Helping Google find your LGfL portal

As search engines go, Google is probably the most influential at the current time, therefore it is important that your site can be found by it.

Page Titles

Google uses an automatic crawler that browses the net to update its database of web pages. The first thing you can do to help it find and sort you into a category is to use a proper page title. The title of a webpage can be seen at the top of your browser window. (e.g. This page title is called “google and your portal”)

The problem is that many people do not bother editing the title of their pages on the LGfL learning platform and so the default name ensues which is what Google picks up on… Learning Module Page: [www.lgfl.net] which is too general to be of much use. It is best to name your page title with key words to the content to help it be found in a search query. (e.g. Happy Primary School Bromley)

To learn how to set your title tag, see our guide on: How to edit your page title

Text Content

Google will also search the text content of your pages and use that as a secondary guide to a search query so it is also worth considering the use of key words as headings in the page. However pictures or the content of images are impossible to determine and so any text in your site that is achieved by images will not be discovered.

Note that this is also true if you are using a flash adaptamation for your front page in that the text the adaptamation contains will not be searchable either.

Alt Tags

The solution is to use <alt> tags. This is the alternative text that appears when your mouse hovers over an image. (e.g. the Google logo at the top of this page) To insert an alt tag in a learning module page you use the square brackets and simply type:

This text will never actually appear on the page, only as a rollover effect for whatever image proceeds it, nevertheless, the Google crawler will pick up on the alt text.

For more information see the webmaster help section on Google itself. Website guidelines

Getting into Google

Of course, the problem is getting your site into the Google database in the first place. Google takes about 3 months to crawl around updating its database and then only gets about 16% of what is online. Google may be big, but the internet is still bigger. You don’t really have any control over what pages get into the Google database other than direct submission which also takes a while and even then doesn’t guarantee a high ranking. Direct submission to Google

Getting a higher ranking on Google

The ranking on Google determines the order the search results are listed in. It's important to realise that the number of hits your site may have makes no difference. It’s the number of links to it from other sites that indicates its popularity. So if your site has links to it from another site that has lots of links to it, the cumulative effect determines a higher ranking and so on… in this respect you have little control over the ranking your site receives. Google ranking

Finally, a useful strategy for schools is to search Google for your school and then contact the top ranking results that mention you to ensure that they have your website address listed correctly.