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SEO - The Google Guide for your website

8 April 2015

Make sure you have links from allied partners, industry associations & business directory websites linking back to your website. The more you have of these the more valuable your site is rated by Google.

Below are 10 tips to help your rankings in Google:

1. Create an Online Network

Make sure you have links from allied partners, industry associations & business directory websites linking back to your website. The more you have of these the more valuable your site is rated by Google.

2. Register your sitemap with Google

Make sure Google knows about all of the pages on your website. You can submit a Sitemap at the Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase coverage of your webpages. The system of lodgement requires an XML file - if you do not know how to create one, let Web Prophets know and they can set one up for you.
 

3. Clear Navigation & Text Based Sitemap

Make sure your site has a clear navigation path with 'text' based links so that Google can easily trawl through the whole site. Set up a text based sitemap on the homepage to make it easy for Google to track the whole site.
 

4. Add meaningful content

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. The more unique and useful the information you have on your website the more Google will appreciate you.
 

5. Use text where possible

Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
 

6. META tags

Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes in the heading code of your web pages are descriptive and accurate.
 

7. Clean URL paths

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the page address names short and the number of them few. Some web servers can use clean URL paths - this replaces the complex code in webpages to simple and clear SEO friendly names e.g.
http://www.yourname.com.au/events/event.asp?ID=3638 becomes http://www.yourname.com.au/events/todays-event
 

8. Keep Links to a minimum

Don't over clutter your web pages with links. Keep the links on a given page to under 50.
 

9. Create a Site for your Audience

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
 

10. Adhere to Google's quality guidelines

Google's quality guidelines includes:

  • Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
  • Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
  • Don't send automated queries to Google.
  • Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
  • Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
  • Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
  • Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
  • If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.
  • Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

 

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