Higher Education Articles
Creating a Google Friendly Website. By Simon Healy
Everybody wants to get their website listed in Google. And with good reason, Google is currently the most popular search engine on the internet. So how do you get listed?
The first step is to create a Google-friendly site. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines offer help on general design, technical, and quality issues.
Their first piece of advice seems like a no-brainer; “Give visitors the information they're looking for”. Okay, what they really mean is make sure you produce a high quality website. And the logic behind that is sound, if you produce a good website that is likely to attract many visitors, then other webmasters will be more willing to link to you. We’ll cover links in a little while.
One of the most cost effective ways to bring very targeted visitors to your new site is using Google Adwords. HigherEdMarketing specialise in this area which you can view more about on our Adwords site here AdwordsMechanics.com
Content for your site
Be sure to include keyword rich content on your site. Think about your topic and what words you would use to try to find it on the web. If you need help with keywords, there are free tools on the internet to generate keywords and check their popularity.
Now about links. Your link network is one of the most important keys to getting listed on Google. If you don’t have any incoming links, don’t even bother trying to get into Google.
Keep the links to your site natural. Natural links are links that have been generated by a webmaster because they think your site content is valuable and can be helpful to their visitors.
An unnatural link is a link manufactured in an attempt to “fool” the search engines into thinking your site is more popular than it really is. These types of links include link schemes and doorway pages.
Consider adding a sitemap. Of course Google now offers a Sitemaps tool to make this easy. It is available in their Webmasters Tools section. Sitemaps offer the keyword rich text links that Google’s search engine loves.
They also suggest viewing your site with a text browser such as Lynx.
Most spiders see your site much as Lynx would, and may help to identify areas such as JavaScript, cookies, DHTML or Macromedia Flash applications that may keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser.
Whatever you do, don’t stuff your pages with keywords, attempt to “cloak” pages or put up “crawler only” pages. Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.
Don't use images to display important names, content, or links. Their crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics. If you must use images, use the ALT tag attribute for those images.
Don't create multiple copies of a page under different URLs. If you offer text-only or printer-friendly versions of pages be sure to block duplicates from the spiders using a robots.txt file. Google also offers information on using a robots.txt file in their information on blocking Googlebot.
Follow these guidelines and you should have a Google-friendly site in no time. Keep in mind that getting listed is only half the battle. The only sites that profit from a listing are the sites in the top 20 of the Search Engine Results Page. There are many articles on how to improve your ranking in the search engines.
Content what Google is looking for?
Quality, relevant, resourceful, original!
There are certain things that Google will look for that will have a significant bearing on your Page Rank. One of them is your website content. Content plays a large part in Page Rank. Bear in mind that this cannot be any old content it has to go by Google rules and standards.
So what are the Googlebots (Google’s little spies) looking for?
• Quality
• Relevance
• Resources
• Originality
You both share a common goal: Remember that Google’s customers (the searchers) are also your potential customers because they are your visitors (your VIPs). This means that you are both working together to achieve a common goal. Googles’s rules and standards should be yours as well.
Quality is an important factor with Page Rank and positioning with the Google search engine.
Naturally Google wants the best for their customers and site quality is one of their requirements. Quality content is a must for your website Page Rank. This is not hard to do. Here’s what you should think about with your content articles:
• Firstly your style of writing should be easy to read and presented well-don’t write like a kindergartener but do not go off the deep end and write like a PHD professor. Make your paragraphs short with concise sentences. Easy to read easy to understand
• Make it informative –your visitors love information. It is a great pre seller
Relevance: Google strives to be and is the most relevant search engine out there. They want to make sure their customers; the searchers have the best experience possible when they use the Google search engine. In order to achieve this Google must make sure that when searches are done they will bring up the right websites. For this reason relevancy plays a strong role in Page Rank assessment and appropriate sites must be screened correctly. Again this is fairly simple. Keep focused on your business topic. All your content should be about your specific industry, information, stories anecdotes etc.
Resources: Your content should be a good resource for your visitors and Google’s customers. As mentioned it is all about giving Google’s customers the VIP treatment. Your content articles should be informative and links in them lead to good resources that will further help your visitors when they click through to them.
Originality: here’s where you need to be careful. Google’s customers do not want to read rehashed stuff that they have read elsewhere.
So do not:
• Copy and paste other people’s articles word for word without their copyrights and Bio Boxes. This is rude and illegal. It is called Plagiarism. Googlebots will catch you and penalize your site. Google doesn’t want to see copied content for their customers. They are looking for fresh original articles.
• Scrape articles and use them verbatim. This is using software to collect articles or snippets of them and place them on your site. If you must do this reword them carefully.
However do:
• Write your own original articles
• Have articles written using freelancers or do it inhouse
• Get Private Label Right (PLR) articles
The bottom line is when you write your content obeying the Google rules you will please your visitors and Google alike. Do it right and your Page Rank will rise accordingly.
Article List
Using Adwords to generate more student visitors - Simon Healy
The top 4 search engine things you need to consider - Simon Healy
'The Recruitment 2.0 Revolution'. Simon Healy
Making your institution's website Google friendly. Simon Healy
Web design and how it will affect your Page Rankings. Dale Pillars