Success with Google

Most people use Google, the worlds biggest brand, to find what they're looking for on the internet. So it makes perfect sense to make sure your website is built and maintained with Success with Google as it's aim. Success is when your website appears on the first page of results of a Google Search for your website's content.

There is no Quick Fix to success with Google. There are no Shortcuts and any offers to get you to straight to the top of Google for a fistful of fivers should be regarded as Snake Oil or a Scam.

There are 30 billion (ish) web pages competing with yours for a place at the top of Google's search listings. The task of acheiving success is daunting but not impossible and with some planning, determination and a strategic (or Campaign) approach your chances will improve massively.
The Campaign approach to Search Engine Optimisation

Don't underestimate the time needed to carry out effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - consider it as an on-going Campaign. Ideally, a campaign would go like this:
Planning and Preparation - before the site's launched

1. This should go without saying: Get really good at what you do and work out how you'll convince your customers to do business with you
2. Find the right keywords and keyphrases which describe you business.
Find out more about Keywords arrow
3. Fill your pages with keyword-rich text and ensure the keywords are present in the page Titles and Headings. Writing keyword-rich copy for the web is a specialised area
4. Try to continue using your keywords when choosing a domain name. Google can distinguish and separate words without spaces - hyphens separate the words more clearly and make them easier for humans to read. If your first-choice domain name is taken, try a hyphenated alternative.

Build your site to Web Standards

1. Ensuring your site is verified and accessible doesn't have any direct bearing on Google's ranking but making sure it's built with clean HTML makes your site more accessible to people with disabilities or folks accessing your pages on portable or other devices. Therefore it can improve the popularity of your site... increasing natural links to your site (which can help with your Google ranking), traffic, and so on.
Find out more about web standards arrow
2. Google's Webmaster Guidelines give a good indication as to what's expected and generally a site built to Web Standards will satisfy those Guidelines

Running The Campaign - attracting attention

1. You'll want a Google Account to enable Analytics (to keep track of visitors etc), to create Maps and to create a Directory entry for your site. All free and totally invaluable
2. Your site should have a Sitemap. Sitemaps seems somewhat neglected these days, but they're actually really useful for humans to find stuff and the Googlebot loves them!
3. Fine-tune the Titles, Keywords and Headings on your pages to make sure they're relevant to the content on your site and to match what people would search for
4. Try to think from the User's Perspective; most are not going to be searching by typing in your site's name, so 'prime' your pages with likely search phrases - Don't just copy competitors keywords, improve on them!
5. Google visits your site often to check on activity and likes to see changes; make sure your site's updated regularly and most important of all, make sure it's Useable, Useful and Helpful

* Try this plug-in for Firefox... it gives you many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results -
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html arrow

Success will come

Maybe not overnight, but with patience, care and attention, the ball will start rolling and you'll see improvements in your Visitor numbers. Analytics will enable you to see what's happening and to improve or correct Search patterns.

Don't get complacent, either... it's possible to lose your Google popularity or for other site's to overtake yours

http://jon-jackson.co.uk/success-with-google.html