Google Do's
Site Accessibility
First and foremost, you need to make sure that your website is always
accessible. This is something that happens often, and if it does you
have to wait until the next month's update to get back in. If your
server goes down temporarily for whatever reason and Googlebot comes to
your site at this same time, than Google will leave you out of the
update. InternetSeer is a web-monitoring tool that will check your site
throughout the day and alert you if the site goes down.
Good Internal Linking
The internal linking of your site will play a role in the indexing and
ranking of your website and web pages. If you decide to theme the
website than the website should be linked vertically, then horizontally
within categories, but not horizontally across categories. The linking
within the site should not be too heavy as to not dilute the strength of
each page.
Another important aspect of the internal linking of your site is the
sitemap. A sitemap is a page that contains links to every page on the
site. There should be a link to the sitemap on every page, or at least
on the homepage, and the link should be easily reached by Googlebot. By
having the link to the sitemap, you can be sure that Googlebot will be
able to reach each one of your web pages.
Good External Linking
(link popularity)
External linking, also called link popularity, is the number of links on
other websites that point to your web pages. This is a big factor in the
ranking algorithm for Google, and as mentioned before, can speed up the
process of getting your site into the database. Previously, to climb the
SERPs all that was needed was a large number of links. Google is now
examining the quality of the links as well as the quantity of links. For
example, it is sometimes better to have 20 links to your site from sites
within the top 40 for a target keyword search, than to have 100 links
that are irrelevant to the website's content. This ties into Page Rank,
which we will discuss below.
Have Good Content
Forget the tricks and forget the smoke and mirrors. The way to rank well
in Google is to have good, unique content that is optimized. A search
engine is a business, with the main goal being to provide the most
relevant results to the user based on their search. If your website has
unique, good content that is relevant to a search, the search engines
will want to serve up your site to the user. (That is where optimizing
comes in)
The content should be in the form of HTML. Google uses its indexing
robot, Googlebot, to crawl through your website and go though your
content. While the robot can read the image tags, Flash tags, etc, it
cannot read the actual files. It is a robot, not a human. For example,
Googlebot cannot see that your image has 20 lines of text that is
keyword rich, but instead sees < img src>.
This is why static HTML content is vital to your Google listing.
Update The Content
A good way to stay on top of your competitors within Google, and to feed
Googlebot is to have updated content. Content becomes outdated and stale
and in turn becomes undesirable to the user. A website should be updated
at least once a month, if not more.
Google's normal updating cycle is once every four weeks. Recently,
Google has been seen to be updating certain sites on cycles that have
been as little as 24 hours. The sites that are been updated on this time
cycle are the ones that have updated content and a high user base.
Listing In Yahoo and ODP
If your site is not in the Google database or if your site is in
jeopardy of being dropped from the database, a good way for Googlebot to
find your site is to have a good listing in Yahoo! and the Open
Directory Project.
Have a Robots.txt
A robots.txt is a file that resides with your web pages, and is the
first file that Googlebot, and most other robots and spiders, will
attempt to access. This file will tell Googlebot which file it can
access and which files to stay away from. Using the robots.txt can be
beneficial in some cases. For example, if you have a page that is in the
current index but you need to take the page down, you can deny Googlebot
access to this web page. The same goes for a link that no longer exists.
Good Page Rank
Google has added a variable to their ranking algorithm called Page Rank
(PR). Page Rank is basically the calculation of how much authority your
website has within a market. PR is a complex mathematical calculation
that is performed with the end result being a number 0-10. A very basic
explanation of Page Rank is that a link from Site A to Site B is a vote
for Site B from Site A. The twist is that not every vote has the same
weight authority or weight. When Google calculates the weight of these
votes it will look at the PR and the content of the site that is casting
the vote. If the PR of the voting site is higher, than the link will
count for more, and if the PR is low and the content is not relevant
than the link will have less weight.
Earlier we discussed link popularity and how 20 links are sometimes
better than 100 links. This is how that example applies. Page Rank is
the foundation for Google's ranking algorithm, as its complexity makes
it hard to tamper or alter with ease.
Although there is no quick solution to a low Page Rank, there are ways
to improve your PR. Perform a search within Google for your target
keywords, and make a list of sites that have a high Page Rank. The
websites that you choose have to be within your market, or have relevant
content, as Google examines this. A high PR can be deemed as anything
over 7, but websites with a PR of 6 should not be included in the list.
Contact the webmasters of these sites and ask them to post a link to
your site. Some of them will decline, and this is where having that
unique and good content comes into play!
The title of this article/tutorial is "Surviving the Google Update", but
if you adhere to these things and exceed them, your site will be on the
list of sites that are updated every 48 hours. Good luck!
