Vanessa Fox from Google recently wrote a great post with many helpful tips on how a site can better improve its general visibility.
Although some of these tips may seem a little obvious on the surface, we frequently find that it is the most obvious factors that are sometimes the most overlooked.
The main points Vanessa gives are:
- Write for visitors, not search engines
- Use descriptive page titles
- Use text for your message, not images or plugins
- Stick to the topic at hand
- Make it obvious what you’re talking about
- Make sure website service is reliable - not crashing, etc
These points emphasize how important it is to pay attention to the small, but vital details. They also demonstrate why it is so important to not get caught up in ranking numbers.
Your website, when you come right down to it, is about the visitor - whether that visitor is going to read your message, purchase your product, or participate in the popularity of your site. A website that ranks high in the search engines, but which does not serve it’s clientelle, is not achieving its goals. If your site ranks around number 11, but converts 15% of time time, you have more to crow about than the #1 site with a 0.5% conversion rate.
These tips also give a hint into what Google values most in a website. By effectively serving the visitor, the website is also serving the search engine. And that can go a long way towards better rankings.
You can read the rest of the post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.