How to increase website presence when performing 'Google' search?

geek84

Hi folks

Can someone be kind enough to suggest any ways in which I can increase the ranking of my small business website (i.e. come higher up in the list) when someone uses a search engine, such as Google, to do a search on the type of services that I offer?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

paddyrg

Think for a second about what you're asking for - it's what everyone else wants also, so if there was an easy answer, they'd all do it, and it's an arms race. In fact, in early internet days, adult sites used to include every keyword they could think of, every country name, every USA state in meta tags and white text on white pages etc. Search engine companies realised their results were getting played, so worked out how to exclude just about every method for gaming the rankings - after all, if they give bad results, people use other search engines.

You'll see a lot of balderdash spoken about 'SEO', a lot of these are armchair experts who paid for a weekend course, and want to dazzle you with jargon. Simple truth is that having a clear website that also works well on mobile phones with natural text reflecting the search terms you are chasing, regularly updated, and being patient will be your best bet.

Or paying money (which in some markets is a mugs game - people bid high for common terms when slightly less common ones or more specific ones will be cheap and better ROI).

Just for illumination, though, if you and I searched for the same terms on Google, we'd get different results. There is no 'first page', there's only 'first page for you' based on your browsing (and youtube, email, etc) history. If an SEO 'expert' doesn't tell you this, it shows they're either ignorant (weekend course) or dishonest - neither is a heap of use to you.

skintpaul

create twitter /facebook / instagram etc accounts, with same user ID if possible, and then engage with similar businesses, or users on their sites, blogs -

leave comments on media sites, with links back to your site if allowed..

A friend runs a fan site, and is on first page of searches, with ZERO marketing budget!

martindow

Think very hard before paying someone as there are lots of rogues offering this kind of business. If you are a local business or offering niche products it is much easier as there is less competition - for instance for a search like 'chihuahua breeder in Rochdale' it will be easy to list high. If you want to get good listings for 'insurance' it will be virtually impossible. 37,000 results versus 1,030,000,000

gazfocus

I am a Google Partner and a Bing Accredited Partner and while I agree that there are some bad eggs in the search engine arena, that's no different really to any other industry, so you just need to use due diligence the same as anything else.

There are a few things to consider within the 4 walls of your own website before looking at things like link building/facebook/twitter.

I would also recommend AGAINST leaving comments on media sites with links back to your site (as suggested by skintpaul) as this is very much frowned upon by Google and could have a negative impact. At best, these types of links would be disallowed, at worst, your website/domain can end up being penalised.

Would you mind sending me a link to your website and I'll take a look at it for you to see if there's anything you can do with the site itself to improve your ranking?

skintpaul

Was thinking more of fan blogs, etc!

Aquamania

geek84 wrote: »

Hi folks

Can someone be kind enough to suggest any ways in which I can increase the ranking of my small business website (i.e. come higher up in the list) when someone uses a search engine, such as Google, to do a search on the type of services that I offer?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

You could try searching the internet to see how the common search engines say they list their search output.

I tried that and the first listing for me was this google one:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en

robatwork

Google are very secretive about their algorithms.

Most agree that backlinks are pretty important - getting other sites that are ranked well to include links to your site. That's something you can work on.

I also still believe in old fashioned things like meta description but many think this is ignored by Google, and let's be honest Google is the one engine you want to appear high in.

[Deleted User]

I do some Crowdflower tasks where I am paid to boost some website ranking. You need to have people with different IP addresses to search for some queries and click on that link from Google.

Crowdflower, Amazon Mturk and Clickworker can do that for you.

Chickabiddybex

If you PM me your website I'll take a look at it for you. There are some simple technical aspects you can implement to make sure the search engines can easily crawl your site. There are also quite a few valid strategies you can opt for when it comes to link building and creating content. Depends on what your site is all about though! For example the social media suggestion is great for some companies but not necessary for others.

I do this sorta thing for a living, I'm no armchair expert. Let me take a look (for free of course!)

A word of warning, you have been given some very dodgy black hat advice in here. Unknowingly I'm sure but be careful!

rockm87

If you have a gmail or google account you can actualy use adwords.

Adwords are the 'keywords' behind your website that create 'hits' from google.

you can log into them and see how your website (or any website) is performing with adwords.