6 Top Google Tips To Succeed With Your Website

The net is full of gems. It is also full of rubbishes.

I read something along this somewhere I don’t remember. But having spent some time on the net I’ve no doubt about its veracity.

In fact, going a step further, I’ll say many of the gems on the net are free.

Now, don’t fret, I’m not going to talk about the free gems like the free search information, the free emailing, the free conversing (Facebook, Twitter, et al), the free geo-locating, and so on.

They are taken for granted since long back, much like the nature’s bounties bestowed upon us.

But wait, suppose you want reliable information on the best ways to rectify a health problem. I use the word ‘reliable’ because maybe you won’t mind paying for the information even though it’s very likely that a plenty of great resources are there that are free. Only if you knew which ones are they (sigh)!

If there is one area where misinformation galore – both involuntary and deliberate – it’s the search engine optimization. The main reason is perhaps that search engine information is proprietary, and usually not public. It belongs to the respective owners like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

What this means is that those who have the resources to test and analyze various aspects of search visibility – for example, does headline tag matter, or must keyword be mentioned in the footer, or suchlike – come out with their own results, that fortunately may be right, or equally unfortunately may be wrong.

The ‘great discovery’, whether right or wrong, makes news nevertheless. And very shortly, the ‘news’ becomes headlines in the millions of SEO websites all over the world.

The truth therefore is there are perhaps more untruths than there are truths about the right way of doing SEO. Adding more to the dilemma of common web users like you and me is the odd feeling that SEO is a dynamic concept that constantly changes and evolves over time (though admittedly some 72 top search engine optimizers around the world feel SEO has changed little in recent years).

So what do we have in hand? If you are not a big company or a high net-worth individual capable of spending tidy sums to the top SEO practitioners, all you perhaps have are loads and loads of ‘hot’ SEO tips – many contradicting one another – without knowing the ones that really matter.

But there is now a difference…at last.

Like a whiff of fresh air, Google’s Matt Cutts beams upon us with an invaluable list of SEO tips, which coming as they do from the 9-year Google veteran can for all practical purposes be considered as the bible to attain and retain increasing search visibility.

Matt focuses on WordPress blog to spell out the SEO tips. If you have spent some time to understand the basics of search engine optimization you may know what are some ‘old-is-gold’ features that have more or less remained the same for a long time.

Matt’s presentation in the WordCamp SF on May 30, 2009 is unarguably one of the best SEO I’ve come across in my modest experience. It’s lucid, and the concepts are explained well to follow and understand.

Let me pick up the 6 which I feel are very practical and can be implemented rather easily. And since Matt says, “..you guys should all do video.”, I present here an easy-to-follow PowerPoint video for you.

Okay, we have had the tips in motion. Let me now have them here in text.

Tip #6: 5 WordPress Plugins

Some are mesmerized by WordPress’ free great templates and widgets, some by its sheer range of plugins. I know a guy who likes testing WP plugins every now and then, and yes he is like a Wikipedia on them. Here are 5 that Matt suggests using:

1) Akismet
2) Cookies for Comments
3) Enforce WWW Preference
4) Feedburner Feedsmith
5) WordPress Super Cache

Tip #5: How To Use Keyword

Keyword in a page is the key to let search engines know of its importance relative to the page. If a site selling men’s clothes also sells ties but never mentions the word ‘tie’ or ‘ties’ in any of its pages, the search engines will never know of the fact.

Conversely, if a page mentions keyword too many times, a greedy expression of intent called ‘keyword stuffing’ or ‘keyword spamming’, the search engine will obviously banish it for overdoing which for the site is clearly not called for.

Between the 2 extremes comes the gentlemanly way of using keyword, and for that Matt has the following tips to follow:

1) Know what search terms visitors may type [2WV tip: Seed Keywords]
2) Brainstorm with AdWords Keyword Tool
3) Use URL’s /%postname%/ & put KW there
4) Use KW in title & sparingly in content
5) What about KWs in category names

Tip #4: Content Matters

A notion exists that content only means texts such as this essay. Not really! As Matt says later – the last tip in this sequence – podcast and web video are also most welcome by Google. So should be images too.

Yet the importance of text as content hardly needs iteration. In which case the top tips by Matt are as below:

1) Write something you care about
2) Be relevant, creative, interesting, frequent
3) Use Katamari technique: Start in a small niche, then build up, build up
4) Original research is good

Tip #3: Stop Hacking

Remember the outage of Twitter and briefly Facebook some time back because of suspected hacking of those sites? Now consider the odds you face should that happen to your website.

Okay, I’m giving an extreme example. There is perhaps very less chance of our becoming the next Twitter or Facebook.

Nevertheless the danger of hacking is all too real to ignore, and it will be a good idea to keep the WordPress content area out of bounds to everyone else except you using the following code.

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from 123.45.67.89
# whitelist work IP address
allow from 123.45.67.98
</LIMIT>

Tip #2: More AdSense Money

This one is a real good one. Place your main blog content between a pair of tags (given below) and be assured that the AdSense ads to be displayed will be relevant to the content. This means more chance of your visitors clicking on them, and more money for you in turn.

<!–google_ad_section_start –>
and
<!–google_ad_section_end –>

Tip #1: Google Loves Video

This I like the most – no prize guessing right why! Matt says as much:

“You guys should all do video.”

Though Matt apparently suggests making what I call ‘camera video’, there is no doubt that demonstrative videos such as the one above from screencast, flash, PowerPoint, and moving image too have their places under the sun.

And in case you want to learn the nitty-gritty of web video production, there is perhaps no better course than to enroll with ours.