how do I increase my google traffic?

super_dad

Google.. the final frontier!


Does anyone have any tips on how to increase their "likeability" by google?

I'm on page 3 at the minute, which is about as useful as sod all... anyone any major "do's"?

Page rank seems unimportant (top ranking sites have a 0 or 1 page rank in my genre)... any help would be appreciated.

I know this is a minefield... but a few hints would help me, and I dare say others

Lil306

Search Engine Optimisation

Have a read up on it through Google.

Best advice I could offer, haven't tried it myself but it's the best way to get your page rank higher in google.

tomsutton529

<meta name="Keywords" content="Club,WN1,Wigan,fomerly maximes, new, old, music, biggest, best,nightclub, 2 rooms, entertainment, Rock, dance, bounce, scouse, music, drum and bass, bars, drinks, Maximes, Back to the old skool" />
<meta name="Description" content="Club WN1 Wigan, fomerly called maximes offers the best in new and old music. One of the biggest nightclubs in wigan! 2 rooms of entertainment. Rock music, dance music and drum and bass! 3 bars packed full of entertainment and best best music around! why not come and check us out? http://www.clubwn1.com formerlly maximes!!" />
<meta name="Author" content="clubwn1&#64;live.co.uk" />

thats what i used to get club wn1 in wigan at the top of google... then at the bottom of the page in the same colour as the background i added.

<p align="center" style="font-size:xx-small;color:#171717">&nbsp;
Club WN1 Wigan, fomerly called maximes offers the best in new and old music. One of the biggest nightclubs in wigan! 2 rooms of entertainment. Rock music, dance music and drum and bass! 3 bars packed full of entertainment and best best music around! why not come and check us out? http://www.clubwn1.com formerly maximes!!
</p>
<h1 style="font-size:xx-small; color:#171717">Club WN1 Wigan, fomerlly called maximes offers the best in new and old music. One of the biggest nightclubs in wigan! 2 rooms of entertainment. Rock music, dance music and drum and bass! 3 bars packed full of entertainment and best best music around! why not come and check us out? http://www.clubwn1.com formerlly maximes!!</h1>
<p style="font-size:xx-small; color:#171717">club wn1, wn1, wigan, wigan, wigan, maximes, maximes,wiagn, winag, wn1, nw1, 1wn, wn1, club, maximes, tiffanys, standishgate, standishgate, igan, wn1, wigan, rock, dance, drum and bass wigan, wigan, drum bass, dance bounce, scouse wigan, maximes, back to the old skool, back to the old school, clubwn1, club wn1, wn1, wn1, maximes</p>

Lil306

tomsutton529 wrote: »

Always wondered how it worked, didn't realise SEO simply read the Meta Tags from the HTML coding

tomsutton529

Lil306 wrote: »

Always wondered how it worked, didn't realise SEO simply read the Meta Tags from the HTML coding

well i dont know if thats the proper way to do it but if you google club wn1 wigan you get the website i designed at the top..and thats how i get it to work.

Lil306

tomsutton529 wrote: »

well i dont know if thats the proper way to do it but if you google club wn1 wigan you get the website i designed at the top..and thats how i get it to work.

Sweet, I'll have to remember that for my site

I can understand how it works in theory, google is basically indexing the meta tags to identify it in the search. The more tags you have the higher the probability

Bikertov

NO NO NO, that is so last millenium - literally !

Once upon a time, when the internet was about 6 months old, you could actually put in a few Meta-tags, 'stuff' them with hundreds of keywords, and hey presto you would be at the top of Google for those words.

Then you could get 'really' clever, and put more keywords in white text on white background, so only 'stupid' search engines could see it.

That was in about 1990 - we are now 20 years on in 2010 - and there would not be a multi-billion £££ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry if it was that easy ...

Added to that, Google changes its indexing 'algorithms' (rules) on a regular basis, so just as you think you have found the 'trick' to the No.1 spot, all can change overnight - literally.

There is no simple answer to getting to the top of Google etc., but the accepted ways forward are:

a) Have good, useful, real informative content
b) Don't try tricks - keyword stuffing, same colour text and background etc - you will get penalised for this.
c) Meta Tags are for information only - they have NO bearing on search engine page placement.
d) Getting real links from well respected websites, on relavant subjects - these are the most valuable things you can do for your site. Links from 'link farms' will do nothing for you.
e) Avoid 'Flash' and 'Framed' sites

Of course, if you have a 'niche' site, with little 'competition', it will be easier to get to No.1.

But just go try it for something like 'Mobile Phones' - you think you can beat Carphone Warehouse etc with a few Meta Tags and a £5 budget ? THINK AGAIN :rotfl:

The best thing is to research and read up - there are loads of forums about the subject, about what NOT to do, as well as what you CAN do.

But above all, it is not easy ...

.

ahillsy

AS Bikertov said, it's not as simple as that - SEO is a skill in itself that you'd put on your CV and makes people a living. So it does take some investment in time to really understand for best results.

Best place to learn about how to maximise your chance of getting a high rank with google is to read through their guide starting here which links on to webmaster guidelines and how google crawls/indexes sites

Important thing is to not try to employ "tricks" to try to improve your ranking, and don't use dodgy services that promise to improve your google rank.

john_s_2

How about providing something that people are searching for, and no one else is quite providing?

With no effort on my part (in terms of SEO) if you Google this phrase, "league table spreadsheet" then my website comes first (at the time of writing). And second.

Just a thought. This isn't meant to come across as spamming, just an example of how to come first in Google.

kwikbreaks

john_s wrote: »

How about providing something that people are searching for, and no one else is quite providing?

With no effort on my part (in terms of SEO) if you Google this phrase, "league table spreadsheet" then my website comes first (at the time of writing). And second.

Just a thought. This isn't meant to come across as spamming, just an example of how to come first in Google.

What you really need to research is whether the phrase is actually being searched for...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=league+table+spreadsheet

In this case it seems that the answer is no so coming top in a search for it is of quesionable benefit

kwikbreaks

super_dad wrote: »

Does anyone have any tips on how to increase their "likeability" by google?

The real needs have already been mentioned - relevant content and inbound links. There are some technical things that need addressing too though. These will not bring any page to top of the pops but getting them wrong will hinder that aim..

Within the head section of the html a couple of important sections are the page title and the meta description. You should make these relevant to the page, include a phrase that you believe would be used to find content such as yours (use http://www.google.com/trends to research this - just swapping words around may make a big difference. Make page title about 10-15 words you can repeat some of this in meta description along with a brief description say 15-20 words total. Make the page title an H1 in the page content and repeat the meta description there too. By all means include a meta keywords entry although I think it is largely ignored these days. Make sure each page repeats words important to the content a few times - this will probably happen naturally in the text anyway.

Each page should have a different title and content from other pages in the site.

Note that the google description of the site entry page in results is often the dmoz.org description (I think google bought out dmoz.org a while ago) so I think it is worth trying to get an entry for the site added there (it is manually edited and this can take a while).

Don't let content stagnate - make at least some minor changes regularly.

SEO is a very big area and lots of money gets spent on it so don't expect to be able to compete with big professional sites.