Do you want your website to rank well in Google? Then think of your website like a restaurant. How Do You Know It's Good Dining? Think about how you determine if you want to try a restaurant. First, you would probably think about what type of restaurant it is. Is it Italian, Lebanese, American, a deli, pizza, Chinese, or a steak house? Is it upscale or down home? Is it near your home or further away? Is it fine dining or fast food? These are all questions of relevancy. If you are interested in pizza then pizza places are relevant, and steak houses are not. So, you are interested in pizza, but which pizza place to try? Now we are talking about quality. Imagine you are visiting New York City, and you inquire about nearby inexpensive pizza places only to learn there are dozens of them near your hotel. How do you pick one? You might ask the hotel clerk for her opinion. You might notice that one restaurant is busy, while another is empty. You might overhear diners leaving one restaurant saying good things and overhear bad reviews of another. All of these factors would influence your perception of the quality and value of your choices, and you would quickly weed out those that you perceive poorly. These factors are your best indicators of quality. Relevancy and Quality Now think of Google as a local dining guide – these days it frequently is – and you are searching the web for a place to eat. Google's goal is to tell you only about the types of restaurants you are interested in (relevancy) and which pizza places are likely to offer the best quality and experience (quality). Relevancy is fairly easy for Google to figure out as long as a web page is properly optimized with the right keywords and content. Quality, however, is trickier for Google to determine because it is more subjective. So, how does Google gauge quality? The answer is also the same as our example: opinions and popularity. Google looks to see how many other websites have made reference to a web page by linking to it. After all, if another site links to your web page, it typically means they have found your web page to be a good page with valuable, quality content – it's a recommendation in the form of an "inbound link". Other factors also apply. For example, if an auto repair website links to a restaurant web page, that is less valuable than if a food critic blog links to the same restaurant web page. Next, Google looks to see how many users have "liked" a web page or "shared" it with their friends via social media. If I like or share a restaurant website with my friends via Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, I am offering a legitimate recommendation, and Google takes that seriously. After all, I wouldn't want to mislead my friends, right? A recent study showed that social media shares can sometimes account for as much as 25% of the search engine ranking factors now. This is important. How Do I Get Inbound Links and Social Media Shares? First, offer the best product or service you can. People are not going to recommend a pizza place where the pizza tastes like cardboard and the service sucks. Make the best pizza and offer the best service. This is a no-brainer. Second, similarly make sure that the content on each web page on your website is as good as the pizza you serve. People are simply more likely to link to or share web pages that offer significant value, whether it is interesting information that is otherwise hard to find or special offers or something very entertaining like an irresistibly-funny video. Quality is still king. And make sure it looks good. Do you instinctively trust a restaurant with a dirty floor, a run down facade or ill-groomed waitstaff? Third, encourage people to link to the pages on your website and/or to share them via social media. Of course, offering truly unique and valuable content is the first and most important step in doing that, but you can give people that extra push by making it easy and also by asking nicely. Make it easy by adding "share" buttons on every page of your website and by posting links on your own social media that are then easy for others to share from there. Ask for it by, well, asking for it. It's that simple. If you ask nicely, you will find that most are willing to post a favorable comment on your social media business page or to link to your website from their own website – happily if they like your company and the website. Ask other websites in your industry to link to your site. Trade links if you have to. Improve your listings in the many online business directories, many of which are free. Finally, enlist the help of professionals. Maintaining a quality website and competing for online success requires a lot of effort. As a small business owner or manager, you must be involved and active in the process, but you don't have much time, do you? For more information about our website success services, email us at design@coppercupimages.com or give us a call at (918) 337-2781.
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