Unless you are a search engine optimization expert, you may not know the different and FREE ways you can find out how well your website is doing in Google search engine results along with creative research options. I’ll share simple tips in this post.
If you can learn to optimize and research results in Google, it will often make sense for other search engines as well (but not always).
Google retains about 70% of the marketplace today, with Bing approximately 10%. The smaller engines fill out the rest. It’s well worth the work to make sure you are found in Google first.
So, if you can optimize well in Google, you’re on your way!
How do you check to see how well you are doing? Many ways – but here are six SEO insider tips for Google web search basics to get started.
6 SEO tips for Google search optimization results. Everything starts from google.com – so make sure you go there now. (Note: these are simple tips to start, but you might consider using these in combination with each other too).
TIP 1 – Is your name/brand found, listed in the results?
Type in your brand name into Google. Are you listed first, down on the page, or not at all? What else do you see – both in natural results and paid ads? Anybody “buying” on your company name, for example? Unless your name is “John Smith”, you should be listed first/high on page one.
TIP 2 – Are your pages listed neatly and uniquely?
Let’s say you have a small website with 20 pages. If you have just “thrown up” the pages, you probably can guess that they are not highly optimized. How do you know? One way is to check to make sure you have unique TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION tags. Just go to Google and type in the “site:yourwebsitedomain.com” – test with both www and without. Are all your pages listed? Are they shown with an attractive, action oriented, keyword rich TITLE, for example? Or, do they all the look the same? If not unique and describing the pages, fix it!
TIP 3 – Specific keyword search for further study
Pick a few of the top keywords you are targeting. (you know those, right?). Now, go to Google.com again, and just type it in. See the results. Now, type it again, but this time, add a ” (double quote) before and after the keyword. You are now performing a phrase search, and it will be searching for the exact word. So, if you had “real estate loans manhattan beach” as your key phrase, you’ll see different results. You should use this when looking specifically for your phrase, and you’ll see typically a smaller result set, and the bolded highlights show your terms. You can use this to see how others are using that keyword phrase in their TITLEs, for example. Note: you can use the + sign (without space before the word) to treat it the same way.
TIP 4 – Research and drilling into details
When looking for specific keywords pages, you may want to include or exclude words. Excluding words is easily done with the – operator. “The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space” (Google). You can use this several times during the input query as well.
TIP 5 – Use your wildcard
Sometimes you may not be entirely sure about the phrase, or what words may be used to form your query. You can use the wildcard, or asterisk symbol (*). It will be used to collect results that may help you drill further. Very powerful, try it out.
TIP 6 – Too similar?
Google search will most often treat your terms to include every word, that’s the default (AND). However, you may want to include searches in an either, OR situation. You can use the OR operator to do that.
In general, these work great, but there are exceptions, so it’s not always a black/white thing. But, hopefully you can expand your searches further through new, clearer search ‘glasses’.
Don’t forget that the “advanced search” option in Google will allow these, and many other options, including time-based search.
Finally, go to the Google Search Tips Gallery for more, including basic search.
What do you think?
Related articles Google SEO & Bing
- Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results – and denies it (googleblog.blogspot.com)
- Unusual All-Out Search War Between Google and Microsoft (googletutor.com)
- Google to Microsoft: Search “Gotcha” (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
About jon rognerud
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Entrepreneur Magazine says Jon Rognerud is one of the most sought-after Digital Marketing Experts. His clients extend from high-end brands and middle-tier businesses in both B2B and B2C. His SEO website optimization book, "The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website" from Entrepreneur Press is in bookstores now.