To Rank in Google Use Google?
There are only about 1,000 criteria that help you get ranked in Google but here’s something you probably never considered before.
Using as many Google services as it makes sense for you to.
That’s it. Using as many Google services as you can – I believe can help you get ranked higher in Google results.
Google reps have said many times over and over that Google is looking to index the best the web has to offer. They want the best sites to rank at the top of their search engine because it reflects well on them when they do. If they had Geocities garbage sites filling the top 10 for a lot of keyword searches – how would that look? Similarly if they had About.com and only About.com filling the top spots – how would that look? Not so great.
Use Google to rank in Google.
Currently Google has a long list of services – nearly all free, that you can put to use for your business.
Here are some:
- Analytics
- Calendar
- Documents – including presentations, docs, spreadsheets, forms
- Photos
- Reader
- Sites
- Webmaster Tools
Why would using Google applications give you a jump on other businesses that don’t employ this tactic?
Google has created tools to help your business become a quality site. Google webmaster tools is full of tidbits that, when optimized can lead to a much better formatted site than you had when you started. There are options you can configure there to help Google understand what is important for your business.
Specifically you can let Google know:
- which pages are most important by listing them in your sitemap
- which country you’re trying to focus on internationally
- whether you want your site to be known as www.yoursite.com or just yoursite.com
- how fast you want Google’s spiders to crawl your site’s pages
In addition to these basic tools Google is also strongly pushing their videos at YouTube (they bought YT some time ago). Adding multimedia at Youtube, linking to it from your website and linking back to your website in the video description is a smart way to bring traffic both ways and show Google that you’re creating a site that is high quality and multimedia.
Google Trust and Reputation Factors – Part 2
continuation from Part 1
Do original research or reporting– Adding to the Google index with NEW information not found before is highly recommended. You might use polls on your site and publish the results. You might do a meta review of services or products and publish it. Adding original content is what Google loves to see..
Live blog– Anything you can do “live” – the better. Live podcasts, tweets, and Facebook updates accomplish this. Social media is almost becoming synonymous with real time and live – because it’s so much more live than traditional websites. Be active in your niche in as many ways as you can, Google is beginning to look at a lot more things than links to your site… like how many times you’re mentioned in Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, etc.
Make lists– Lists are sticky and people usually read them. They’re bits of information presented in a quick format to digest. Online readers have short attention spans. they need short bits of info. Write many articles of this type. Lists are shared often and are more viral than a dry article.
Create controversy – This creates incoming links to your site. Google doesn’t care if they’re positive or negative – they’re links
Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed - If you have profiles for your business website on the major social media sites and there are followers and people that interact with you there – oftne – that’s an indication that your site is valid and trustable. Google is starting to add many variables to the “what matters” list and social media definitely matters. You should be all over social media – especially Twitter and Facebook at the moment. There will be more hot social media applications coming out in the short term.
Matt’s list stopped at those, but I’ll add a couple more things here that I’ve learned…
Timeis a major factor in reputation and trust by Google. You’ll notice with each year anniversary your site is trusted more in Google and you’ll see a bump in traffic if you’re updating your content regularly and all other variables on your site are good.
Mozilla.org and other major directory listings help a lot. I’m not sure whether you’ll be able to buy a Yahoo Business directory listing any more or not since they joined with BING, but if they do – it will be a good one to pay for entry into. A Mozilla.org listing is very helpful, but hard to get as they don’t maintain the directory very well any longer.
Inbound links from high-trust sites. Getting inbound links from sites that Google already strusts highly is a great way to gain some respect for your own business site. Use Google’s PageRank checkers to see if sites you want links from are listed at PageRank 4 or more. PR 4 sites are doing well in Google’s eyes and would be great for incoming links.
Onsite variables. Trustworthy sites have pages that every great site should have: About; Disclaimer; Shipping; Privacy; FAQ; Sitemap… etc. These are always found at every reputable site.
Summary
There are many variables that go into helping Google decide whether your site is worth ranking highly in the Google results. I’ve mentioned some here, but there are many more. Focus on keeping your site updated, relevant, and full of great information that makes visitors want to read and share your content. Keep active in social media applications as they come out and
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Google Trust and Reputation Factors – Part 1
Google trust and reputation is talked about as having profound effects on whether or not your business website shows up in the search engines.
Some of the major factors that go into whether Google trusts your site are listed below. The topics were given by Matt Cutts – Google employee and search engine spokesman. My comments follow.
To increase your business website’s reputation in Google Matt Cutts recommends:
Be interesting– If your website is a clone of another site – different wording but all saying the same thing – this is not adding anything to the webosphere and is not likely to make it’s mark in the Google results. Also, use multimedia and different means to communicate your message than do other sites. Add PDF files, XLS, presentations, graphics, video, audio, whatever you can to spice it up and make it sticky for visitors that arrive on your site. The bounce rate on your site should be as low as possible – which means visitors stay once they arrive at your site.
Update often– Continually add content to your site on a recurring basis. It need not be scheduled, but regular updates are highly recommended. News sites rank highly in Google probably because their depth of information and the fact that they’re updated many times throughout the day. Google would love to have real-time search at some point. The more real-time you can make your site – the better off you’ll be as time goes forward.
Find your niche - Focus your site on a tightly defined niche and Google will know what to do with your site. If you consistently write about the same niche and cover different areas Google sees that as a quality site that is adding something ot their index. Off topic posts are probably not helping at all – so keep them to a minimum. There are plenty of unexploited niches out there – find one in your industry and exploit it to your advantage.
Provide a useful service – Are you providing what 75,000 others are already doing? Google is not likely to index your site very highly in this case unless you become one of the best 75,000. How hard would that be? Almost impossible, but $ solves everything, right? This parallels the idea about finding your niche. Do a value add to a traditional service or product to make it more useful than what thousands of companies already have.
“Useful” might also relate to how often your links are passed around the web. Viral content or flagship content will do best.
