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* Top placement in the Google and Yahoo search results are
absolutely essential in order for your website to be successful.
By applying the techniques in this guide, you will be successful
at getting our website ranked in Google and Yahoo on the first
page of the search results (top-10).
1. How to prevent getting banned from Google!
Google places a very strong emphasis on the quality and relevancy
of their search results. As the undisputed leader in the world
of search engines, they know that in order to stay on top
they must make sure that their users are satisfied with the
quality of the search results provided. To that end, they
do not take kindly to several techniques used by many webmasters
and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts. These techniques
can and will get a site banned from Google or at the very
least result in a Page Rank (PR) penalty. (PR will be discussed
in more detail later.) A list of the most common (and dangerous)
techniques is below:
Submitting multiple URLs for the same site - An
example would be submitting mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html
to their database, thereby essentially trying to get two
search results for the same page.
Cloaking - Cloaking is having two separate pages,
one optimized for the search engines and a different one
optimized for the viewer. In other words the search engine
sees one page but the user is redirected to a different
page when the link is clicked. Cloaking is a big no-no with
Google.
Doorway pages - In order to get a good listing in
the search engines, some webmasters will load the home page
with keywords. But a page filled with keywords comes across
as nonsense to a human viewing the page. Therefore the webmaster
will do a redirect to another page that is much easier to
read (or have the user click a link to get to that page).
This is basically cloaking. And as we now know, cloaking
is a no-no.
Hidden text - Some webmasters will place hidden
keywords on a page and make the font color the same as the
background color (for example white text on a white background).
This renders the text invisible to the human eye but the
search engine spiders can still see it. This results in
a higher Page Rank and search engine listing for those keywords.
Hidden text is often used on a doorway page. Using hidden
text is a sure way to get banned from Google fast!
Hidden links - The number of pages that link to
one of your pages has a direct effect on how high your page
appears in the search results (and that page's PR). As with
hiding text, hiding links will also result in a ban or PR
penalty.
Link farms - A link farm is loosely defined as a
page that lists links solely or mainly for the purpose of
achieving a high Google PR. Free-For-All links pages are
often considered link farms by Google. Be careful who you
link to! Realistically, you can't control who links to you,
so incoming links will not hurt your site's ranking. But
you control directly who you link to so Google will ban
or penalize your site for linking to a "bad neighborhood".
Spamming - Don't send unsolicited commercial emails
(SPAM).
Selling PR - Blatantly advertising the fact that
your high PR site will sell a link to another site in order
to boost that site's PR is another big no-no. Selling advertising
in the form of a link on your site is perfectly acceptable.
Selling a link for the stated or implied purpose of increasing
a site's PR is not.
Multiple identical sites - In order to increase
PR, some webmasters will create and interlink multiple pages
all with identical or very similar content. This is not
allowed.
Multiple domains - Creating multiple domains that
redirect to one page is not allowed. Also, creating multiple
domains with the same or nearly the same content and then
interlinking them is a no-no. If you have multiple sites
place unique content on each site. Doing otherwise will
result in a ban or penalty.
Excessive links - Google recommends having no more
than 100 links on any given page. Having more than 100 links
won't result in a ban but it can result in a lower PR.
If you refrain from using any of the above techniques you
can avoid a Google penalty. The best way to attain a high
PR and placement in the Google listings is to stay on Google's
"good side". Now that we have the "don'ts"
out of the way, let's get started with the "do's"!
2. Search engines vs. directories
Many people think of search engines and directories as the
same thing. In reality there is a big difference between them.
While the difference between them is pretty much un-noticeable
to a person who is searching the web, understanding the difference
is critical to getting your site displayed highly in the SE
results. A directory is a searchable database of web pages
that are reviewed, selected, and categorized by humans. A
search engine "crawls the web" by following links
from web page to web page and website to website. You don't
even have to submit your site to a search engine in order
for it to "find" your site and place it in the index
for searching.
Yahoo is the most well known directory on the web.
Yahoo searches provide a major source of traffic (visitors)
to a website. Submitting your site directly to Yahoo is an
option, but for a commercial site there is a $299 fee just
for having Yahoo evaluate your site quickly and give you a
yes or no answer. Paying the fee in no way guarantees that
your site will be accepted for inclusion. It only guarantees
that your site will be considered and a decision will be made.
Later on you will find out why submitting directly to Yahoo
is unnecessary.
Another very important directory is the Open Directory
Project (ODP). Getting your site listed in the ODP is
almost guaranteed to get your site indexed automatically by
Google. The web is packed with tons of directories, but Yahoo
and the ODP are by far the most important ones when it comes
to attaining website traffic and getting listed in Google.
Google is by far the most used search engine on the
web. Getting listed in their massive database is an absolute
must for any commercial website. Another very important search
engine is Lycos. You may submit your site to Lycos, but they
charge a fee of $31 or so. But if you are patient, your site
will be crawled and added to their listings automatically
after following the instructions in this guide.
3. Search Engine Spiders
Spiders (also called "bots") move from website to
website and page to page by following links. The Google spider
(known as Googlebot) does a semi-regular "crawl"
into the interior pages of sites that are already in its database.
This crawl is used by Google to index many or all of the interior
pages of your website as well as find new pages (and new sites)
to index.
You can tell whether your site has been crawled by looking
for the annotation "Googlebot" in your visitor logs
(check with your web host for information on accessing your
log files). After your pages have been crawled, the new versions
of those page(s) are placed in Google's cache for your site.
Once your site has been indexed by Google, you can view the
latest version of your pages in Google's cache like this ...
Search for your website URL on Google. After the description,
you will see the word "cache". Click on it and you
will see the version of your web page that Google has cached
last.
Google's search engine spider (Googlebot) is the best friend
a webmaster can have. In order to get listed in Google quickly
(and most other search engines as well), all you have to do
is get a few other websites that are already in Google to
place links to your home page on their site (usually on a
links page).
Googlebot visits sites with a high Google PageRank on the
home page (typically PR5 or higher) virtually every day. Lower
ranked sites will get visits at longer intervals.
You want the spider to visit your site as often as possible
in order to pick up new pages and any changes to your old
ones. To this end, you need to boost your home page's Page-Rank
to at least PR5 as quickly as possible. You can easily do
this simply by getting more high-quality inbound links.
Changes to your home page also help attract Googlebot, so
keep it as fresh as possible.
Note: Google has another spider with the notation "mediapartners".
The mediapartners spider is used in conjunction with their
AdSense content-matching advertising program, and it has nothing
to do with search engine rankings.
4. How to design a "search engine friendly"website
There are several things that you can do to make your site
"friendly" to the search engines, especially Google.
First of all, make effective use of your page's title Meta
Tag. Choose a title that reflects your business and includes
2 or 3 of your primary keywords. For example, the title of
our site is:
Another very important Meta Tag is the description. The description
tag shouldn't contain just a list of key words. It should
be a logical sentence that contains your keywords.
In order to make it very easy for the search engine spiders
to crawl your site, if possible place links to all of your
pages on your home page as well as every other page on your
site. Also create a Site Map page and link to it directly
from your home page. On your Site Map page place links to
every other page in your website. This guarantees that every
page on your website can be reached with a maximum of two
mouse clicks or "link follows" by the spiders.
5. Changes to make to an existing website for better search
engine rankings
First of all, remove any of the "bad techniques"
described in the section titled "How To Prevent Getting
Banned From Google". Next, change your title and description
to a keyword rich format as described above. Add lots of unique
keyword rich content to your pages while removing any excessive
affiliate links.
As previously stated, all you have to do to get your site
listed in Google is to get a few (the more the better but
at least 3 or 4) websites to link to your site. The easiest
and fastest way to do this is to offer a link to their site
from your site in return. This is called "reciprocal
linking".
If done properly, the reciprocal linking process is the single
best way to enhance your page's PR and traffic flow. Reciprocal
links allow you to share your traffic with other quality websites.
In return, you also receive "targeted" traffic from
the websites of your linking partners.
But the value of reciprocal links goes much farther than
just an increase in traffic. The number of external web pages
that link to yours has a direct relationship to your pages's
PR value as calculated by Google.
Be very careful about who you choose to do a link exchange
with however. As discussed in the previous section about Link
Farms, linking to a "bad neighborhood" such as a
site that has been penalized by Google, will get your site
banned as well or result in a lower PR.
MORE!
Conclusion As I have said so many times before, search
engine optimization and positioning is a science as well as
an art. What really counts are the results you will get from
your efforts. If you carefully implement all the tips and
techniques that are in this article, your website should rank
well in the search engines and your Web-based business should
be a success.
* = Article by www.rlrouse.com
Rich@RichsWebDesign.com
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