Eric

Many times over and over the same questions are asked, “How do I get my site in Google?”  Well in theory, this is very simple.  Have a good site with a lot of good content.  However, with as many sites as there are in the net, Google has to constantly evolve their ranking algorithm.  Approx. every 6 months, Google does a purge on their system.  Sites that are so so usually don’t make the cut and get dropped.  Rankings and all.  But can you blame them?  They search millions of sites everyday, constantly finding new ones.  With an indexing system as large as theirs, they have to find a way to maintain a way to keep their databases as efficient as possible.

It has been said that new domains don’t get ranked, as true as that maybe, I’ve had plenty of brand new domains start return results within a matter of months.  But what are the criteria on getting your site indexed and cached by Google?  Here are some tips that will surely get you’re site noticed.

First of all, not all sites will get in.  You must understand that.  What makes a site get in?  HTML coding.  Simple as that.  The downfall to many sites seeking that organic natural rankings fail to properly set their site up with clean HTML code.  When Google and other search engines come in to evaluate your site the first time around, they will usually stick around for the first 10kb of the site.  If the first 10kb of your site is bogged down with code, guess what, the search engine will not find any content, turn around, leave, and throw your site at the end of the list to be read.  This will pretty much ensure the next time Googlebot or other search engines spiders will come around again sometime when boy bands decide to come out of the closet.  HTML coding is one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization that people fail to realize.

Second, read able text links are key.  Search Engines cannot read JavaScript or follow JavaScript links.  So don’t use them.  If possible, a clean linkshould be used.  Ex.

<a href=”your_page.html” title=”Page Name”>Page Name</a>

This link is easily read by search engines.   The “title” attribute gives the spider a good idea on what it is to expect.  A good idea, stuff the keyword the end page is targeted towards in that spot.

Third, theme your site.  If your site revolves around “Widgets”, make it only about widgets.  Do not try and add other categories to your site, as this will throw off the “theme” and drop your chances of getting the main keywords or key phrases targeted.

Fourth, CONTENT!!!! Good quality content with just enough keyword repetition is in order.  Content should be betwen 200 and 300 words, and about 3 paragraphs.  Make sure the content is unique, and actually provides good information to the readers.  No one wants to read or visit a site with useless content.  Most of the stuff on this blog is useless information. But people keep reading it for some reason.  (I know it baffles me off too).  All the content on your page should have a certain amount keyword density and repetition.  You should only target no more than 3 keywords per page.  Keep in mind, you are still going for a theme on the site.   If it is widgets, then stick to widgets.  Do no have content on why the sky is blue.  It has no relevance to widgets and Google will doc you for it.

Fifth, links.  Good content will automatically have links generated back to the page.  This is what you want, and what you are aiming for.  If you don’t have time to wait around for it, surf the net and find other sites related to your site, and ask for a link exchange.  Be sure before you put their link up on your site, that they put one up for you.  Check back often to ensure they didn’t take it down.  If they did, you just gave them a one way link.  One way links weight more than 2 way links.  So the idea is to get as many one way links back to your site or landing page.  Often time posting in forums related to you site with your link in the signature works.  Posting in blogs with a link back to your site works too.  I don’t do it for my site, however, I do it a lot for sites I am promoting.  Not to mention, this drives free traffic to your site, esp if the page has a lot of traffic to it.

Sixth, change your content often.  Make weekly updates if you can. Add pages.  Constantly make changes to your site.  This will keep the spiders hungry ad coming back for more.  This blog gets on average a visit from Googlebot about every 2 days if not everyday.  I personally don’t see why considering I post to this once a decade, but they seem to like it.  If you can, make daily changes, even if they are small.
Seventh, use a site map.  Have a site map built just for the purposes of having all links in your site in one page.  If you can, use the Google SiteMaps feature to let Google know how often you make changes to your site.

Generally, getting our site into search engines is not hard.  Follow these 7 steps and you should be good.  There are of course a lot of other factors that go with really optimizing a site, however as a starter, these are good steps to follow when trying to get your site noticed by the search engines.