Understanding how Google ranks your website in their search engine seems like a difficult task but in the end it comes down to a few basic rules to follow and some hard work building good content. Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide gives you the information required to design and structure your website design and marketing to gain exposure through search engines.
It is important to ensure your webpages have unique and accurate page titles related to the content of the page. Google will use this in the search listing title. The description meta tag is also utilised by Google to complete the search listing. Content from the page itself is also often used to complete the search listing as it appears in Google Search. Ensure the page title, description meta tag and content of the page are related to the same topic the page is representing.
Make your site easy to navigate. Use a simple directory structure and use words in your URL’s that relate to the page content, for example, similar to the page title. This gives users and search engines more information of what the page is about and is easier for users to remember and also looks practical.
It is best to use text for links rather than images. Anchor text as it is called gives more information to a user and a search engine than an image can. It gives a clearer idea of what will be found on the following page if the link is clicked.
The most important part of a webpage is the written content. Google and other search engines will use this information to categorise your website. Make it simple and easy to read and stick to the topic at hand. However don’t overload the content with too many repetitive keywords in an ungrammatical way as Google will penalise you for this.
The more useful and compelling the content is to a visitor the more likely they are to inform others of your website by providing links to it. Google will identify how many links there are to your website and from what types of websites they come from. The more links from more related sites the higher your ranking will be.
We recommend you read the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide to get a more thorough understanding of the topics mentioned in this article. They are just a few of what is outlined in their document.