10-Point Checklist for High Visibility in Google
Google is the pre-eminent search engine (SE) with no close competitor. Given that inclusion is free, your Web pages must be in it. We’ll show you how to top the Google SERPs, that is, be found at the top of the search engine results pages. These techniques are known as search engine optimization (SEO) and require a small investment of your time.
I took two of my sites to the top of the SERPs in three months, so it can be done. My pages have few competitors: my challenge was mainly to get past false positives such as resumes, job vacancies, articles, and so on. If you are competing with “real” sites that are selling competitive products such as
...add additional information for future searches that are completed. Writing notes in detail will make it easier for people who carry on your work in the future. This will allow them to see your thought process. Make sure that you ...
Goal
Casual Google users use default settings, so your site must get into the top 20 results. Unfortunately, you cannot assume that visitors will use the most appropriate search terms. Real people are unpredictable.
Google SERP
You must understand that SERP positioning is dynamic - what you see depends on no single factor. It depends on the viewer’s location, the type of search used (basic, advanced, regional, filtered, and so on), the content of the page, their keyword density, the page rank (PR), the search term (words or phrase), and so on. Therefore, you need to plan your site carefully.
Ten-Point
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1. Domain Name and Server
Get a .ca domain if your audience is likely to look for Canadian sites. Use a global, top-level domain (gTLD) such as .com if your business is not local. A unique, topical name such as “dentist-atlanta.com” should rank higher in the SERPs than “dentist.com” or “smithclinic.com” (if the search term is likely to be “dentist in atlanta” or similar).
It is nice but not essential if the web host gives your site a unique IP address, but it is highly advisable to host your site on your own dedicated server. Shared web hosting means that a server could host thousands of web sites, and Google’s spiders would be slowed down.
If you already have
...Using An Online Forum On The Net?" This is the question that I've been asked the most by concerned and loving parents and carers. Simply let them know that it's OK for them to to interact with others online but ...
2. Page Title
An ill-planned page title is the Achilles Heel of a Web page. This is the text that appears at the very top of the browser window.
The Title tag text should be brief and readable, avoiding superfluous words and punctuation marks. Begin with the most valuable keywords, e.g. “Root canal specialist dentist clinic, Mayfair, London”, not something like “***** Fred Smith, BDS - 5 Stars Dental Clinic *****”, or
...on the names that have been given to you. In these interviews, you can also ask anything you want to know about your ancestors. For example, your relatives perhaps can tell you about the cities in which your family members ...
3. Style Sheet
Placing style definitions in a .css (Cascading Style Sheet) file moves the body text close to the top of the document and shrinks the page size. Many Javascript effects can be replaced by CSS. Fast-loading pages are good for both humans and search engine crawlers.
4. Meta Tags
Google ignores the Keywords meta tag for ranking but other SEs use it. An extract from the Description meta tag sometimes appears in the SERP; sometimes you see a snippet from the body text. Moderation and relevance should be your benchmark for placing keywords in these tags.
5. Content
Quality content is rewarded by top placement in the search results. For
...or both grandparents on one side, the child, and preferably a parent. Some grandparent DNA tests may require that both grandparents be tested, while others allow for just one grandparent to be tested. Grandparent DNA tests are done in the ...
Links to popular causes, memorial ribbons, HTML validation, page counters, etc. could distract visitors to other sites.
Optimise images and keep the page size low.
Place key phrases towards the top of pages and in heading tags such as H1. Don’t get hung up on a single keyword for the whole site. Pick different ones for different pages so that you have more ways to be found. Optimise for the search terms used by your paying customers, if you can identify them, not casual visitors.
Consider (this depends on the size and nature of your business)
...the present and work backward in time. Genealogists may also conduct interviews with living relatives to determine the same information. The success of a genealogist may depend on the volunteer efforts of complete strangers. There are many helpful message boards ...
6. Links and Folders
Link a site map from the home page so that crawlers can find the rest of your pages.
Link each page to the home page and to others in its logical group (but not to every other page
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Use keywords for folders, image names and Alt text but don’t overdo it. e.g. /hamilton/lawyer/divorce.htm, alt=”Perth plumber” The deeper your directory structure, the less likely it will be spidered regularly.
7. Neighbourhood Watch
Get quality incoming links from sites that share your theme. Without referrals, it’s near impossible to be visited by Googlebot. Try to get such links from sites with PR3 (Page Rank - see below) or better, not from link farms that are clearly built to boost PR. Make it easy for other sites to use keyword-loaded phrases in their links, say, by offering a cut-and-paste slice of HTML anchor code. Here is an example you
...seem now to be tied to "disrespect" rather than being related to drugs or a gang infringing upon the territory of another gang. Seven people happened to get shot all in the period of only 24 hours because some girlfriends ...
Links from lower-ranking peers will not penalise you; they simply won’t appear in Google’s list of backward links to your page. You cannot control who links to you, but you have control over who you link to.
Add a judicious number of outbound links to topical peers of the same or better calibre. Google likes links to authoritative sites, but don’t overdo the external links. Although such sites might not overtly link to your site, their site statistics file might get crawled and constitute a link back to you.
8. Cloaking
Cloaking hides content from humans and SEs, which is generally a bad practice. Good reasons to cloak include hiding parts of your
...It is possible to search only by last name, thereby finding those of everyone who shares a particular surname. This can be useful in starting research on a possible ancestor about whom you know very little or finding a whole ...
Subscriber-only sites also manage to get into SEs. They use a cloaking practice known as “agent name delivery”, which is a slab of code that checks whether the visitor is a crawler or a human. Crawlers get to see the whole site, but others are directed to a sign-up form.
9. Avoidable Practices
The following practices could get your site banned from Google at worst or lower its ranking at best:
Gimmicks. Pointless Javascript effects such as cursor trails and transitions do nothing for your viewers but place a lot of code above your body text. You want your content close to the
...wall fixings and there it was blending in effortlessly above the radiator in my utility room. My first wall mounted airer.As it turned out the first of a complete selection of airers, drying racks and washing lines which would combine ...
Bad HTML code. Novice hand-coders might copy some HTML tags without understanding their meaning. One webmaster used the robot directive and wondered why his site was not fully in Google in spite of Googlebot visits and good incoming links. He was asking to be indexed, but for his links not to be followed.
Multiple sites with duplicated content, e.g. www.example.net and www.example.com hosted on the same server or different ones, as this is considered spamming. Use a permanent redirect on all secondary sites to point to the main domain.
Multiple copies of the same page. This is typically an entry or “doorway” page optmised for different keywords to lure different people, e.g. crackz.htm, serials.htm, passwords.htm,
...less, my husband and I would still grab the dog and enjoy the patio. Sometimes we'd go for breakfast. We were considered "regulars". Many of us in the neighborhood did the "coffee walk/talk". Then the first owners retired and sold ...
Hidden content. This can be repetitive text on the same colour background or a layer with coordinates that are off the visible page. It begs the question why the author does not put this effort into creating visible text.
Flash-Only pages. A solution is a user agent entry check that displays Flash to enabled browsers, but plain HTML to crawlers and other human visitors.
Frames. Googlebot will crawl links in the Noframes text, but not ones in the framed pages. Other SEs might not crawl frames, so it is better to use tables and more so to use CSS. If you must use frames, ensure that you use the correct Doctype declaration for frames. I have noticed
...information. Most of these links can be found for free on the internet, but it would take hours, if not days, to find them all by hand. Thus, an Internet Detective Site is providing a service that saves the searcher ...
Submission software or service. They could submit your site to thousands of unknown SEs. You will get a lot of spam, abuse, and possible inclusion in link farms that will ruin your reputation in Google’s eyes. After all, can you name more than five major SEs?
Session IDs. Sites that require session IDs from crawlers will get poor visibility because the previous session will have expired by the time Googlebot returns.
Over-optimisation. [Update 11/2003] Many sites that followed a strict “SEO formula” found that they could not be found at the top of the SERPs, or in the index at all. There is speculation that such tactics
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10. Patience
Having optimized and submitted your pages to Google, get on with growing your business, because Google takes time to rank you. Work on getting quality, inbound links from high-ranking sites that feature the same subject matter. Increase your content and keep it fresh. Get free or paid listings in Google Adwords, Overture, Yahoo, Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org), and reputable engines such as MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves.
Ash Nallawalla is an experienced Internet marketer. Much of his work involves search engine marketing, which includes pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. More information is at http://www.sem911.com/