When I first started as a webmaster, there were
numerous search engines around. Nowadays, though,
we are, for the most part, left with only Google and
Bing, with Google providing the majority of visitors to
most websites. This article provides some tips on how
you can improve the position of your site in the search
engine results on Google. Improving Your Site’s
Placement on Google’s Search Engine Results Google
ranks a page according to a large number of factors.
Exactly what these factors are is apparently a trade
secret, although there are number of well-known things
that contribute to the ranking of a page. Links
Pointing to Your Website One of the factors that
contribute to a web page being considered “important”
is the number of links pointing to that page. For
example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it,
it will be ranked higher (in Google’s estimation) than
one that only has 20. But what are “quality” links”?
These are links from other popular pages, that is, pages
that have, themselves, many (quality) links pointing to
them. (Yeah, I know. My definition is circular. And it’s
possible that the search engine has other factors that
determine the quality of a link.) Anyway, in general,
since Google ranks your pages according to the number
of links pointing at your page, your site will do better if
it has more links pointing to it.
Your
Title Tag
Keywords-laden links
engine site map
numerous search engines around. Nowadays, though,
we are, for the most part, left with only Google and
Bing, with Google providing the majority of visitors to
most websites. This article provides some tips on how
you can improve the position of your site in the search
engine results on Google. Improving Your Site’s
Placement on Google’s Search Engine Results Google
ranks a page according to a large number of factors.
Exactly what these factors are is apparently a trade
secret, although there are number of well-known things
that contribute to the ranking of a page.
Pointing to Your Website One of the factors that
contribute to a web page being considered “important”
is the number of links pointing to that page. For
example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it,
it will be ranked higher (in Google’s estimation) than
one that only has 20. But what are “quality” links”?
These are links from other popular pages, that is, pages
that have, themselves, many (quality) links pointing to
them. (Yeah, I know. My definition is circular. And it’s
possible that the search engine has other factors that
determine the quality of a link.) Anyway, in general,
since Google ranks your pages according to the number
of links pointing at your page, your site will do better if
it has more links pointing to it.
Your
Title Tag
- Google seems to give weight to
the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is
sandwiched between the HTMLtags in thesection of
your web page. If you use a Web editor that
automatically inserts a title like “New Document”,
remember to change it to some meaningful text with
your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature.
Otherwise, your site will only feature in the search
results when someone looks for “New Document”.
Note: by “keywords”, I mean the words people will use
when searching for your site. For example, if your site
sells bicycles, then one keyword for it would be
“bicycles”, since that’s the word you’d expect people to
use when searching for bicycles. Your Page Must Have
the Words You Think People Will Search For Besides the
title tag, - if you want your website to feature in
Google’s results when someone searches for a set of
words, say “Widget X”, those words must actually occur
on your page. Think about it from the point of view of a
search engine. If you don’t put the words “Widget X”
somewhere on the page, how is the search engine
supposed to know that the page deals with that topic?
The search engine is not a human being who can draw
inferences from the general tone and content of the
page. Even if it can handle some synonyms, you’re
going to compete with other sites who have specifically
placed those words on their site. I know this point
seems self-evident (once you’ve come across it).
However, from experience, many webmasters (me
included) don’t seem to realise (“realize” in US English)
that when they are first starting out.
Keywords-laden links
- According to a paper
published by one of Google’s founders, if the links
pointing to your page has some words in them, those
words will be regarded by Google as an additional
indication of the content of your page. For example, a
link with the text “Cheap Shoe Store” pointing at your
page will cause Google to think that your page is
relevant when someone searches for “cheap shoe
store” - However, my recommendation is that if
you think a particular set of words is relevant to your
site, don’t rely on some random site on the Internet to
link to you with those words. Put them directly on your
page.
engine site map
- Although not strictly
necessary, if you find that Google (or Bing, for that
matter) is not able to discover some pages on your
website, create a site map. While such a site map does
not guarantee that Google will index and list every li> - page, it will at least help it discover those missing
pages if your site design is such that it has impeded the
search engine from finding them before.
- Like all
respectable search engines, Google will read and obey
a special text file on your website called the “robots.txt”
file. You can control where search engines are allowed
to go with this file. A corollary of this is that you can
also inadvertantly block the search engine from going
to certain parts of your site. It’s generally a good idea to
create a robots.txt file for your website, even if it’s an
empty file with zero bytes (which means that search
engines are allowed to index everything on your site).
ALT text on Images If you have been placing images on
your website without bothering to place ALT text, now
is a good time to add them. An “ALT text” (or alternate
text) is just a way of putting a brief description (using
words) of what your picture shows. They are needed
by the software used by the blind so that they know
what’s in the picture. Since all search engines, including
Google, are essentially blind, relying on words, they also
need the ALT text. The description you give in the ALT
text is treated like the words occurring on your web
page, although I don’t know if they are regarded as
being of equal importance. Be Careful Whom You Hire
Google’s use of links to rank a website has at least 2
side effects on the Internet. Firstly, people seeking to
rank higher have engaged companies to furnish them
with zillions of links. Those companies presumably set
up a whole bunch of sites for the sole purpose of
linking to their clients. Secondly, as a response to this,
the Google programmers have retaliated (and continue
to do so) by discrediting links from such “link networks”
as well as penalising the sites that pay them for the
service. It’s apparently possible to run afoul of this even
if you have no intention of buying links. For example, if
you are not careful, and have engaged a search engine
optimisation - (“SEO”) company to improve your
site’s performance on Google, and they use a link
network, your site may inadvertantly get caught in the
crossfire of this ongoing war between the link networks
and Google. The META Keywords Tag is Ignored The
Google search engine ignores the META keywords tag,
and has always done so. If you have received spam
from some wannabe search engine optimisation
“specialist” telling you that you need to add this to your
site, think twice about hiring him/her, since this
recommendation already gives you a hint of the extent
of his/her knowledge. Dynamic Pages and Google Like
all modern search engines (yeah, all 2 of them), Google
is able to index dynamically generated pages, so long
as a link to those pages exists somewhere. For
example, a page like “http://example.com/ showstuff.?
page=19” can be indexed by Google, so you don’t really
need to rewrite your URLs if you can’t be bothered. If
you have a dynamically generated page that you think
should be indexed, just make sure you put a link to it
somewhere on your site. This applies to all web pages
that you want indexed anyway, so even if you don’t
understand what I mean by “dynamic page”, it doesn’t
matter. Make sure that all the pages of your site can be
found through at least one link on your site. If they are
not linked to from somewhere, no one will be able to
find it, neither Google nor your visitors (unless they are
psychic). Disabling the Caching of Your Page Will Not
Affect Your Page Rank In ancient history, it was claimed
that Google would penalise pages that forbade it from
caching their pages. As you know, the Google search
engine caches the pages it indexes unless otherwise
instructed. To avoid problems with people who dislike
this, they allow sites to instruct Google not to cache
those pages. Google have (“has” in US English)
apparently publicly denied that disabling caching would
affect the page’s ranking in any way. I tend to believe
their claim. Don’t Waste Your Time With The Google
Toolbar’s Page Rank In prehistoric times, you could add
something known as the Google Toolbar to your web
browser, and get something known as the “Page Rank”
shown for any site you visit. In those days, the “Page
Rank” would give you an idea of how important Google
thought your site was. Nowadays, the Page Rank is
only one of apparently zillions of factors used by Google
in ranking a website. They also discourage people from
focusing on the Page Rank, and as a result, do not
actually update the rank displayed on the toolbar in a
timely fashion. (That is, the rank shown is often many
months out of date.) In fact, I’m not sure if the page
rank is even shown on the toolbar anymore. In other
words, it’s not worth your time to install the toolbar li>
