by Martyn Kinsella-Jones

Created on: November 10, 2007   Last Updated: July 18, 2011

Just imagine; you have the best product in the world and a design award winning web site, but you are lacking one thing; visitors. Everyone seems to go elsewhere to buy similar but inferior and more expensive products. What is going wrong here?

You read about Google's page ranking system, which might give you a clue as to where all your potential customers are going. Anxiously, you go to the page ranking site and excitedly type in your web address, which turns up somewhat disappointingly with a page rank of 2. Other web sites promoting and selling lesser products have Page rankings of 6 or more and are taking all your customers, so why is this and what can you do about it?

Understanding Google's page ranking system is not the dark art that some might have you believe. Essentially, there are three basic principles to obtaining a decent page rank.

Firstly; clarity and consistency. A simple hierarchical web site structure with clear text and graphical links that will make your site easy to navigate is vital. Simple, understandable categories making it easy for customers to find what they are looking for. All the animations and flashy gizmo's won't mean a thing if visitors can't find what they want within three clicks of a mouse. This is especially true of commercial database driven sites. How easily searchable is the site? Does it have the options of a simple or advanced text based search for your visitors? If so, the links will be used and your site's page rank will go up.

Likewise, a site that is slow to load and requires a complex method of navigation is more likely to lose you visitors, no matter how beautifully the pages are designed. Imagine the frustration of a customer who needs the information you require fast, yet has to wait for all manner of animations and code to load and play before they get to what they want. The best advice is to work to a maximum 8-second download limit at a tested 256kbps speed connection, no more. Any longer and you will lose visitors. They will simply get bored and go somewhere else.

Secondly. Content is king. This is the difficult part, putting yourself in your potential customers shoes. What does your site have to offer to them? Do your keywords in the Meta tags match the wording in your content? The easier you make the search engine's job, the more easily your site will be found' and the higher your traffic, and of course the higher your page rank.

Another trick is to keep your content fresh and up to date. For a cookery

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