Understanding Google - What you need to know to conquer this Search Engine giant.
Getting a top position in Google also gets you a top position in Yahoo as
well as AOL. So it's very important to understand Google's likes and dislikes.
The last thing you want to do is upset this giant.
Here's a checklist of the inside secrets of what it takes
to rank high on Google.
- Use a keyword density of about 1 to 2%. Use to be that you could
rank high with 5% to 15%, but not any more. Google will call that "over
optimizing" and penalize you.
- Don't use more than 83 characters (including spaces) in your meta title
tag. That usually comes out to about 10 to 15 words. If you have more
characters, there is no penality it's just that Google won't count them as being
in your title tag.
- Your important keywords absolutely MUST be in your title. (That is if
you want them to achieve any importance at all.)
- Google doesn't use the description tag for a description like some search
engines do, but take the time to write a good description of your site anyway.
Google does index the words in the description tag just like they were words in
the text. Be sure to use keywords in your description tag. Google only looks at
approximately the first 25 words in the description tag.
- The keyword tag is NOT indexed or counted by Google. So why should
you use it you might ask. One of the minor search engines still use it for the
time being. But, I use the keyword tag on every page to remind me what keywords
I am optimizing the page for.
- Google indexes all of the visible text on a page up about 100k. This is way
more than you would ever be using anyway.
- Google counts "cat" and "Cat" as the same word. In other words, Google is
NOT case sensitive.
- Very important: Google counts "dog" and "dogs" as two totally
different words. Singular and plural versions of a word are different words
for Google. Google also counts "run" and "running" as different words.
Word-stemming creates different words.
- Keyword order is important. "atlanta restaurants" is NOT the same as
'restaurants atlanta"
- A hyphen is the same as a space with Google. "Nashville-singers" is the same
as Nashville singers"
- Google likes sites with a LOT of pages. A good goal would be to add
one new page a week. Your site should have a minimum of 3 to 5 page to start
with. More pages would be much better. Link each one of them back to your home
page. You can also link every page to every other page. Look at the different
linking strategies described in other articles on this site.
The most important thing to remember about Google is to have as many
incoming (on-topic) links as possible.
Try to add at least one or more incoming links every week. (You won't even be listed on Google until you have at least one incoming link from another site that is already listed on Google.)
Follow the simple rules above and you will soon see high rankings for all of
your keywords. Jerry Minchey Copyright 2008
Note: This article may be reproduced if it is reproduced in it's entirety and the statement below is prominently included at the end of the article.
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Jerry Minchey is a long time student and practitioner of search engine optimization and is the editor of the website, www.SearchEngineU.com which is
dedicated to showing search engine beginners how to achieve high rankings on
Google and other search engines using website optimization techniques.
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