Everyone wants to climb up the Google ladder these days. I’d compare it to a mountain. Make no mistake, it is not easy and you definitely can’t cheat.

I have put together a list of five quick tips (in order of importance and speed) to improve your Google ranking. I hope you find them useful!

The five tips

1. URLs and page titles

The paths of your URLs are the most important things to consider. These will be the very first things Google looks at. They must be self-explanatory and very logical. Google uses a concept of ‘Taxonomy’ and ‘Autology’. Taxonomy is essentially the category of which your page content belongs to. For example, if you have a page about a particular book then this should be within the ‘books’ category. It sounds obvious I know, but there are still a staggering number of sites out there that do not employ this technique.

An example of an unfriendly URL would be http://www.mysite.com/books.php?cat=2&bookid=234. This does not help Google understand anything. What is the name of the book? What type of book is it?

Always remember to treat Google as an idiot. Hold it’s hand, explain in full, and reiterate everything.

This same example written as a Google (or any search engine) friendly URL would be something like http://www.mysite.com/books/adventure/lord-of-the-rings. Google can take so much more from this URL and as a bonus, it’s also easier for your visitors to remember! As a standard your URL should not contain any special characters but it can contain hyphens.

Page titles should essentially follow the same concept of taxonomy and autology. It’s not quite the same though, as Google will interpret the first part of your page title as having the most importance. It is therefore best to have the specific page title come first. For example ‘About us | Site name’ should be used as opposed to ‘Site name | About us’. You should always follow this concept.

2. Lots of content

The more content you have, the better. If users don’t have to scroll on your pages then get writing! An important point to note is not to rush this. Google will recognize the difference between rushed badly written content and good content. You have to strike a balance.

What’s more, always keep updating your site with new content. If Google finds some new content every time it crawls your site then this will give you more credibility and will ultimately contribute towards your overall ranking and credibility.

3. Explain your hyperlinks and headings

As highlighted in tip #1, Google needs you to explain everything to it over and over again. All links should be self explanatory and describe exactly what they are linking to. Google will use your link names as keywords for your site so you need to spend some time thinking about these (even if it means rewriting your content)!

Lets draw an analogy: a street sign would never read ‘go down here’, it would tell you the name of the location that it is pointing towards, for example ‘New York’. If you wouldn’t do it with a street sign then why do it with your hyperlinks? Never use ‘click here’ or anything equally as vague to direct visitors to a page.

When writing headings always use the correct tags; <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and so forth. Always make sure they are structured in that order too! By using heading tags you are signifying to Google that the text inside is a very important part of the page. Similarly to links, never use vague content in a header - you will simply be wasting a good opportunity to get some keywords in there! As with everything I have described so far there is a delicate balance that you have to strike here. Don’t go cramming your site with headings in the hope that Google will index all your content. It will in fact reduce the credibility of your pages.

4. Meta tags

Meta tags are HTML tags used to tell the search engine crawler about the content on your page. They generally come in the form of ‘keywords’ and ‘description’.

Meta tags are not as important as they used to be and certainly aren’t necessary to get indexed by Google nowadays but nevertheless can be useful. You first need to decide if you actually need them in your page source. Only use them if you have different keywords and descriptions for each page, otherwise you risk tarnishing your Google ‘credibility’. Many people think they can simply drop the same tags into the top of their pages and start reaping the rewards. This is a common misconception. Think about it logically. If you are describing a page from a book, would you describe every page in the same way? Of course not!

5. Link building

This is essential if you wish to get anywhere on Google, but I listed it last as it requires a lot of time!

Link popularity is the main factor that search engines use to rank web sites. The general concept is that the more credible links Google finds to your website, the higher it will be ranked. The more credible the websites linking to your site are, the better. For example, links to your site from various forum posts and blog entries on the web are all good and will help but are definitely not as good as a link from a large established portal like the BBC or MSNBC for instance.

There is no short way to do this. It involves hard work, determination, and time, but is worth it and your site will certainly benefit from it.

Good luck!

There is of course a lot more to learn about SEO. It is a very deep and complex issue dependent upon an almost unthinkable amount of factors.

I hope this post helps you kick-start your own SEO strategy and moves your site from the depths of Google up to the forefront of exposure! Please leave a comment if you found this useful, it would be great to hear your opinions.