Google SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Google Optimization

Optimizing a new site for google can be one of the most challenging, time consuming, pride swallowing, gut wrenching tasks imaginable. For an established site it can be a walk in the park. Why does google do this to new sites? What's the point? It's simple, they want to reduce spam. Below are most of the factors involve when optimizing for google.

*Important - Google's algorithm is heavily based on Off-Page factors. It's not the shear number of links that matter. It's the quality of those links.

H1 Tags - The main topic of your page should be your H1 tag, the closer to the top of the page, the better.
Title Tags - 2-3 of your main keywords should appear in your Title Tag per page. Make sure each page has unique title tags. The first words of your page title count the most.
Bold, Underlined, and Italic Text - Don't overdue it, but try and utilize these features throughout your website. One of each will suffice per page.
Keywords in the URL - Google, as of late, seems to have lessened the significance of hyphenated URL's. Don't get us wrong there are a ton out there that rank very well. The one's that do rank well are larger established sites. Getting a new site to rank well in Google with a hyphenated URL is getting tougher and tougher. This is largely due to DMOZ's dislike of the practice and the amount of spam sites that request inclusion.
Keywords in the filename - Google likes keywords in the filename of the interior pages of your site.
Meta Keywords - Almost a non-existent dinosaur of search ranking factors. Meta tags are still used mostly by MSN and Yahoo. Google does not use them at all.
Alt Image Tags - Mainly used for the visually impaired. Alt tags can be used to increase or decrease the keyword density of a page. Use them to describe images. Don't get fancy.
Keyword Density - Google loves keyword rich content but it's hard to write naturally and stay under their 2%-4% guideline. A good rule of thumb. Write the content naturally and then use the tags above to adjust the density.
Link Anchor Text - Just like all other search engines, Google will rank you higher for a specific keyword if you have those keywords in the link or anchor text of the inbound link. Probably the most important ranking factor for all search engines. If you have a choice. Try to get as many variations as possible.
Inbound Links from Varying IP's - Get as many as you can but make sure the links you get aren't largely based on one set of IP addresses. In other words, if you have a bunch of sites only link them together where it makes sense. Themed related links seem to get the most value.
Site wide links - Google seems to only regard the first link highly and then gradually decreases the value.
Strong Internal Link Structure - Google loves sites that are easy to crawl and thematically related to the content of the receiving page. So create a site that allows "Googlebot" to jump in and out easily. Internal links can become very powerful with the right amount of inbound links.
Linking Out to Authority Sites - Yet another theory states that google favors sites that link out to authority sites.
Smaller vs. Larger Sites - Google loves large established content rich sites. Smaller sites can achieve high rankings with the right amount of inbound links but without the content, you still won't get much traffic.
DMOZ Directory - The largest human edited directory which propagates to the google directory. If you can get your targeted keywords into your listing at DMOZ, you're almost assured a great ranking for that keyword in google.
Original Content - Don't copy text from other sites. Take a look at the competition for ideas but stay away from copying even whole sentences. SE's are cracking down on duplicate content and you'll be penalized severely.
Proper HTML and Code - Although not highly regarded by google. Make sure to keep your code clean. This will ultimately help SE spiders navigate your site and possible help in your rankings. There is a good validation tool located here www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

Google PageRank

Page Rank is Google's way of giving a specific value to how popular your website is. It is based on the number of links to your website. The more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your Page Rank (PR) will be. Page Rank isn't as important as it used to be but it's still a huge part of Google's algorithm and it's still a good way to determine how well a site ranks. Even for beginning SEO enthusiasts, it's a must have. Get it the google toolbar here.

The Google Sandbox

Google uses what they call a sandbox to reduce spam. The sandbox is basically a 8-12 month period where a new site is tested to determine proper relevancy. There are many theories regarding this but most say it's based on the amount of links your site receives in a given time frame and whether they are deemed as being natural or not. Some people don't think it exists. Our theories and experience has lead us to believe that "The Sandbox" is real. How can you get around it? Time. The current theory is that each link you receive is only counted after a specific amount of time. That being said, most new sites won't rank at all for almost a year. So keep that in your mind when starting out. Yahoo and MSN don't have a sandbox yet. We can guarantee that they have something up their sleeve though.

DMOZ, DMOZ, DMOZ

Your best friend or your worst enemy. We love DMOZ at times. We hate DMOZ at times, but what a great way for google to dig through the spam. By far the best link you can receive from any site on the planet (well in googles eyes that is). The largest human edited directory which propagates to the google directory. If you can get your targeted keywords into your listing at DMOZ, you're almost assured a great ranking for that keyword in google. That's why keywords in the URL of your site are so important. The editors can be rude and obnoxious at times but think of the crap they have to deal with. You can't really blame them.

Authority Sites

Googles way of determining relevancy. These are the links you want. One link from an authority site is 100 times more valuable than any link exchange. How do I find out who is an authority? Take a look at Googles top ten for a specific keyword. Check out their back links on www.alltheweb.com, www.yahoo.com, or www.msn.com. Similar back links are a good way of determining authority status in most cases. A great tool for this is SEO Elite created by Brad Callen (One of the Experts in SEO). If you want a quick and easy way of determining why a site ranks high or what sites are considered authorities. This is must have software.

Submitting Your Site To Google

Not necessary. It takes from 6-8 weeks for this to work. A faster way to get your site indexed is to get an inbound link from another site. A simple email will do. The higher the pagerank of the site that is sending you the link, the faster your site will be indexed.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Main