How do I get my website to show up at the top of Google search results?

Starting a new website?  How do you get traffic to our new web site?  This is the million dollar question, and if you are an E-Commerce site this could literally be a million dollar question.  Most of us are familiar with Google but for those of you who are not Google is a diversified company but made famous initially by their search engine.   If you are one of the few who have not searched the Internet using Google, check it out at http://www.Google.com.

It seems the majority of web users are now using Google to find websites based upon their needs.  Needs vary from purchasing items on-line, looking for services or simply finding answers to a specific question.  Some examples may be

• Searching for a specific site, user could enter New Jersey DMV to find out what hours they are open (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=New+Jersey+DMV)
• Searching for a specific item, user may want to purchase a new Sony HD TV so they could type Sony HDTV with the following results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=HDTV+plasma)
• Our search for the answer to a specific question, For example, What is the capital of California with the following results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=What+is+the+capital+of+California).

As a site owner the goal is to have your site come up as early in the search results as possible.  Whether you are selling services or products you desire the searcher finds your company as early in the search results as possible before they find a competitor who can meet their needs.  The concept is simple but getting your site to come up as early in the search results is not that simple and takes a lot of tweaking. 

According to Google:

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

In Laymen’s terms for your site to gain better Page Rank the following aspects play a big part

1. The more sites that link to your site the better.  The higher the volume the site linking to your site the more valuable the link is to your search results.  An example, if your site had a link from Microsoft to your site that would be much more valuable then having a link from a website that does not generate a lot of traffic (number of people accessing the site over a given period of time).  That being said, getting links to your site is not always an easy task.  For the small business this really is not an option unless you post content that other find extremely useful.  The competition is fierce so the number one factor in gaining the best search results is branding.  If you can get your company’s name out there and people search specifically for that you are in the best situation.
2. Content is crucial.  You need to anticipate what your clients would be searching for and gear your content towards those search criteria.  For example, for our site http://www.SpartanSoft.net we anticipate people would be searching for Website development so we tried to stress that fact in our content.

That being said it is not easy to get your site to show up in the top of the search results without a bit of help.  Another consideration is that the Google architects are always tweeking their search engine ranking engine.  I have experimented following the best practices I have found throughout the Internet and unfortunately it takes a long time to tweek your content to show up as high a ranking as possible.

Another option is paid advertising using Ad-Words but that is another article coming soon….

One of the best articles I have ever read on explaining the mystery of Google page ranking can be found here (it is a little technical but not to complicated)
Google Page Rank Explained