Small business owners often ask me “how can you get my site to show up in the top 10 in Google?” Well, that’s the million dollar question, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve (all white hat, of course) but what I like to do is turn the question around and ask, “what can YOU do to get your site to show up better?”

Google, Yahoo!, MSN and all the search engines have a secret recipe that they call their “algorithm” for deciding how to rank websites in the natural search results. It’s a pinch of this and a dash of that. A cup of popularity and a pound of good content.

Take a look at Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. The very first thing they mention in their advice to you upon launching your website is “Have other relevant sites link to yours.”

Let me give you some advice on how YOU can help your website be more “popular” and attract those all-important inbound links.

Make your website an interesting destination. Yep. That’s the secret. Here’s how:

High Quality Content

Be original. Don’t copy content from someone else’s website! Content should be unique and interesting, factual, educational, entertaining, enlightening and inspiring, or controversial and fresh. Find out what people in your industry are looking for online and provide it.

Include Linkbait

Want other sites to link to yours? Include a tool or a service that people are looking for. For example, if it fits your industry, you might want to have a mortgage calculator, or a calorie counter, or a currency converter. That type of thing. Include product reviews, Top Ten Lists, interviews of some of the newsmakers in your industry, surveys, film clips or demos, expert advice, contests, coupons, humor… Do you have any websites bookmarked? Which sites are in your “Favorites” and why? Thinking about this can help you come up with ideas for making your own site linkworthy.

Social Networking

You can host a blog or a discussion forum on your site that will attract readers and commenters. Make sure it is full of accurate, helpful information for your industry and target audience. And it needs to be current. Readers will abandon a site whose last posting was a month ago, let alone a site that hasn’t been updated since 2004. Participate in other blogs and forums by adding your own unique, helpful comments and you will entice other bloggers and readers to link to your site.

Sources for Links

Free links are often there just for the asking. Here are some suggestions:

• business partners
• vendors
• suppliers
• association memberships
• certifications you or your business have acquired
• links from parent companies or subsidiaries
• submit press releases to online media
• offer to write articles, reviews, critiques, Top 10 lists, etc. for online media

Look at the PageRank of the sites you want links from and make sure they aren’t part of link farms or web rings as those links won’t help you in your quest for “link juice”. If a site has a pretty good PageRank (4 or higher) and they are willing to link to your site, make sure it’s from the page with the juice and not from some other page on their site that has no PageRank, like a “Links” page.

Reciprocal Links Are Sort of Free

A Reciprocal Link is where you ask another website to link to yours, and you agree to add a link on your website pointing to theirs. I’ll point to you if you’ll point to me. Like most things, this is best done in moderation. And if what you want is link juice and not just traffic, see the point above.

Paid Links Are Not Evil

As a tool to drive traffic to your site, paid links are like advertising. They won’t pass any PageRank, but they will send traffic. And that’s a good thing. It’s okay to buy links. It’s a little trickier for you to sell links, and that could end up hurting your site.

Directory Listings

Register your site on The Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org. It’s free. Add your company’s website to any directory of legitimate businesses in your business niche. Even if these don’t pass any PageRank, they will send traffic.

It’s like everything else about your business… if you don’t expend any effort, you won’t see any results.

Named after Google co-founder Larry Page, PageRank is a value assigned to every site indexed by Google. Each page is ranked on a scale of 1-10 (or truthfully, 0-10, with 10 being the highest score, and some sites have no score). This PageRank number is essentially an indication of the “popularity” of a web page, as indicated by how many other web pages link to it.

It’s not strictly based on volume, as Google also considers the quality and authority of the sites that are linking to your website. So 50 inbound links from authoritative websites that have a good PageRank themselves will weigh more than 1,000 inbound links from a link farm or web ring and will result in a higher PageRank. Incidentally, very few websites have achieved a PageRank of 10 and yes, Google’s own home page is one of them. Most small businesses would be doing very well to have a 3 or 4.

How do you find out what your website’s PageRank is?

METHOD 1
It’s a little work to set up, but this method gives you a tool that will show you the PageRank of every web page you go to. Download and install the Google toolbar in your browser. Trust me, you’ll love it.

For Firefox:

http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html

For Internet Explorer:

http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index.html

Once the toolbar is installed, it will include a bunch of buttons you may not want, and you can customize it to remove them. On the right side of the Google toolbar, click on “Settings”, “Options” and you can customize it from there.

The PageRank indicator will now automatically show you the Google PageRank of every single web page you visit. It shows a sliding green bar but if you hover your mouse cursor over it, it will tell you the PageRank in numbers.

METHOD 2
Click on the following link and type in the web address of the site or page you want to check.

http://www.googlepagerankchecker.com/

So, you know the PageRank of your web page. Now what?

Your PageRank is only ONE of the factors that Google considers when deciding where to place your site in the search results. The higher it is, the more it can help you, theoretically. I’ve worked with many small businesses who have no PageRank, or a PR of 1, and we can still get their site to show up well in the search results!

To increase your site’s PageRank, you need to make a concerted effort to draw links to your site. That will be the subject of my next post, Life is still a popularity contest.

There are more than 98 million domain names currently registered and that makes it tough to come up with a name you will like that no one has registered yet. Here are some things to consider:

There are a lot of Top Level Domains (TLDs) you can choose from including com, net, org, info, biz and us but if this is for a business website, go with .com. It’s the standard and if you want to have even a hope that people will remember your web address, it needs to be a .com.

Make a list of at least a dozen possible choices before you start checking on availability. Include your company name but don’t be surprised if someone else already has it, unless it’s a unique name. Let’s say your business name is Smith Brothers Plumbing. And you’re located in Fort Worth, Texas. Let’s come up with some possibilities.

1. smithbrothersplumbing.com (being optimistic)
2. smithbrothers.com (leaving out the keyword)
3. sbplumbing.com (focus on the keyword)
4. sbplumbers.com (might be a more popular keyword than plumbing)
5. sbplumbingfortworth.com (adding the local anchor)
6. sbplumbersfortworth.com (switching the keyword)
7. fortworthplumber.com (going for the popular search phrase)
8. fortworthplumbers.com (plural)
9. plumberfortworth.com (keyword first)
10. plumbersfortworth.com (plural again)
11. ftworthplumber.com (common abbreviation of city name)
12. ftworthplumbers.com (try the plural again)
13. tarrantcountyplumber.com (going for the broader geographical anchor)

You’ll notice that there are no hyphens or underscores in the names. Again, if you want the address to be memorable, leave out punctuation. No one will remember it and it’s harder to type. Here are some additional tips for what to avoid when choosing a domain name.

Now, how do you find out if any of these domain names are available? Don’t check with Network Solutions until they fix this questionable practice. You can try godaddy.com or dotster.com and find instant feedback on whether or not your domain names are available and you can either register them right on the spot or come back later and do it.

Which domain name do you go with? Chances are that more than one of your choices will be available. Let’s see how our selections fared.

As of this writing, these four are available:

smithbrothersplumbing.com
sbplumbingfortworth.com
sbplumbersfortworth.com
tarrantcountyplumber.com

Which one to go with? The obvious choice is the company name, smithbrothersplumbing.com. If that one weren’t available, I’d go with sbplumbingfortworth.com since it’s close to the company name and includes the city name as well. But any one of these four choices would work.

From an SEO perspective, it’s not clear how much of an advantage it is to have a keyword like plumbing or plumbers in your domain name. But it definitely can’t hurt you and has the advantage of telling people what your company is about before they even see the website. So if your company name was Smith Brothers Residential Services, but most of what you do is plumbing repair, add plumbing or plumbers to your domain name.

Once you decide, register it for 10 years. Unless you think your company will be out of business sooner than that, it is actually an indicator that the search engines take into account when ranking a website. If you have a brand-new website and the domain name is registered for one year, it could send the wrong message.

Once you register the domain name, get it hosted right away even if it will be months till your website is ready to launch. Put up a “business card” home page in the meantime. Include your company logo, name, and all contact info plus a paragraph of text describing your business. You can include a mention of the fact that the website is under development, but don’t put up a generic “under construction” page or a cute graphic.

Already have a domain name you’re not thrilled with? Think you should change domain names? Read this first!

As a general rule, it is far better to keep an established domain name than it is to get a new one and move your website to it. There are exceptions.

Why keep the old domain name? The search engines give a lot of consideration to the age of a domain name when deciding how to rank a website and where to place it in search results. How much is a lot? That’s hard to say, but over the past six years, as I have been doing organic SEO, I have often found websites showing up on the second page of search results (or worse!) after sites that have less relevant content, are poorly designed, have fewer inbound links from other websites, haven’t utilized basic on-page SEO tactics and basically left me scratching my head until I checked the age of their domains. In many, many instances I have found that the better-ranking sites had domain names that were 5 to 10 years old.

Are other websites linking to yours? If you move your website to a new domain, even if you do it the right way, you stand to lose those valuable inbound links to your site. The search engines take a careful count of inbound links, and each one is like a vote for the popularity and authority of your site. If you want to see how many pages out there link to your site, check with Google and Yahoo.

At Google, type in link:www.yourdomain.com (substituting your actual domain name). Don’t use http://. The results page will show you a list of every external page that links to your website in Google’s index.

At Yahoo, type in the same request, link:www.yourdomain.com and the results page shows a list of every page out there that links to your home page. There are two variables in that search. Where the links are coming from and which page on your site they are linking to. Be default, Yahoo shows you all pages that link to your home page, including the pages on your own site. And it shows only those links that are pointing to your home page. If you change the search parameters, you can remove your own pages from the list and see who else is linking to your site. And you can see if they are linking to any of the other pages inside your website and not just the home page.

If you don’t have any inbound links to your site, or you have very few, then a domain name change would have fewer bad consequences for you. But there is still the age advantage to keeping your old domain name.

Should you have multiple domain names? There are many legitimate reasons why you would want to have multiple domain names for one company. You may want to buy your domain name in every TLD that is available (com, net, org, info, biz, us) and have them all permanently redirect to your .com address. You may want to buy common misspellings for your domain name, or you may just want to keep critics from setting up a negative website using your name. Read all about these reasons here.

You may feel that your domain name needs to include a keyword or it is too long, too short, too trendy, not trendy enough, hard to remember, easy to misspell or whatever! The wise solution? Buy the domain name you want, if you feel you must, but don’t move your website there. Instead, put a permanent redirect in place so that if people type in your www.newdomain.com it will take them to www.olddomain.com instantly and seamlessly.

How to redirect people from your new domain to the old one? The best way to handle this from an SEO perspective is to use a permanent 301 redirect that tells the browsers and search engine bots that the permanent home for that URL is somewhere else.

How to set a 301 redirect the right way? If you are the business owner, talk to a trusted web developer and contact your web hosting company for assistance. Depending upon what kind of server your website is hosted on, you will need to use different methods for setting up a proper 301 redirect. Here’s a comprehensive blog post, and another, and here’s a forum with great detailed discussion about it.

The exceptions to keeping your old domain name? If your existing domain name is fairly new and you don’t have any inbound links, and the new domain name you’re considering is significantly better for your business, then buy the new name and make sure that all of your old pages are permanently redirected to the new location. But keep the old domain name! That way you can keep the redirect in place and ensure that no one else snatches up your identity. Eventually, when all of your inbound links are straightened out, and your new domain has been well established, you may want to retire the old domain name.

And, of course, there may be an older, more desirable domain name available that you can buy. Just be sure you research it carefully so you don’t inadvertently buy a domain name with a shady past that can hurt your company.

Once upon a time you picked a domain name. Your company’s web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The part that follows the www. You or someone helping you “bought” or registered that domain name for you. This may have taken place some years ago. The person who helped you may no longer be working for you or you may have lost the registration info.

To complicate things further, you may be getting letters in the mail or email with the alarming message that your domain name is expiring. They are advising you to renew your registration or lose your web address. The letters look official. Should you send them a check? Are they really the ones who manage your domain name?

What to do?

Click on this link and do a Who Is search to get the info you need. At the very top of the page, under the DomainTools logo is a text box where you should type in your web address. Don’t include the www. Then click on the little right-facing arrow next to the text box. The page that comes up will tell you everything you need to know. Well, almost everything.

In the box of Registry Data, you will see the ICANN Registrar. It will say Register.com or GoDaddy.com or the name of any one of thousands of registrars or resellers who manage domain names. If you’re lucky it will also show you enough information to clear up who actually owns your domain name and when it is set to expire. It’s probably not registered with the scammers who have been sending you letters or email.

Unfortunately, the WhoIs record often shows that you are not the registered owner of your own domain name. It may have been registered “for” you by your administrative assistant who no longer works for you, or your web designer or your IT consultant or your web hosting company. What you may find out is that you can’t renew it or move your website to another hosting company or make any change at all.

Hopefully you do recognize the name of the person that is the designated contact or administrator of your domain registration if it’s not in your name. Ask this person to give you the username and password so you can log in to the account and change all of the contact info to your own. Change the username and password and then write them down.

If you don’t recognize the person or company who registered your domain name or you can’t contact them or they are uncooperative, you will need to contact the domain registrar to find out their process for getting ownership of your domain name changed over to you. This can be painful and time consuming. It’s easier to get divorced.

But it has to be done and you should do it today. Do NOT WAIT until your domain name expires because there is a VERY REAL chance that when the domain registration expires, someone will steal your domain name right out from under you and then try to sell it back to you for lots of money.

The image below shows the kind of information you will find in the Who Is record:

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In this case, the Registrant (or domain owner) is Domain Discreet. At the top is the address and contact info for them. They are also the administrative and technical contact. The domain Registrar is Register.com. The domain was registered in September 2006 and expires in September 2008. The DNS servers tell you who the web hosting company is. In this case, it is mochahost.com. If we were unable to contact the people at Domain Discreet to turn over the account access to us, we would have to work with Register.com.