Steps to take for optimal Google indexing of your site.

The cornerstone of any good search engine is highly relevant results. Google's unprecedented success has been due to its uncanny ability to match quality information with a user's search terms. The core of Google's search results is based on a patented algorithm called PageRank.

There is an entire industry focused on getting sites listed near the top of search engines. Google has proven to be the toughest search engine for a site to do well on. Even so, it isn't all that difficult to get a new web site listed and begin receiving traffic from Google.

Learning the ins and outs of getting your site listed by a search engine can be a daunting task. There is a vast array of information about search engines on the Web, and not all of it is useful or proper. This discussion of getting your site into the Google database focuses on long-term techniques for successfully promoting your site through Google, helping you avoid some of the common misconceptions and problems that a new site owner might face.

Search Engine Basics

When you type a term into a search site, the engine looks up potential matches in its database and presents the most relevant web page matches first. How those web pages get into the database and, consequently, how you can get yours in there as well, is a three-step process:

A search engine visits a site with an automated program called a spider (sometimes called a robot). A spider is a program similar to a web browser that downloads a site's pages. It doesn't actually display the page anywhere; it just downloads the page data.

After the spider has acquired the page, the search engine passes the page to a program called an indexer, which is another robotic program that extracts most of the visible portions of the page. The indexer also analyzes the page for keywords, the title, links, and other important information contained in the code.

The search engine adds your site to its database and makes it available to searchers. The greatest difference between search engines is in this final step where ranking or result position for a particular keyword is determined.

Submitting Your Site to Google

The first step is to get your pages listed in the database, and there are two ways to go about this. The first is direct submission of your site's URL to Google via its "Add your URL to Google" page. To counter programmed robots, search engines routinely move submission pages around on their sites. You can find Google's submission page linked from its Help pages or Webmaster Info pages (http://www.google.com/addurl.html).

Visit Google's add URL page, enter the main index page for your site into the submission form, and press Submit. Google's spider (called GoogleBot) will visit your page, usually within four weeks. The spider will traverse all the pages on your site and add them to its index. Within eight weeks, you should be able to find your site listed in Google.

The second way to get your site listed is to let Google find you based on links that point to your site. Once GoogleBot finds a link to your site from a page that is already in its index, it will visit your site.

Google has been updating its database on a monthly basis for three years. It sends its spider out in crawler mode once a month, as well. Crawler mode is a special mode in which a spider traverses, or crawls, the entire Web. As it runs into page links, it indexes those pages in a never-ending attempt to download all the pages it can. Once your pages are listed in Google, they are revisited and updated on a monthly basis. If you frequently update your content, Google may index your search terms more often.

Once you are indexed and listed in Google, the next question for a site owner naturally is, "How can I rank better under my applicable search terms?"

The Search Engine Optimization Template

This is my general recipe for the ubiquitous Google. It is generic enough that it works well everywhere and is as close as I have come to a "one-size-fits-all" SEO (Search Engine Optimization) template.

Use your targeted keyword phrase:

In META keywords. It's not necessary for Google, but it is still a good habit. Keep your META keywords short (128 characters max, or 10 keywords).

In a META description. Keep your keywords near the left but as part of a full sentence.

In the title at the far left, but not as the first word.

In the top portion of the page in the first sentence of the first full paragraph (plain text: no bold, no italic, no style).

In an H3 or larger heading.

In bold (second paragraph if possible and anywhere except in the first usage on the page).

In italic (anywhere except in the first usage).

In a subscript/superscript.

In a URL (directory name, filename, or domain name). Do not duplicate the keyword in the URL.

In an image filename used on the page.

In the ALT tag of the image.

In the title attribute of the image.

In link text to another site.

In an internal link's text.

In the title attribute of all the targeted links in and out of the page.

In the filename of your external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) or JavaScript file.

In an inbound link on the site (preferably from your home page).

In an inbound link from off the site (if possible).

In a link to a site that has a PageRank of 8 or better.

Other search engine optimization issues to consider include:

Use "last modified" headers if you can.

Validate the HTML. Some feel that Google's parser has become stricter at parsing instead of milder. It often misses an entire page because of a few simple errors; we have tested this thoroughly.

Use an HTML template throughout your site. Google can spot the template and parse it off. (Of course, this also means it is pretty good at spotting duplicate content.)

Keep the page as an .html or .htm extension. Any dynamic extension is a risk.

Keep the HTML below 20 KB; 5 to 15 KB is the ideal range.

Keep the ratio of text to HTML very high. Text should outweigh HTML by a significant amount.

Double-check your page in Netscape, Opera, and Internet Explorer. Use Lynx if you have it.

Use only raw hrEFs for links. Keep JavaScript far, far away from links. The simpler the link code, the better.

More traffic will come once you realize that 1 referral a day to 10 pages is better than 10 referrals a day to 1 page.

Don't assume that keywords in your site's navigation template are worth anything at all. Google looks for full sentences and paragraphs. Keywords just lying around orphaned on the page are not worth as much as when they are used in a sentence.

Brett Tabke