Search Engine Optimization (Page 5B)

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SEO for Google

Google uses a technology called a crawler which means Google spiders the web to maintain its index, with emphasis on content and link popularity.

One major factor that determines your rank on Google is the number of links that point to your site (also known as linkbacks). Linksbacks to your site determines your Google pagerank.

The popularity (pagerank) of the sites that link to your site, the keywords used in text in and around the links that point to your site, and what website you link to also play a role in how well your site will perform on Google for certain keywords.

Google's web crawler only views the visible text on your page. The Meta description and keywords have little influence on Google's rankings. Google has become aggressive when it comes to elimination of spam or sites that are solely created to sell a product and do not offer any true content for the visitor.

Upon submitting your site to Google, it can take 3-6 weeks for your site to be listed in the index. Google does not include all website in their search listings.

Google respiders every page in its database approximately once every 4 weeks and usually publishes a major update to its index during the last week of each month.

Google provides content to other search engines including AOL Search, Netscape and Iwon.

Google PageRank

PageRank is a numeric value that symbolizes how meaningful a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. They assume that the more votes that are cast for a webpage, the more important it must be. Also, the PageRank of the page that is "casting the vote" factors into how important the vote itself is to your score.

PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. The reason it matters so much to many webmasters is it is one of the crucial factors that determines a page's ranking within the search results. However, it isn't the only factor that Google uses to generate search results…. just a very important one.

There are sites you can go to that will check your pagerank such as BlogFlux. You can also download the Google Toolbar which you can set to display the PageRank for every webpage you visit.

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Affiliate Confessions

Don't rely 100% on Google traffic for your online business! This is probably the most important lesson I've learned in my experience with affiliate marketing.

Free search engine traffic can be lucrative, but it can also be taken away in a day when Google decides to update their algorithm and suddenly your site goes from being number 3 to being number 45 in the search results.

What I have learned is don’t over focus on one avenue of traffic. Always focus on your visitors and offer them features they'll enjoy and use on a regular basis. That way they will come back again and again.

Janet
San Francisco, CA

Submit Your Site

When you are ready, click here to ubmit your webpages to Google for free. You will only need to submit your home page for each website you own. The Google spider will crawl your site and find all of the other pages that are listed on your menus and links.

In addition to offering a search engine, Google also offers a directory which is similar to a phone book. To be listed in Google's directory, submit your site to The Open Directory. Submitting your site to the open directory is free.

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