Hey - been a couple of weeks since my last post, where does the time go? Today we look at what Google sees when it crawls round your website.
What's a spider got to do with Search Engine Optimisation?
Last time I wrote about the importance of good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for your business name - and it is important as anyone you've been recommended to can give you a search and find you (FYI I've just scraped onto page one of Google so all the work I put in is paying off). However most new business on spec will come from people looking for your product or service.
Let's take an example - 'marketing services in Surrey' for example, you can insert your own product and service to try this. What comes up first of all is a list of Google business listings; it's really important that you get yourself one. For one, it makes you easier to find, but secondly it's part of what Google uses to rank you when people search (everything from analytics, to webmaster tools, to submitting a website to Google to index is part of this).
You may also see some of the paid ads I mentioned in my last post, and then you will see the natural search results. What is really going to get me to be the first thing people find when they google 'marketing service Surrey' is well written, concise and relevant content that can be understood in context by Google's web crawlers (called Spiders), if they can see that I offer marketing services in the Surrey area, they'll index me further up the pile. If I've sold my soul and got Google analytics, webmaster tools etc. and am managing them well, even better.
How the SEO web gets built
The really important thing to talk about is linking - Google loves it when different websites link to each other, but it loves it even more if your site is linked internally. For example a menu will have something like Home | Products | Pricing | Contact, which is seen as pretty equal, however if on the products and pricing pages, I link them both to a page or blog post which talks all about how I offer marketing services, and they know from my location, what I write or my Google business page that I am in Surrey, the Itsy Bitsy Spider will start to see a hierarchy on the site and judge that I have all the ingredients to be nearer the top. Imagine all these links as a web for the Google Spider to jump around on, the more they can crawl and index links, the higher they'll push you up the rankings.
I'll find something fun, but no less important to talk about next; if you need any help with the above, drop me a line.
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