Useful information and websites (hopefully)

We have an increasing amount of customers finding us via the website and have always been very keen on using the website to increase the visibility of Best Years to retailers looking for new soft toys and gifts or soft toy wholesalers

Over the years we have worked with quite a few different companies to try to get our website on the top of Google rankings and to be honest we have not had much success despite spending £000s 

This year I decided that it would help if we understood the workings of search engine so I enrolled on a couple of Business Link courses and they were fab. Here are a couple of top tips from the days I went on � Hopefully you will see the impact on the next our website over couple of months

4 key things which impact on the visibility of your site to the Google spyders. These will visit your site every 2- 3 weeks depending on how long your site has been up and how often you change it. For example the BBCs website is visited every hour or so!

Links � the more links you have coming in to your site the better. However it is no good having thousands of links coming in from various sites. It only works if traffic visits the site on which your link is so links in relevant articles are much better than from a links page which is rarely visited

Meta � tags Every page must have a title tag and a description tag Title tags are 8-12 words long and are a summary of the page and its content Description tag are 20-25 words long, should read correctly and be grammatically correct and spellings right. A short phrase or couple of sentences

Google ads. You cannot be too good at these but remember that 70% of searches contain 2 plus words so the more specific you can be the better. Also make sure that people coming through from Google ads land on a dedicated page and not just your home page

Keyword Density. You need to understand which words your customers use when they search for your website and use them liberally in your website. 5-10% of the words in your content should be key words but make sure the content remains readable and grammatically correct because the search engines are sensitive to sites where key words are over used and will classify you as spam. Recommended site www.wordtracker.com or follow this search path - About google, advertising, sign up or learn more, get keyword ideas

Other useful sites www.99designs.com  need a new design? This site allows you to put your recommendation on the web and designers will submit their proposals. Prices start from $250 which even at the current exchange rate is a bargain www.istockphoto.com  need an image? Royalty free images from £2 but make sure that it has not already been downloaded thousands of times already