SEO-ing

I was under the impression that I was doing pretty well. After all, if you Google for Enfys, my site comes up on the first page. However, I suddenly realised that if you Google for all the other things that my site is about, it is no where to be seen despite the fact that Biz Information thinks it is worth £5,687.13

Suprisingly, my old pipex site is worth £952,709.74!!!! Anybody want to buy it?

Think of a web site like an old fashioned Ladybird book, the ones that have a picture on one side and words on the other. A child tells the story from the pictures where as an adult tells the story from the words. In the case of a website, we see the finished pretty page and Google reads the html coding which makes the page up.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is about putting keywords into the coding of your website so that Google picks it up. It all sounds very complicated but it isn't really. There is lots of help out there, especially from Google themselves.

First of all, you need a Google account (and if you have a Blogspot blog you already have one) then you need to access Googles Webmaster Tools. Here you will find a wealth of information, all free and all aimed directly at helping you to improve your Google ratings.

They even provide a Free SEO Starter Guide to help you. Although, I have to confess, I splashed out on "How to get to No.1 in Google - in easy steps" as well.

There are quite a few basic things that you can do to improve your ratings. Make sure that each page has a unique page title and description. Use "proper" text for internal links, not just "Click here". Give your pictures relevant names and use "alt" text to give them a more accurate description. Remember, Google searches for pictures as well.

When you have done as much as you can with your site, you need to register it with Google. They will give you a code for the home page so that they can verify it is yours and when the process is complete, you can access loads of information about what Google thinks about your site.

Another thing you need to do is upload a Sitemap and tell Google it is there. This tells Google what pages are on your site and how important they are.

You can either spend ages typing out one of these yourself, or you can ask Sitemaps Pal to do it for you.

Another thing to do is to get lots of external links to your site. These links are one of the ways Google finds your site. Lots of relevant links help your rating. If anybody wants to link to mine, I won't say no.

Of course, the guide sets all of this out so much better than I can so I would highly recommend downloading a copy. And if you can afford the book, get that as well. It has loads more information in it than the Guide.

This brings me to something I have been thinking about for a while. A blog is one of the ways of getting external links to your site. I dont have any on here as it is against the rules of UK Scrappers.

After much consideration, I have decided to use my blog to help with the SEO of Rainbow Valley. This will means links to my site from here and, consequently, removing my blog from my siggy on UKS. I do have a few other things to do before I start the serious SEO of this blog though.

Like re-writing the Rainbow Afghan. This was the first pattern I wrote to sell. It was a very steep learning curve for me. As a result, it is not as user friendly as I would like it. One of the main queries I get is about the instructions for joining.

So, I am going to add photo instructions to it.

That is after I have added the March issue of the Chatteris Centrepoint to the blog, ready to be published on March 1st.