Getting site on Google.

[simon404]

Does anyone have any ideas about getting a site on google? Our site is hosted for free by Heart Internet. They say that a site has a better chance if we were to change to a paying package.

[simon404]

[Admin aka Dan]

I don't think it makes any difference how your site is hosted - Google works on the principle - if you are an 'important' site people will link to you.

Cheers

Dan

[Deleted]

Dan's right - the more links to and from a site, the more chance there is of picking your site up in searches. If you go to the google web site there is a coding for you to embed in your web site that can enable search engines pick it up more easily.

Paying packages are not worth the money if you can put links to/from your site yourself, and care and experience in building the site can also influence how easily its found. You can also easily optimise your site yourself free of charge, as links below will tell you.

Go to http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/webmasters/ for info from Google, and for impartial advice go to http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.php for more info on optimising your site for the search engines.

Check these out before you pay out. I develop and host web sites and sell domain names, by the way. We charge £60 per year for 10 pop accounts, database, webmail, client control panels, webstat access, 2Gb bandwidth per month, web optimising, etc, etc., etc, so do not offer things free - but these free services do have to make their money somewhere to pay their staff.

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch!

[simon404]

Thanks to you both for the advice.

[NattyEm]

Simon, you also need to look at the content on your site, your keywords (ie. what people will be searching on) and make sure these are promonent.  Look at the titles of your pages, and at any link text you have.  Make sure all pictures have alt tags, and any framed parts include relevant copy in the noframes tags.  Make sure you look at your METAs so you have a relevant discription and list of keywords.  There are lots of forums out there dedicated to search engine optimisation.  Try and get other relevant sites to link to you.  Make sure you have a site map - even better if its text based with a little bit of relevant copy for each link.

Also ensure you have some kind of webstats package on your site so you can see where your traffic is coming from, and if the search engine spiders have been and how much info they crawled.

Whether or not you pay for your hosting shouldn't make any difference, although if it is a business venture it may be worth looking at pay per click advertising (Adwords on google) to increase your traffic.  They say that having an adwords account doesn't effect your general listings, but I have seen listings drop a lot of places when they cancel their adword accounts - coincedence maybe!  If you want me to take a quick look at your site and let you know anything quick and obvious just drop me a PM :)
(I work very-part-time for a search engine optimisation company!) 

HTH!

[Deleted]

Good idea NattyEm - this is what I meant by care and experience in building your site influencing the search outcomes.

Different hosting services can make a difference if they are offering to optimise your site as part of the package - you can get different hosting packages depending on needs. Some literally just 'bung it up there' - which is fine - and others offer a complete service package. A lot of naming and hosting companies don't actually get involved in looking at the design, content, or optimisation of a site, for example, which is a big influences (see above)