Google Guru
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Getting a search engine ranking
Quote:
In the final article in a series on building a website, Michael Herman explains how Google ranks webpages and what you can do to improve your ranking.
Responsible for the virtual death of time and distance, the internet can bring you closer – faster – to the people who matter most to you.
But as many millions of users have discovered since the advent of the internet in the early 1990s, simply having a site and address on the internet does not mean you are automatically in the business of winning new friends and influencing people.
With the number of websites exceeding the number of people on the planet and growing at the rate of at least 30,000 new sites a day, having your website discovered can be more challenging than building it in the first place.
WHY GOOGLE?
If you are wondering why being listed in Google's index is important then consider this:
# Google.com is one of the five most popular sites on the internet.
# It is the No. 1 search engine in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Australia. (Nielsen//NetRatings)
# It attracts 81.9 million unique users a month. (Nielsen/ NetRatings)
# It provides 97 language interfaces and results in 35.
# It is truly global – over half of its users are from outside the US.
Of the many search engines that seek to impose order on the chaos of the internet, Google has emerged as the largest and most popular choice worldwide.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had a vision of "making the world's information universally accessible and useful" when they were students at Stanford University, by developing a technology to provide the fastest and most accurate search results.
A fully automated search engine uses robots known as "spiders" to find sites for inclusion in its index. There is no need to submit your site for it to be included in Google's index.
But getting onto the index is just one step to being discovered in a Google search – you need to ensure your site appears as high on the results list as possible, a process made easier by guidelines provided by the company and generally referred to as search-engine optimisation.
Google has published three sets of guidelines, covering design and content, technical factors and quality issues. Of these, adherence to the quality guidelines is mandatory and your site will be delisted if you use deceptive and manipulative behaviour to improve your ranking.
First, says Google, create pages for users, not for search engines. Do not use tricks to boost your ranking and if in doubt, ask yourself: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Second, decline participation in link schemes, especially avoiding links to web spammers as you will be judged guilty by association, which may adversely affect your ranking.
Third, Google expressly forbids webmasters from using "unauthorised" optimisation software to submit pages and check rankings.
"Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service," the company says. "Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google."
These techniques are also forbidden. Don't use:
# Hidden text or hidden links.
# Cloaking or sneaky redirects.
# Sending automated queries to Google.
# Loading pages with irrelevant words.
# Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with "substantially" duplicate content.
# Using "doorway" pages created just for search-engine optimisation and affiliate programs with little or no original content.
While this is not a comprehensive list of forbidden practices, it covers the main techniques that are prohibited. The general principle, though, is that all sneak tactics are unwelcome and could result in a delisting. Be warned – once your site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google. com or on any of Google's partner sites.
"Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience," says Google, "and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit."
The main guidelines for design and content are easy to understand and follow, even for newbies.
Before you post your website on the internet, Google recommends you check that every page is reachable from at least one static text link. Also, you can influence your ranking by embedding in your content words that users will type to find your pages. Further, where possible use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links as the Google spiders do not recognise text contained in images.
These design practices are worth noting. Do:
# Use descriptive and accurate TITLE and ALT tags.
# Check for broken links and correct HTML.
# Limit the links on a given page to fewer than 100.
The technical guidelines are mainly for complex websites but there is one main consideration that applies to simple websites as well. Ensure you don't use applications that stop spiders from indexing your site fully. Javascript, cookies, frames, DHTML and Flash are among the main culprits here. You can check the extent to which you are hindering spiders by using a text browser to simulate a spider-indexing session. Google recommends Lynx (downloadable free from lynx.browser.org).
Google updates its index about once a month to include new sites and eliminate tricksters. This frequently results in sites being reranked and, sometimes, temporarily suspended. If this happens, your site will reappear within a few days as long as you have not used any of the prohibited practices or attempted to subvert the ranking process.
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08-28-2004, 09:16 PM
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