"I'd recommend reading around here more(Webmaster World). Start with the FAQ and Brett's guide to building traffic in 26 steps. Feel free to keep an eye on what I post via my profile page. Think about terms that users would actually type to find your site, and make sure you've got them on your pages. Look for other sites that your users might like and link to them, and look for sites that would be a good match for your domain and nicely ask if they'd link to you. Definitely read through our section at www.google.com/webmasters/ for more advice about how to make your site more crawlable.

One cautionary word of advice: take everything with a grain of salt, and make choices that are common sense to you and work well for your users. For example, there was recently a thread that suggested Google was running out of "address space" to label our documents. I was talking to another engineer here and he said he almost fell out of his chair laughing when he read that. So there's always a lot of theories floating around all the time about why something is this way or that. My advice is to assume that Google wants the most useful, relevant pages to come up first for searchers. Try to build those useful, relevant pages as well as you can, and we'll do our best to find them and rank them accurately for searches.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!"
GoogleGuy

From the "GoogleGuy" - "...Don't worry about the PR for now. We are going thru changes and YES, they will be updated v.soon. This new system will better detect spammers (unethical SEO practices)."

If you are somewhat lost by now, let's take a brief step back to explain what "PR" and "Backwards Linking" is all about. From Google itself:

To download the Google Toolbar to see all site's PR, Go here!. You not only be able to have Google's PR Tool, but also an integrated search function, a Page Info tool and much more. A part of this Page Info tool is the capability of seeing any sites "Backwards Links". In other words, how many other sites link to the site you are viewing. As you read in the above quote from Google, this number of "quality backwards links" helps to determine a site's PR value. It is a rather complex formula, but that is the basics. If you do not have Google's toolbar and want to see how many sites Google THINKS there are linking back to a given site, just do a search on Google for "link:http://www.anysiteyouwish.com"

PR is on a scale of 0-10, where "0" is a poor site, with very little quality (in Google's opinion) and has very few if any sites linking backwards to it. A site which has a PR of "10" would be like Yahoo.com , Microsoft.com, Adobe.com, USAToday.com and CNN.com ; Extremely high quality sites that are industry standards and have many MANY sites linking to it. What I touched on in the beginning paragraph is the PR of many sites are stuck on whatever PR it had back in March. Many backwards linking number have also been very unpredictable. Back a few months ago, I had some 480 backwards links for www.RichsWebDesign.com . Now is shows the number at 184. ... No explanation!

According to many SEO experts, Google may be going through some major changing in the next few months and have just not updated there PR system. No one seems to know why, but it is unfortunate for newer sites. These newer sites have PR=0 or have not even been listed, therefore do not show any PR (graybar).

Some of the better places to hear news, anouncements and some interesting gossip about Google and Google's PR can be found @ www.SearchEngine-news.com, Google Guy, iHelpYou.com and SEO Chat. Keep watching in Rich's Web Design News ... I will keep you updated AS SOON as I hear ANYTHING!

The page is the work of Nathan Dintenfass, a web developer and blogger. He explains, "On April 9th, 2003 I happened upon a random post on Doc Searls blog where he explained that he accidently typed just the letter "O" into Google and got the O'Reilly web site. I started wondering what came up for all the letters of the alphabet, and I've been meaning to play around with the Google Web Services API.

The Google alphabet is the result.

2. Learn basic HTML. Many search engine optimization techniques involve editing the behind the scenes HTML code. Your high rankings can depend on knowing which codes are necessary, and which aren't.

3. Choose keywords wisely. The keywords you think might be perfect for your site may not be what people are actually searching for. To find the optimal keywords for your site, use tools such as WordTracker. Choose two or three highly targeted phrases for each page of your site. Never shoot for general keywords such as "travel" or "vacation."

4. Write at least 200 - 250 words of visible text copy based on your chosen keywords. This is a crucial component to high rankings and a successful Web site. The search engines need to "read" keyword rich copy on your pages so they can successfully classify your site. Use each keyword phrase numerous times within your copy for best results.

5. Create a killer Title tag. HTML title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight with all of the search engines. You must put your keywords into this tag and not waste space with extra words. Do not use the Title tag to display your company name or to say "Home Page." Think of it more as a "Title Keyword Tag" and create it accordingly. Add your company name to the end of this tag, if you must use it.

6. Create Meaty Meta tags. Meta tags can be valuable, but they are not a magic bullet. Create a Meta Description tag that uses your keywords and also describes your site. The information in this tag often appears under your Title in the search engine results pages. The Meta Keyword tag isn't quite as important as the Meta Description tag. Contrary to popular belief, what you place in the keyword tag will have very little bearing on what keywords your site is actually found under, and it's not given any consideration whatsoever by Google. Use this tag, but do not obsess over.

7. Use extra "goodies" to boost rankings. Things like headlines, image alt tags, header tags H1 ... H2, etc.), links from other pages, keywords in file names, and keywords in hyperlinks can cumulatively boost search engine rankings. Use any or all of these where they make sense for your site.

8. Be careful when submitting to directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Having directory listings are a key component to getting your site spidered and listed by Google. Making mistakes in the submission process could cost you dearly as directory listings are difficult to change later in the game. Therefore, it's important to read Yahoo's How to Suggest Your Site and How to add a site to the Open Directory before submitting.

9. Don't expect quick results. Getting high rankings takes time; there's no getting around that fact. Once your site is added to a search engine or directory, its ranking may start out low and then slowly work its way up the ladder. Some search engines measure "click-through popularity," i.e., the more people that click on a particular site, the higher its ranking will go. Be patient and give your site time to mature.

10. Don't constantly "tweak" your site for better results. It's best not to make changes to your optimization for at least three-to-six months after submission. It often takes the engines at least that long to add your optimized pages to their databases. Submit it, and then forget about it for a while!

If you've followed these tips and still can't find your site in the engines, the first place to "tweak" would be your page copy. If you added less than 250 words of visible text on your pages, this is probably your culprit. Also, double check your keyword density, and make sure that you only targeted two or three phrases per page. Eventually, you'll see the fruits of your labor with many top ten rankings in Google and the rest of the search engines!