How To Improve Your Rankings in Google

Get other relevant websites to link to you. A link that includes your keywords within the <a>nchor tags is much better for Google ranking than simply the URL or the name of the web site. There is no substitute for quality links. You simply have to have incoming links in order to get high rankings in search engines for any search terms that are not unique to your website. Links are the sine qua non of search engine rankings. Period. Finito. End of story. In addition to their classic PageRank system, Google is becoming increasingly aware of the content of the page where a link originates which has evolved to incorporate what Google calls "trust" and the search engine community has dubbed "TrustRank". Such link analysis is also related to the patented Hilltop method by which links are analyzed for the anchor text (ie. the text between the <a> and </a> that users click on), the position of the link within the page, and the overall content of the page on which the link resides. So, it is very important to emphasize links from pages with relevant content if you want to do well in Google. Simple link exchanges are no longer helpful in winning the battle in the more competitive areas. In addition, posting links on your web site to other relevant sites, regardless of whether or not they link back to you, may have a positive effect on rankings in Google. Such links may help toward making your site an "authority hub" for your site's topics and further building its "trust" status.

Make sure the <title> tag on each page emphasizes the keywords for that page. The page title is the most valuable real estate on the page. Not only is it a vital component of the rankings for the page, it is the text that the user will see in the search engine results pages (SERPs). In terms of priority here, keywords come first, and your company/website name is a distant second.

Include keyword-rich text on your main page with conventional text links that contain the appropriate keywords within the <a>nchor tags to key pages within your website. Google judges the relevancy of a webpage to the terms in a user's search query, in part, by the proximity of the keywords to each other on the page, and the order in which they appear on the page. This especially includes the <title> tag and headlines tags (ie. <h1>, etc.).

Submit your website to quality web site directories like The Open Directory Project (ODP or DMOZ). A listing in The Open Directory Project will often get you a listing in Google and most other search engines because so many websites incorportate The Open Directory Project's listings on their pages that the link itself will present your site to the search engines. The Open Directory Project is owned by America Online through its Netscape subsidiary, but it is operated by volunteer editors. You need to follow their submission rules precisely in order to be approved, so be sure to read their instructions carefully. Getting a site listed in the ODP can take many months, but it does pay off. Other directories like JoeAnt, Jayde, and GoGuides are also valuable listings.

Add fresh, relevant, original content to your web site regularly. All search engines, and Google in particular, like to see new pages and updated content on existing pages. Keeping your website increasingly useful and growing is good for your search engine rankings because it helps to attract more users, and thus, more links, and thus, higher rankings, and thus, more users, and so on, and so on...

Install a proper robots.txt file in your root directory. See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html for information on creating a proper robots.txt file. It keeps robots away from your private or content-free pages and directories, and shows an awareness of the search engines that can only help you. If nothing else, it will enhance your control of which directories get crawled. For example, you may not want your graphics files listed in the image searches. The robots.txt file can keep the spiders out of your images directory. Preventing the search engines from crawling private or unimportant pages means that your other pages will tend to be crawled more often. The Google Webmaster Tools console provides an excellent tool for creating and testing your robots.txt file.

Avoid schemes that try to fool search engines (particularly Google) into giving your website an undeservedly high ranking such as keyword stuffing, invisible text, link farms, automated link directories and link exchange services, doorway pages, three-way linking schemes, throwaway domains, and so on - all of which can get you penalized for a very long time or banished entirely from the search engines.

When in doubt, see Rule #1. Links are the mother's milk of search engine rankings. Make a habit of soliciting new links from other well-ranked sites whose main topic is related to yours on a regular basis.