Interview: How do I get more traffic from Google?

For the owners of small news websites and blogs it remains a major issue – how do you use Google and other search engines to get more people to come to your site? After all, even the most entertaining article in the world is useless if nobody reads it. We spoke to Sebastian Katthoever, from the strategic planning section of DW’s New Media department, about how Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) really works.

DW: What’s the first thing to consider as a webmaster when you are trying to ensure more Google users are directed to your page?

Sebastian Katthoever: As a blogger you need to find out first which searches are currently bringing readers to your website. The two websites Google Webmaster-Tools and Google Analytics will tell you this information. For example, let’s say I write a blog about German cars. I need to look at what users are searching for on this topic and what I have on my page already. I need to appreciate both of these things before I can start getting some results.

There is also a great free product called Insights for Search from Google. If I just type in German cars this site tells me all the terms that are being searched for in this subject area. And there is a graphic demonstration to go with it. If you know these expressions, then you can put that into your blog entry. Say I want to write about the new Mercedes A-Class car, then I can put other terms into that article that are otherwise popular right now and that will get me more traffic. I think that is exciting because it allows you to see what people have searched for in the last few weeks – and what they are searching for now. For a person that runs a site that’s really important information.

Are there other active steps that a blogger can take to be found more easily by Google?

There are lots of different ways. You have to imagine Google uses a mathematical algorithm to do each search. In this algorithm there are over 100 factors. For someone who is doing a blog it is difficult to cover all of these factors, but there are a few that are particularly important.

For instance, the title of the page should have the right keywords, words that are associated with the topic on your page. Then you have to make sure that the keywords for the subject area that you are writing about show up in the headline of the article. The sub-headlines should also have the keywords and in the article text, these same words should also appear regularly. There is a rule of thumb that 3 to 4 percent of the article should be made up of keywords related to your subject area.

That sounds like it could really reduce creativity. To what extent is the work of journalists being compromised by this do you think?

Every journalist has to decide for himself to what extent he or she wants to play along. I think that even small adjustments are sufficient to receive considerably more traffic via Google. For instance, using a quote in a headline won’t help at all if it does not use some of the keywords from the article. An ambiguous quote can often be a nice journalistic device, but it may mean that the search engines won’t find your piece. The text can generally be relatively freely formulated perhaps but the title of the page has to be done a certain way in order to be found. We have to remember when we are writing – an article can be fantastic, but if no-one finds it, then no-one reads it. That’s a shame because you are making such an effort.

Do the number of links on a page play a role?

Yes, they play a big role. Not only the links from the world wide web that link to your blog, but also the internal links on your page, are important. If you have a blog with a lot of articles then you should, for example, use so called “tag clouds” to sort the articles into different topics. This is because when Google scans your page it needs to identify structures and a hierarchy. This helps it decide whether an article is important or not.

If we continue with our German car blog example, if I have a sub-page with a whole bunch of articles on electric cars, Google realises that this page is particularly relevant for this subject area. The articles themselves are thereby each given more importance, which means they are more likely to be listed higher in the Google results list. That’s what you are aiming for.

After you’ve made changes to your site, how can you find out whether your new tactics are working?

Actually, before you start with trying out any new SEO measures, you should look at the extent of the referral traffic that you already get from Google.  Google Webmaster-Tools can tell you that. That gives you your start position. Then, after you have, say, improved the headlines and tags you can have a look at your statistics one or two months later to see if there has been a change in traffic. That would be a simple way of doing it.

What about just running some searches yourself to see if you land at your own website?

You can do that, but you need to realise that the Google algorithm is regionalised and personalised these days. That means a search that you run on Google in a large German city will give you different results to when you run a search in a rural part of Africa.

There is also a difference depending on whether you are a man or a woman, or whether you are young or old. Google knows all of that information about its users these days and that means the search results differ. That’s why many experts in the SEO scene use professional tools, to find out whether the website adjustments they are making are working.

Finally, is it advisable for bloggers to do SEO maintenance on their site themselves or is it better to get professional help?

At the start I think most bloggers are best served by just doing some reading on the topic. There are a lot of blogs and technical books on this subject, with some great tips, and they can give you some useful ideas. If you still aren’t having any success, then you can get professional assistance. But I think for a blog or a smaller publication, there is no harm in having a go at SEO yourself.

Interview: André Leslie