Make Your Website Show On Google (On-Site)

Make Your Website Show On Google

• “I have a website. But when I search for it in Google or Yahoo it never shows up.”
• “I have submitted many time to Google and Yahoo, but it still does not appear in any of them.”

Does that sound familiar to you?

While getting a website is easy, making it appear in the search engines has become a pretty complex job. The good news are that you can make your website rank high in the top search results when you know how to ‘Search Engine Optimize’ it.

Search Engine Optimization of a website consists of two important factors:

1. On-page optimization
2. Off-page optimization

In this article we will show you how you can optimize your website yourself by doing ‘On-Page’ optimization.

(Make sure to also read our article about Off-Page optimization as both aspects are vital if you want to rank high in the search engines!)

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

On-Page means everything you can do to the content and HTML code of your website. Here is what you should do:

1. Select the keywords you want to target
   Find out what do your potential visitors type in the search box in Google to find your products or services. Ideally, select keywords with a high search volume and little competition. To find out how many searches there are every month for a keyword you are trying to target, use the free Google Keyword Tool. To find out about your competition, type your keyword in the search box of the free version of Keyword Spy. If you find that your keyword has to much competition of ‘big players’ which invest thousands of dollars per month in marketing, try to rather combine a couple of ‘niche keywords’ instead (e.g. target ‘San Diego bathroom remodeling’ instead of ‘General Contractor’). By going after a niche keyword keep in mind to select keywords which still have a decent search volume.
2. Rewrite your website’s content by using the keywords or key phrases you selected. Target about 2 – 3 keywords per page (e.g. have one page about bathroom remodeling and another one about kitchen remodeling). Don’t overdo it! You will get penalized by the search engines for ‘stuffing’ your website with keywords! Write for the real person who will read your website rather than for the search engine robot.
3. Use < h1 >, < h2 >, bold and italics to highlight your keywords in your content, and also use them in links to your other pages.
4. Link between your pages, so all of your important content pages can be reached by a link from at least one other page, so when the search engines start to crawl your website from the home page they are able to find all your relevant pages.
5. Keep in mind that the search engine robots can only read text. They don’t understand your photos and Flash graphics unless you label them. So describe all of your pictures with ‘ALT’ tags using your keywords where appropriate.
6. Make sure that you have the following META tags in the < HEAD > of your HTML code:

   < TITLE >Your Descriptive Website Title Goes Here
   

   This is what the search engines will show as heading for your website in their search results, so use your keywords wisely! Again: keyword stuffing is bad! You have up to 70 letters including spaces. Don’t say ‘Welcome to ABC Company’, but e.g. rather ‘Kitchen and Bathroom Remodeling in San Diego’.

   META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Your website’s description goes here in a sentence or two.”>
   

   This description will be shown in the search engine’s result under the heading for your website. So repeat your most important keyword, but write a helpful sentence which will persuade a searcher to visit your website in order to solve his problem.

   < META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="your keywords, go here, separated by a comma" >

   This tag used to be very useful in the beginning of the internet, but as the search engines algorithms are getting more and more sophisticated, it’s of little use these days. You should still have a list of up to 20 keywords or key phrases as it helps the engines understand what your website is about.

Tip: If you are unsure about the correct HTML syntax, you can ‘spy’ on other websites by selecting ‘View Source’ in Internet Explorer.

While having an HTML code optimized website with keyword relevant and informative content is crucial, your website won’t be ranked high in the search engines unless you also do ‘Off-Page’ search engine optimization.