Just having a well-designed website is not enough if it’s buried in the middle of the third page of Google search results…

John Mignano

Studies show that over 90% of the time, Google users rarely go beyond the top ten sites returned by a query.

Credit this to Google’s efficient algorithm that does an excellent job of ranking sites based on relevance—on a given search for a general or specialized topic, the first ten sites that Google lists will almost always be relevant to the keyword or keywords that you typed in.

Google even goes as far as providing an “I’m feeling lucky” button that you can click on if you’re in a rush; an alternative to “Google Search”, it zeroes in on what the algorithm decides is the most relevant site related to your query.

Now from a user’s perspective, this is the benefit of using Google for consistently reliable search results.

But to the website designer this presents an enormous challenge: how does one make it to the first page of results, let alone the top ten?

It isn’t as if the results are provided by a committee of real live human beings who screen each and every website for each and every query—an unrealistic undertaking, to say the least.

In the offline world, being noticed is as basic as being seen; sit outside on the sidewalk with a sign around your neck and your presence will at least register with whoever passes by (unless you live in New York City).

But online, it’s easy to be invisible—the basics of establishing an online presence are as simple as register a domain and getting your site hosted. Then what?

Google uses an algorithm. The aforementioned committee of living and breathing website-screening humans would have to consist of the entire planet’s population to do the approximate job that Google’s algorithm does.

Without going behind-the-scenes, all you need to understand is that an algorithm, by definition, relies on certain rules.

These rules are what determine how Google filter the mass of websites in existence and distills them into a list of results, ranked in relevance.

So the question becomes: how does Google define what’s “relevant”?

Basically, it’s all about content…and then some.

Yes, content is still king. A software algorithm may be doing the dirty work but it’s designed to do the work of a billion humans, with those same humans in mind—so the quality of your content still matters.

Here’s an example:

You have a well-designed website, meaning that you took care of your meta and title tags. These two tags are crucial yet sometimes overlooked, but when used properly, these score big points with Google’s algorithm in your website’s favor.

Another major factor in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is how your website employs keywords. Again, with well-written content, this is already assured in most cases.

The only task left is to screen your content the same way that Google’s algorithm would. If you have a website about “Cigars” for instance, is your written content full of keywords related to that topic?

Now this is a top-down approach. Many times it can be even more efficient to do take care of this from the bottom-up.

If your content is written with the concept of keywords in mind, then it will have a better chance of ranking well in Google.

Again, these keywords naturally occur if articles are well-written and focused, but a human writes these for you (I would guess), yet its Google’s algorithm that reads them first before ranking your website accordingly for other human to find.

That’s another very important rule the Google algorithm pays attention to external links to your site.

In other words, after your visitors leave, do they still care? This aspect of Google SEO is also within your control if you take the time to set up a “link exchange” system.

Simply put, Google favors sites that have more external links in them.

Now there’s nothing stopping you from peppering your site with links left and right. But unless this is implemented effectively, your site will be hit with usability issues and your daily visitor traffic will go down.

A link exchange keeps things from going out of control: you can arrange with webmasters of external sites related to your own for reciprocal links. Keep in mind that if your website is an island, it will stay that way as far as Google is concerned.

Google SEO really boils down to that: understanding the rules of the algorithm.

It’s like discovering the chemicals that make up pheromones; the laws of attraction are equally invisible to the naked eye.

But once you get that good, quality traffic coming to your website, it also matters that your visitors don’t show up at your door expecting a beauty when what’s inside is less than it’s shell.

Because unless you are the only website dedicated to your field or industry, equally attractive websites with intelligent SEO but better quality content will bury you the next time the search results are updated.

That’s as simple as it gets with these SEO tips for Google…