Many business owners come to CVW Web Design asking for help with their current websites. And one of the most common questions is "How can I get better search engine positions"?
There's a lot of potential in that question but one of the best places to start is Google itself. What? Help from Google? Yes, in fact, Google does provide help and guidance for websites in its Webmaster Guidelines
"Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site".
The reason for this is simple, Google wants to provide the best set of search results for any search and it wants to encourage you to improve your website in order to do that. So, whilst Google does not provide exact details of how it ranks websites, it does provide sensible advice - and some pointers about what you should not be doing!
There are quite a few tips in its Webmaster Guidelines so every website owner (and web designer/developer) should read them. Some of the tips are more technical but the quality and content sections are reasonably straightforward.
For example:
- Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it
- Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
- Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.
Why not read through the Guidelines and ask yourself if your website is following Google's advice.