It has become second nature for a business to have a website, whether they are selling goods or services online, or simply giving out information about who they are and what they do.

Businesses may even have reached a second or third re-design of their original website and have, over time, invested money and effort to achieve a the best look possible.

But by far the number one question asked by website owners to website developers is: “How can I get on the first page of Google?”

There are several reasons for this: o Search engines are the way in which 90 per cent of people locate the Internet resources they need and Google has a 75 per cent market share of these searches in Europe and North America.

o More than 80 per cent of people never bother with search engine results past page two, and 65 per cent don’t click on the paid advertising. Being near the top of the non-paid (or organic) search results can be the single most desired goal of some businesses.

o About 15 per cent of all sales in Britain are online and this is rising by approximately three per cent each year. You need the Internet to be working hard for you and generating new sales.

So how does Google determine its search results?

Asking how Google works is a complex question. Part of the answer is unknown and closely guarded within Google, but the parts we do know about allow for the manipulation of search rankings.

This is part of what is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and its purpose is to drive lots more traffic to your website.

Google works by focusing on relevancy. You will hear a variety of comments about how Google ranks sites, but in the end it all comes down to this term.

Relevancy can simply be defined as a web page that is most relevant to the terms searched for by a user.

Google focuses on the content of web pages and tends to mostly ignore meta tags (part of the website programming code) as too many SEO experts learned how to tweak their sites to get results.

Google looks at the overall text of the page as well as the site as a whole.

The exact Google formula, known as the algorithm, is not public information, but issues such as keyword density, flow of the text, amount of code, registration, length of domain and how long visitors stay on a site all seem to be used.

In truth, there are probably hundreds of factors involved in the evaluation.

Google also determines relevancy and rankings by looking outside of a site. Specifically, it looks to see what other sites are linking to the site in question.

In theory, the more sites linking to you must be an indication that you are offering highly relevant content on your site.

As you might imagine, this led to the growth of an entire industry dedicated to trading links. This process is known as reciprocal linking.

In the last year, Google has devalued such links because it no longer represents a measurement of relevancy. Instead, it just represents a measure of how many links a site can trade.

Google now looks more at the type of links being traded and gives high value to links which are inbound only. This means someone is linking to your site without you linking back to them.

After all that, how do you actually go about improving the Google ranking of your own website? Time and effort will eventually pay dividends and you should consider the following: Check the content on your website — thoroughly research the most relevant search terms appropriate to your business and the products you sell. Check that keywords and key terms are used in your pages’ text flow and that your text is HTML text and not graphics (which cannot be searched as easily).

n Research your competitors’ keywords and content. Find out what search terms are working for them.

By doing this kind of analysis you can help to hone your content and increase your page ranking.

Invest time in building back links — the more sites you can convince to include a link to your site, the more relevant your site will be to Google.

Sign up to and maintain a blog — blogging, or an online diary, is a very useful way of letting your customers, and search engines know that you are an active company and have new products, services or things to say.

Maintaining one need not be too time intensive — a few items a week will pay dividends.

Write articles for publishing online — most articles stay online for many years and the text written within is searchable by Google.

Social networking — many business are now using Twitter and Facebook to advertise and Google has just annouced that Twitter tweets will soon become searchable, a great resource to improve your ranking.

Track your website traffic — you can sign up to the excellent Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, free services that enable you analyse and track many aspects of your website.

Spending time to fully utilise the graphs and data generated will help you plan your next steps.

Check back regularly — small and regular efforts with your website are often better than a single overhaul once every few years.

Websites need nurturing to remain fresh, and new competitors are constantly appearing. Think of this as just part of your regular marketing and you will be rewarded with a better page ranking.

Contact: John Roberts, Couloir Design, 01295 738298.

Web: www.couloirdesign.co.uk