Simple ways to improve your Google PageRank

Search Engine Optimisation

Wow, what a loaded phrase. Let’s start breaking this chestnut down with some definitions:

• Query – a set of search terms (and/or modifiers) that represent “a search”.
• Corpus – the body of content over which queries are performed.
• Rank – the calculated relevance of a particular result for a given query.
  

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the endeavour of making changes in web pages to achieve the best possible rank. If you end up with the highest rank for the terms that people generally use in their queries for your given subject matter then more visitors will head your way.

That is the basic science, next up the art and unfortunately, occasionally, black art!

The question burning on everybody’s lips is what changes do I make to get the best rank? The answer to this question is immensely interesting because nobody has the same one. And for that we can thank PageRank.

PageRank is Google’s rank algorithm and Google is the most important search engine to rank well in so I will focus on that. Unless you have been living under a rock you know that PageRank utilises the mathematical field of graph theory to determine which pages are deemed worthwhile.

Ok, you may not have thought about it exactly like that but you knew that links to your website were not a bad thing. The trouble is that using links to score pages is just one part of the overall ranking strategy in play at Google.

This Information Week article contains a quote from Dave Girouard which claims over 100 variables in play to determine rank and that is just the variables, not how they are combined. This brings us back to the interesting question. Nobody knows how to answer the rank optimisation question precisely because Google are the only ones that know.

On top of that it is their business to ensure a) you don’t know and b) the system cannot be tampered with or more colloquially “gamed”. A gamed ranking system results in poor search results and there goes Google’s ability to sell ads.

Now that stage is set, let’s dig into SEO experts and services. If the experts and the providers of these services can’t know precisely what levers to pull to produce results isn’t it a process of fumbling in the dark to determine what works in general and what doesn’t?

Not only that but it would have to be combined with a healthy dose of hope that Google won’t change the rules. If I was doing the consultation I sure wouldn’t want to be making guarantees.

So what are these SEO guys actually doing?

A search engine query can be split into two steps. The first determines the set of candidate results from the query. The second determines the rank. These two separate steps are tackled by focusing on two completely different aspects of your website. Making sure you are in the results for a given query is pretty simple – have the search terms in your content, even simpler this is something you have direct control over. Unfortunately, it could mean you are at the end of a million long list. Achieving higher rank is trickier partly because of everything just described but also because of the biggest factor in the rank algorithm – inbound links. Unfortunately high quality inbound links do not grow on trees (which is kind of the whole point of making them a “vote” for worthiness).

If determining whether or not a particular page is in the candidate set is primarily a function of the content in the page, it seems to me there is little point waving voodoo magic incantations on the content on your own website. What is important is to know what keywords people are using. This is easy to determine these days with tools like: Google Adwords Keyword Tool  and Google Insights for Search. Next ensure those keywords appear in your content. There is a tiny “incantation” to recite here; the title tag is the most important “content slot” as it is an indicator to the search what the document is about. The next most important slot is the H1 tag (close to the top of the page is better) as obviously this gives the search an idea of the headings. For me, that is it. That is all there is to “optimising” the content of your website. Notice that it follows some pretty fundamental ideas about creating decent web pages for people - titles and headings?

Some consultants will want to argue about keyword densities and other esoterica but this is like optimising your headlights when you have engine troubles and about to race at Bathurst. I can’t help but feel a lot of this type of thing is bamboozling people with jargon to bring some mystery and awe to some pretty simple stuff.

If you are operating in a relatively niche area, chances are your competitors haven’t even figured this part out yet so a single change to your website with this concept in mind will suddenly have your pages selected as being candidates and that maybe all it takes to be on the first page or better – top spot. If you are considering engaging an SEO consultant please don’t have them perform this task. Settle on your own keywords then find a friendly web developer at a fraction of the cost and point them at this article and set them loose on your site (if you maintain your own site, skip engaging the web developer!).

To optimise the rank side of the equation, again, it is a competition so fundamentally it is about having more and higher quality links to your website than they have. SEO consultants can take two tacts to solve this problem. The first we’ll call “ethical optimisation” or white hats; the second we’ll call black hat SEO.

White hats optimise entirely within the rules set down by Google. Funnily enough those rules encourage people to build websites that are appropriate and relevant for people, as that is what people are looking for when they are searching. On the other side, black hats use tricks such as pages that look one way to Google’s spiders compared to what the rest of the Internet sees. Or more often shenanigans with links. It is unadvised to bother attempting the black hat tricks. It is quite the gamble as BMW Germany found out. When engaging a consultant I would ask about the methods in use, if they seem questionable pull out, you do not want to find yourself banned from Google altogether.

Gathering inbound links is no easy task. Any page that allows you to indiscriminately add links is not likely to boost your PageRank. So it won’t be a case of finding some trick to push you higher. One of the best methods I can think of is taking a subject related to your field and running a blog about it. If there is sufficient interest and the writing is attractive to enough people other blog authors will start linking to your content. At this point your blog has PageRank which you may bestow upon your own website by linking back to it. This is clearly a long term project and made more difficult these days by the huge sea of blogs that have emerged.

SEO consultants usually achieve this by having a set of websites they have groomed over time (sometimes even their client’s websites). They then create a mesh of links so that each of their clients gain a boost – likely related to a financial remuneration.
If you are considering optimising a new website my advice would be to run a well considered Adwords campaign first to determine if the proposition was sound. This will allow you to determine if the crusade of reaching strong solid “organic results” (unpaid results) is worth embarking on.

Points of the post:

1. Determine your keywords and place them primarily in title tags and H1 tags at the top of your pages. This is the key to getting into the results – the first step.
2. Inbound links to your website are the key to ranking well. There is no silver bullet here. It takes an equal measure of scrapping for them and providing content that people actually want.
3. Be careful when engaging SEO consultants. If they are only changing your website they are overpriced web developers. If they are providing inbound links be careful of the quality of the source of those links. Be especially careful of deceptive “black hat” practices.

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In his real job, Luke Amery works on shopping cart software. He is the technical director of On Technology, Australia's leading e-commerce development company.