Intuitive naming of pages, images, descriptions and links,
• Easy to index and marked out content for Google’s indexing,
• Be honest and talk about the stuff you do, not waffling and boring people.

There are many others of course.  I normally state that there are 200 smaller things that you have to do, to make it work for you.  But the best advice is to be clear and simple, honest and think about the language that people use to search for your product or service and mention this on your website – A blog is a good way to to add content yourself and facilitates the need for regular relevant updated content.

Some tips for you to be doing to get your website traffic up.

1. Ask all of your suppliers to link to you as they are relevant and links in are good.
2. Make sure the website suits your demographic as it may ‘too posh’ and distract!
3. Submit your business to Google Places for business and Google+ linking them to each other.
4. Make a Facebook “Page” for the business or organisation and get your friends viewing your pages.
5. Set out your website, so that it’s easy and maybe fun to go on a journey of discovery clicking many pages.
6. Make sure you have Google analytics’s installed AND LOOK AT THEM! (yes I’m shouting!!!)

If you do two things as a result of reading this –

1. Submit your website to the Dmoz site listing website (Once)
2. Update your Yelp listing but NEVER PAY YELP or YELLOW PAGES for advertising (in my opinion)

Thanks for reading and remember, links in are good and relevant updated content means you will see good results in your analytics’s but only if you look at them.