12. Tips for building a more Google Friendly website for Mineral Dealers (and anyone else with a website...)
By: Justin Zzyzx
Having your site come up first on google searches can work wonders for the amount of traffic you get to your site. Do you ever spend time searching Google for your name and your business name? It's remarkable what comes up...or what does not come up! Whether your site is personal or business, it is in your best interest to get more traffic to your site.
At the end of 2005 my company, ZzyzxMinerals.com purchased a website we had been advertising on for several years, The-Vug.com. The-Vug.com was created by Dr. Steven Hardinger in 2002 with the goal of telling everyone when the last time a site was updated. As my wife and I reworked the site and verified all of the mineral websites, we noticed that only a handful of dealers concentrate on making their presence known. Just making a website is a daunting task, now...promoting it! It is easy to miss this important invisible step while building your website. Most of the time people have to just figure it out for themselves, as there tends to be a lack of people talking to us on this business level and very few opportunities to learn how the trade works. I want to help you make your website a little better if possible. I mean, I have to look for YOU so I can add you to The-Vug. So let's look at some things you can do to increase your google ranking, which will bring more customers to you!
When people search for a phrase on Google and it shows the results, how do you think they got in that order? Google and other search engines have programs called ROBOTS. These robots are not here to cause you harm like these robots (Click on that link to see my favorite internet video). These robots are programs that snake their way through the internet to gather information on why they should give you a high ranking on the search engine. It all has to do with content. Content equals high google ranking. The robots have certain needs to be filled in order to approve of your site.
When people search for a phrase on Google and it shows the results, how do you think they got in that order? Google and other search engines have programs called ROBOTS. These robots are not here to cause you harm like these robots (Click on that link to see my favorite internet video). These robots are programs that snake their way through the internet to gather information on why they should give you a high ranking on the search engine. It all has to do with content. Content equals high google ranking. The robots have certain needs to be filled to approve of your site.
The next thing you need to know is about how Google ranks pages. Google gives each page on the Internet a score of 1 through 10, or sometimes a Zero, if it’s not rating the page at all. Many pages on most mineral websites have a zero, either because they are new pages and the Robots have not ranked them, or because they do not have enough content or importance. The more important content you have on your website and the more people go to your website, the higher your google ranking. Making your website more Robot friendly also helps raise your page ranking. You will never reach a 10, but you can certainly strive for a 5 or 6!
One of the most common mistakes I see holding people back comes from the title on the home page of your website. Open up your home page in your web browser. What does it say at the very top of the page, in the blue bar at the VERY top of the window? If it says “Index”, “Home” or the DEADLY “Untitled”, you have something to change! The bar at the top contains the “Title” of the page, something that you assign the page in your script. Basically, you want to tell the robots (and the people) what it is that you are doing on that page. If you had the domain name Quartzcrystals.com and you wanted people that are looking for Quartz Crystals to come to the site, you would want make your title say “Quartz Crystals.com - Your Home for Quartz Crystals, both Retail and Wholesale” Or “Quartz Crystals.com Fine Natural Quartz Crystals” Either way, it should be far more descriptive that “Index”!
How can you change your title to your website?
Look at your source code on your website. The top part should look SOMETHING like this…
<html>
<head>
<title>Minwreck Minerals- Minerals, Mineral Specimen Paintings and Polished Mineral Spheres</title>Simply change the words in the title to something that describes the page and your business a little more accurately than “untitled”!
Next, keep in mind that Robots don’t like running around on sites that are built with Frames or ones that are heavy with flash effects. The robots will simply not be able to find the information on the interior pages of a framed website and it will not get the content information out of Flash websites. So, it’s best to stay away from these forms of web building anyway.
The next tip that will help to increase your google rankings is your Alt tags in your pictures. When you put your mouse overtop of an image, sometimes words pop up next to the mouse pointer. Well, when you have a picture on your site, the Robots will not know what they look like, they only know what you tell them. So, the Alt tag is your spot to tell the robots what the pictures are!
Your picture tag should look something like this…
<IMG SRC="http://www.minwreck.com/maingraphic_01.gif" WIDTH=559 HEIGHT=494 BORDER=0 ALT="MinWreck.com Mineral Dealer Main Page">
By including an ALT tag with each of your pictures the robots will have a better idea of what you are trying to do on your site!
One important thing that even the most savvy web designer might neglect is to ensure that each page on your website has a link that returns you back to your main index page. When the robots hit pages that don’t link back they stop their searching of your site! Just think of all the pages it might miss because it went down some dark alleyway on your website! Ack!
Of course, the wonderful thing about using Google is the fact that you get great results most of the time, all due to the fact that they look for CONTENT on your website. The more valuable information you have on your site, the higher your ranking will be. So, what is valuable content on a Mineral Dealer’s website? Well, how about including the locality information to the specimens on the page in the title of the page? You could describe the locality at the top of the page. Include an article on the last digging trip you went on, or write a show report. All of these things will ad valuable content and due wonders for your ranking. If you look at some of the most popular mineral websites they have a ranking of 4-6, in general. The reason why is because of the content on the site. If you want random customers finding you above everyone else, add lots of content inter mixed with your items for sale!
It helps your ranking quite a bit if you have a bit of plain old text on your front page, talking about your site, what you sell and what you do. Since it is your front page, this information is of the highest importance to the robots! 
The most important thing I saved for last. Links on your page and links to your page. Of course it make sense that the more links you have that lead to your website, the more important your website is to the Robots. They hit those links on the other pages and the bots get impressed. All of a sudden they think you have “street cred” and they put you closer to the top. Of course, that also works in reverse. If you provide links to websites that have valuable information then the Robots will reward you with increasing your overall rating. Of course, some search engines will bring down your ranking if you link to websites that don’t have valuable information. While there are plenty of people I would put on my link page there are also lots of people I would NEVER put on my link page. Take a day and think about your friends and associates that have websites and work out trades with them. Find some other dealers over the Internet that share common interests and offer to trade links with them! You might just make a new friend!
While there are plenty of more tweeks you can do to your website, these are some of the most important things to remember and by taking care of these simple changes you can get your website to have a higher page ranking and possibly just a little bit nicer of a website!
Good Luck comes from Hard Work!
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All text, images, and design copyright 2006 Justin Zzyzx All rights reserved.
Mirrored by The-Vug.com by permission
Webdesign by Brandy Naugle, Copyright 2002-2006; The Vug; a division of Zzyzx Minerals