Google Optimization, The PR Ladder

There are three major search engines you need to be aware of when submitting your website. Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

In this post I will be discussing how to properly optimize your site for Google. Let’s begin with title tags.

Title Tags

Title Tags are very important to Google. The Big G use them as headings on the search result pages in most cases. Make sure to give every page of your site a unique and different title tag. Use keywords you are targeting near the beginning and in the middle of the title.

Include only the keywords relevant to that particular page. Do not repeat or duplicate the same word. You need to keep in mind to balance the title tag for both search engines and to the human visitor.

Keep the title short and descriptive. Google only display up to a certain amount of characters on the search results pages. Use 12-15 words for best results. Be creative and try to make it more attractive to the web surfer so they will click on your link.

Heading Tags (H1-H6)

Use one H1 tag for each page and the rest according to the importance of the text in content. Apply them when necessary and not every other line break.

The Right Keywords

It does not matter how good your content is if you ware targeting for the wrong keywords. Get a clear idea of what your site is all about and think about who your target audience is. This is a very important step. Then chose the appropriate keywords.

If your website is new, do not aim for the high demanding or popular keywords just yet. Example, Say you have a site about food. Do not use food, drinks, cooking as your main keywords. These already have bigger competition so you will not succeed in getting the ranking you are hoping for.

Use what the search industry call “Long-Tailed Keywords”. For the example above, a long tailed versions could be Hawaiian food, Texas cooking, Best soft drinks, etc.

Now you have less competition which means you have an easy time getting to the top spots in Search Engine Result Pages or better known as SERPs in Google.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density means how many times your targeted word appear on the content of the page. Couple of years ago there was a certain number that you could use, and in most cases you are guaranteed to be listed on the top 10 or 20, but now Google’s algorithm changed to avoid that it is not there anymore.

How do you know what density to use on your website?Search for the term you are targeting for on Google search, and analyze how those pages to see how they use the targeted phrases.

This is a pretty easy process and shouldn’t take you that long to figure out how many times those words are repeated. After you go through the first 10 result pages, you should have a pretty good idea on the density.

Avoid using keyword stuffing. Do not use them on every other word or too close to each other. Your visitors might not like this either since your content does not look professional.

The main keywords and relevant text should start on the top of the content. Use synonyms to tie the them with the rest of the body text. Google will link the synonyms with keywords in a way to give that page a better relevancy and a boost.

Website Domain

If are are just starting out, get a domain with one or more keywords in it for what you are targeting for, otherwise keep improving your current one. Keywords in the domain helps a little bit for PR but not so much.

Link Structure and Keywords

Use appropriate keywords in your linking structure. Avoid using query types which contains ? or % or other characters like that.

An optimized link format should look like thishttp://www.mydomain.com/keyword-file-name.html or for a directory directory http://www.mydomain.com/keyword-directory-name/ respectfully.

More On Links

Google gives more weight to links contain in the middle area of your website content as opposed to your Navigation links. These are known as Inline Links. So make sure to use them appropriately.

Flash, JAVA, And Images

Do not put site content or blocks of text inside Flash or Images. Google spider will not see them.

If images are used in navigation, use the “Alt” tag to include the title for that link.

Google can penetrate and read most Java based menus but not all of them. Try to use ordered <ol></ol> or unordered <ul></ul> lists as much as possible for navigation menus.

META Keyword And Description Tags

Use the META keyword tag for other search engines. Google does not rely on this tag.

Google use the Description tag on the search results page if your website has insufficient content like with Flash based sites or even some times with sites with a lot of content.

Keep it simple and use the targeted keywords near the start of the sentence. Make sure not to repeat the words no more than three times.

Well that’s it folks. Hope this give you some idea what Google is looking for and how part of their algorithm calculate a Page Rank for you.