Search Engine Management Tips & How To Get Google To Love You!

 

Hi guys,

Tim here.

I watched with interest a video recently featuring Matt Cutts from Google relating to search engine management or more precisely SEO the way google wants you to do it.

From our perspective (Internet Marketers) he let a number of things “slip” about what Google are looking for when looking to rank sites.

Quite frankly he was pretty well telling you what TO do to get on the good side of Google which of course will help your sites to perform better!

Here is a summary of what we think the main points he made were....

 

a) Have a title in your title tag, but make the title tag readable.

For example if you want to rank for the following keyword phrase;

search engine optimization agency

Then if should be in the title tag on the page (no surprises there). But... He went on to say it should not be spammy BUT could contain 2-3 keywords!

So don’t just put Search Engine Optimization Agency in your title, try something like

Easy SEO Tips From A Search Engine Optimization Agency

By doing something along those lines, it could help you to rank for;

So that's 4 keywords and we have made it readable and not spammy. In other words ADD MORE to your TITLE and not just the exact keyword.

So in your situation just find 2,3 or 4 keywords that you can place in a sentence, but keep it short. You don’t want to exceed 60 characters for a title, and 55 is probably better.

 

b) Branded Domains

According to Matt, it’s not essential to have a keyword in your domain name. A brand domain name that is catchy is perfectly acceptable to Google and will rank well provided you do the other things necessary like proper title, keywords in text, etc.

Lets assume you want to rank for the term;

search engine optimization cost

What he is saying is you do not necessarily need to register a domain like search-engine-optimization-cost.com but that a domain like catchingthewave.com might be fine. ( bad example the “wave” is traffic in this case).

Of course if you think about it, then a “catchy” brand name is more natural isn’t it ?

 

c) You should NOT use underscores..

This is a biggie!

If you have to want to rank for the keyword phrase

search engine management

Then you might have a url that looks like this.

takeoverpageone.com/search-engine-management-techniques.php

Using the dash “-” Google will treat these as separate words. e.g. my search engine management techniques. So that is a good number of different words that google can figure out.

But.... If you use an underscore (_), then google treats this as one word! e.g. searchenginemanagementtechniques ouch. Only one word. So not a good thing.

Probably not what you wanted and likely to prevent you ranking !

 

d) You DON’T WANT RANKINGS IN THE SEARCH ENGINES!

That's right, you actually want TRAFFIC.

Well actually you don’t want traffic either, you want CONVERSIONS. E.g. People taking the appropriate action on your page, buying your stuff, leaving email address, etc.

So many of us focus on getting our keyword to page 1, and not focus on getting our page optimized to give the best experience for the visitor.

On a number of occasions Matt made it clear that Google is aiming to give the BEST experience to the visitor, so it stands to reason that they would actually check if your website is giving that experience to your visitors and rewarding websites that give it with more visitors anyway!

 

e) Original Content is vital.

Google does not want you to be putting up duplicate content on your website. “Cookie Cutter” websites regurgitating someone else's original content is NOT what Google wants to appear in their index. e.g. Press releases, RSS feeds, etc.

If you are doing that on your site then your are fighting Google rather than working with them.

 

f) How to Easily get a keyword currently on page 2-3 to page 1!

ANOTHER BIGGIE !

Just mention the keyword phrase a few more times on the page. Matt actually said that is what you need to do. In other words make it obvious to Google what your page is about by mentioning the keyword phrase(s) you are looking to rank for a few more times and often this can be enough to move it from page 2-3 to page 1!

Of course we are NOT talking about spammy content or stuffing keywords, but you get the picture.


g) Google is making around 500 CHANGES to their algorithm each year.

So focus on giving them what they want, rather than trying to “beat” them. Some techniques might work today but get discovered and no work tomorrow. Good original content, and the other tips on the page will always put your page in the best position to work well.

 

h) Formatting of content.

Matt pointed out that badly formatted content that is hard to read or pages with lots of ads above the fold, or little content is NOT what users want so as a result not what Google want. So in other words when the visitor lands on the page they do not have the “solution” to the problem they were hoping to solve immediately obvious to them because of the ads, headers, titles or hard to decipher content on the page.

Our take?

Google is “reading” pages that have large chunks of text on page but are not formatted for easy reading as this is more likely a site trying to “game google” rather than trying to help users.

So format your content so that it is easy to read. And put your best content early on the page, not all your Ads and other stuff.

This will help you with your visitors AND Google.

 

i) Similar to (h) Microsoft Word special characters is a sign of spam.

You’ve probably edited a document before in word and pasted it into Wordpress. When you do sometimes you get those weird “special” characters. It a problem with Microsoft replacing characters like single quotes with their own “special” version of the same character.

The thing is, Matt suggested that Google use finding these special characters as a possible sign that your page is spammy with the theory being the content has just been quickly pasted on a page.

So ensure you clean up your documents and none of those special characters are showing.

Pasting your content from Word to a simple text editor such as notepad before adding to your web page can help prevent these weird characters.

 

j) Larger Sites.

Focusing on more content on a single site is a better strategy than smaller amounts of content spread over many sites.

So big IS beautiful.

Try and put up a pile of content on your site rather than a few pages on a single site. But original content of course.

Well that's it. I hope you have got something out of this info.

Remember, this is DIRECT from the horses mouth so to speak. Matt from Google virtually “letting us know” what we need to do to get on Google’s “good” side :)

So go out there and get some Google love!

Cya.

Tim