SEO Cumbria - Search Engine Optimisation Cumbria - How to know if your website is working...
In the third of her guest articles for Web Watch, Sabina Hine, search engine consultant with a Kendal-based web design company, gives tips on how to make the search engines work best for your website...
Search engine reports are a great way to find out how well your site is performing and give you clues as to how you can improve it.
Search Engine Statistics Reports
Your web hosting package should include some excellent reporting information that will give you a good idea about who, when and from where people are visiting your website.
This information is free for you to view and means that you can basically create your own reports without having to pay anyone.
Depending on how technical you are, you may prefer to ask a Search Engine consultant to review and decipher it for you. They should then be able to recommend ways to improve your website and show you how to monitor the success of any changes made.
If you are having difficulty finding your website statistics then you can use one of the free packages like http://www.creatingonline.com/site_promotion/site_monitoring.htm. However, the main draw back is that the majority of these packages insist that you place their logo on each of the pages you wish to have tracked. There are also some additional paid for services available, just type "Website Statistics Packages" in the search engines and away you go.
Choosing Your Keywords
One of the main considerations in how effective your websites performance is in search engines is the search terms for which you would like your customers to find you.
There are some tools to help you decide but at the moment they are mostly based on American results and as such are of limited use to the UK market. Some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies get their results from www.wordtracker.com or www.webceo.com and similar packages. Their results are US-based but they do have their uses for tracking, but there is an annual fee for their use and this may mean you pay more in the long run. Ask your SEO consultant whether they use such tools or whether they create their reports manually.
Other keyword analysis tools such as Overture http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/ searchinventory/suggestion/ or Google Adword https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html can provide you with a base line of search terms typed into the search engines and will give you a good idea of what people are looking for.
How Does My Website Rank?
Once you have selected your keywords it is useful to see what your current positioning is within the main search engines for them. This can also indicate how much work is required to improve on your position in the results.
A useful tool is www.googlerankings.com - this will show your website's Google Page Rank in relation to specific keyword or key phrase and provides you with further information and tools to help you make improvements. There is also a keyword density test which will show you how many times a particular word or phrase appears within your website text.
The importance of links
Google sets great store by the number of relevant websites that link back to your own. This is one of the things that helps Google create your PR (page rank) score. The key here is relevance. If a website links to your site Google sees that your site must have something important to say on a particular topic and so will rank it more favourably. A word of caution however - if Google feels that you have simply gone out and farmed as many links as possible, regardless of the relevance to your own website, you will be penalised for trying to mislead your audience and your rank will suffer accordingly.
You can find out who is linking back to your website in a number of ways. One of the simplest is it to type link:www.your domain.co.uk into Google and it will bring back all websites that have a link on their website to yours.
What does Google see when it looks at my website?
To see what Google sees when it crawls your website simply type cache:www.example.co.uk in the Google search bar, and this will show what text Google can see. This will help to understand why your website performs as it does, and to make suitable changes to help improve your position.
How to get a better rank
The key to success is to always think like a consumer and not a website owner. If your website is well constructed and the content has been carefully crafted your website will eventually get the credit it deserves. There are no quick fixes or shortcuts. It can be a long, slow process but it will be worth it in the end. You will probably have to make many small changes over time in reaction to how the Search Engines are ranking your website. As a rule of thumb, keep it relevant and keep adding new content and you won't go far wrong.
