Download - 50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website
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*50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website*
Steve Johnston & Liam McGee, Random House
Business Books 2010
1. Always refer to the Tripod of Love: Visibility,
Relevance and Reputation when working to
improve Google's love for your website. (see
section 2.9).
2. Admit you don't really know what your users wantand commit yourself to finding out by doing
research into how they express themselves on
Google. (see section 3.1).
3. Think deep, think laterally and take your time
when investigating the ways users search for the
stuff on your website (see section 3.2.).
4. Get closer to what Google knows about the
words in your marketplace. It knows a lot and will
give it up if you ask it the right questions. (see
section 3.4.).
5. Chunk and repeat when writing for users andGoogle. (see section 3.5).
6. Create the quality content that your users want
and need to find. This works for Google too. (see
section 3.6.).
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7. Always remember that the long tail exists - even if
you can't see it - so err on the side of more content.
(see section 3.7.).
8. Be prepared to travel far down the long tail of
search because there are profitable surprises in the
patterns and themes you'll find there. (see section
3.8.1.).
9. Find the money to buy good quality search termdata. It will be worth it. (see section 3.8.1.).
10. Build your website's information architecture
from a detailed taxonomy of demand. (see section
3.8.3.).
11. Your majority shareholder/stakeholder needs tounderstand the importance of Google and how
online excellence builds Reputation. Se start talking
to them today.
12. Do not assume that the existence of your
website is enough for other sites to link to it. Take a
hard look at your market and commit to being betteronline than the rest of it. (see section 4.1.1.).
13. Spend time, not money, encouraging the world
to talk about you online. People talking about your
website is better than having a big marketing
budget. (see section 4.1.2.).
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14. Make sure your URL's are not a mess of
duplicates that dilute the power of links, becauseReputation links are to URL's, not to pages. (see
section 4.1.3.).
15. If in doubt about what your Reputation should
look like, go back to basics, be courageous, and
build a real reputation around who you are and
what you do. (see section 4.2.).
16. Be prepared to create content worthy of a
destination website - deeper, richer, more complete,
and simply better than your competitors - if you
want the links a destination deserves (see section
4.2.1.).
17. Develop tactical Reputation (link bait) content as
long as it's funny or controversial or insightful or
quirky genuinely fascinating, but most of all
Relevant! (see section 4.2.2.).
18. Get the word out about your wonderful website
by participating in the social media conversationsthat are relevant to it. Be brave, honest and helpful,
and avoid direct sales! (see section 4.2.3.).
19. Online status updates and social groups are
powerful ways of spreading the word about your
site, so use them regularly and intelligently. This
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means sanity-checking their likely Relevance and
making sure their frequency is appropriate for the
behaviors in your market. (see section 4.2.3.).
20. Share your knowledge an experience, become
an expert in your sector, do not waffle and divert.
Stay focused and always be useful and relevant,
the rest will take care of itself. (see section 4.2.3.).
21. Don't be afraid to link to the sites that you loveand that may be useful to your visitors. Being really
useful is a great way to acquire Reputation. (see
section 4.2.5.).
22. Suggest to your visitors that they link to you if
they find your website useful. Make it easy for them
with snippets of HTML. (see section 4.3.).
23. Submit your website for inclusion in the Open
Directory Project and buy your standard entry in the
Yahoo Directory. (see section 4.3.4.).
24. FInd the authority sites in your sector and
develop strategies to make a link from them to youirresistible. All sectors have their pockets of
powerful and relevant authority; find them and get
planning. (see section 4.3.4.).
25. When putting the technical building blocks of
your website together apply Web Standards.
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Google loves Web Standards.
26. Valid and fast-loading HTML is a quality signalto Google, so be vigilant to what's in the source
code, even if you've never looked there before. (see
section 5.1.).
27. Emphasize the phrases and sentences that are
important on your website, by the careful use of
italics and emboldening. (see section 5.1.1.).
28. Present headed paragraphs with effective
semantic markup using heading and paragraph
tags. And nest headings at different levels to
identify the structure of longer pieces of content.
(see section 5.1.2.).
29. Order items in your page that are lists of
phrases, words, or even sentences in list tags.
Include your navigation items as lists. (see section
5.1.2.).
30. Only use blockquotes and table tags for quotes
and tabular data respectively, not for layout. (seesection 5.1.2.).
31. Divide the page content into relevant chunks or
blocks by using division tags. This helps segregate
the important from the unimportant content. (see
section 5.1.3.).
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32. Spend five minutes crafting a better title tag for
a page. Title tags are remarkably importantbecause they also feature as the link in Google's
results pages. (see section 5.1.4.).
33. Increase the click-through rate of your pages
when they appear in Google's results by writing
highly complementary and compelling descriptions
to accompany your titles. (see section 5.1.4.).
34. Group your pages by using internal links so that
they reflect the patterns of Relevance on your site.
(see section 5.1.5.).
35. Use your own search result pages to group
unlinked-to but otherwise relevant content fromacross your website. (see section 5.1.5.).
36. Use a Google SiteMap feed to tell Google
automatically where all your URL's can be found
and which are the most important. (see section
5.1.5.).
37. Tell Google where your business is based,
through the Google Local Business Center and/or
the geotargeting option in Google Webmaster
Tools. (see section 5.1.6.).
38 . Avoid hiding rich content in proprietary
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applications, such as PDF's, Flash etc. and in
databases that cannot be queried by Google. By all
means use them, but allow Google-friendlyversions, such as video transcripts. (see section
5.1.7.).
39. Minimise the number of web domains from
which you operate, because Google loves each on
its own merits and Reputation can be diluted if you
have more than one. (see section 5.2.1.).
40. Target international markets only after
composing a balanced view that combines your
existing Reputation, your ability to acquire country-
level domains, and your appetite for local
Reputation-development. There is no one way to
acquire Google's international love, and this is oneof the most complex issues you'll have to deal with.
(see section 5.2.2.).
41. At all costs avoid the duplication of content at
multiple URL's across your site. And if you really
can't avoid it, manage it through the use of
canonical tag. Think of each piece of conent ashaving a home URL that all roads must lead to.
(see section 5.2.3.).
42. When you move your content from one URL to
another, tell Google by configuring a permanent
redirect from the old URL to the new one. (see
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section 5.2.4.).
43. Organize and manage the patterns of yourinternal links, so that your Reputation flows to the
important URL's (this may be the same as or
different from Way 34, depending on your site's
needs). (see section 5.2.5.).
44. Organize and carefully select the words chosen
for your internal links. Remember anchor text isimmensely powerful, even within your own site.
(see section 5.2.6.).
45. Create URL's that describe the content that is
found at them. Relevant vocabulary in an URL
translates to perfect anchor text when others use it
in links. (see section 5.2.7.).
46. Use web analytics tools such as Google
Analytics, to measure the natural search visits you
get from Google that do not include the name of
brand of your business. There are generic visits
and they demonstrate best how Google love is
growing. (see section 6.1.).
47. Measure the length of the tail in the natural
search visits of your analytics before and after you
make changes. An increase in the number of
different search expressions delivering visits are a
simple indication of how you are doing. (see section
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6.1.1.).
48. Become a fanatical follower of everythingGoogle publishes for Webmasters by visiting
Google Webmaster central every week, and check
the reports for your domain in Google Webmaster
Tools every day.
49. When Google appears to have fallen out of love
with your site, don't panic! Carefully analyze therecent changes you have made and if there is
insufficient cause within them, sit tight and be
patient. It usually turns out to be a passing mood.
50. The principles of Google's love are unlikely to
change significantly in the future. So, if in doubt
about how to proceed, remember the Tripod of Loveand ask yourself, 'What would Google do?'.