Search engine optimization for Google (SEO)
First things first, you can’t get top position in Google overnight, or even in a week so you’re going to have to be patient, but it will pay off. Google uses a method called “PageRank” to determine a page in their indexes rank when matched with certain keywords. Like most search engines Google included, they use a mixture of keywords, content/title relevancy. We’ll look more at these as the article progresses. But to better understand this, lets use some exampes:
Content title and content
There’s no wrong way to eat a reeses
So the other day I was walking around my car and I realized I had a flat tire. I just wanted to let you know not to buy Eddie’s tire patch kit, it sucks! Anyways, peace out!
This could be a typical blog post, or something of the sort, but the thing I want you to get out of it is, what the heck does the title have to do with the actual content? Furthermore, what if this website’s actual meta keywords were “trees, nature, health, fitness, life” whatever the blogger or website chooses. Even less relevant to the content and title of that content. Google penalizes you for things like this.
Googles logic
Google didn’t just “become” the best search engine in the world for no apparent reason. Google is logical and approaches websites keywords and content in the most logical way possible. If the title of a book was “How to optimize your site for Google” and the entire book was solely about painting, why in the world would the book’s title be something that isn’t relevant to the actual book? Exactly. Google knows this, as do most search engines. This is why Google takes titles so seriously. From the actual <title></title> tag of your website, to header tags, <h1></h1> and paragraph tags, <p></p>. Well forming your XHTML should be standard already. I’m not going to teach you how to write proper XHTML. You should know that by now.
Make your contents keyword density thick. You realize how many times throughout this article I’ve used the words “Google” and “optimize” and “search engine” and “SEO”? A lot. Keyword density is extremely important. If someone searhes for “Search engine optimization for google” do you think my article has a good chance? Take a look at the title of this blog post. You see my point. Be sure to make it natural though like you were talking, don’t write to a computer. Google notices odd placement of keywords and penalizes you for that too. (This company grosses like 2 billion dollars a friggin’ month. I think can afford some pretty hefty A.I. code bases.)
Quick tips on how to better optimize your site to be Google friendly (SEO) For this article we will use an imaginary website called “crainbandy.com” 
imagine the site we’re going to optimize sells fish bait. Here we go, on to the tips.
- Pick a title that is relevant to the site and has a few choice keywords
Google puts heavy importance on this it seems, I’m not sure why. The actual title of your web page, depending on how much content you have could make or break your positioning completely. Not forever, but by having a good solid title tag that matches a few of your meta keywords and a couple choice words in your meta description tag, you should be set.
Example (Our title)
<title> WaxJelly fish bait – Fish bait, bait and more bait! Your source for fish bait online</title> - Pick unique keywords that actually match content titles/content itself
If you’re a programmer and you write open source software, don’t pick keywords like “software” and “programming” and “code” those are far too general. There are too many sites that spend thousands of dollars to bid on these keywords. Not that you can’t, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you program primarily in PHP, pick something like “php software” or even “open source php software”, you see what I’m getting at? Ask yourself what you would look for, and pick keywords that fit.
Example (Meta keywords)
<meta name=”keywords” content=”fish bait, fish bait online, crainbandy bait, crainbandy fish bait, fish bait online, buy fish bait online”> - Make a relevant site description
I noticed a jump of about 3 pages when I optimized my keywords, description and title tag to have matching keywords here and there. Not exactly, but relevant. For example, go to Google.com and simply search for “google”, The title of Google.com is “Google” and it’s description is below the title. Not too elaborate is it? Well it doesn’t have to be. Google’s page rank is perfect 10/10 and the amount of links linking in to google (it’s pagerank) is unreal. Billions and billions of links going in to it means, if you type Google, you’re going to find Google.com everywhere on the first 10 pages or so.
Example (Site description)
<meta name=”description” content=”WaxJelly.com is the official website for the WaxJelly bait stand. Buy bait online or by phone. Plenty of bait for all your bait needs! Come on in”> - Use the <h1></h1> tags for headers and the <p></p> paragraph tags for content
Be sure to put all of your titles in header tags, and all of your content in paragraph tags. It makes for a much happier Google. Also a key point in search engine optimization is well-forming your XHTML.
Example
<h1>WaxJelly bait is booming!</h1>
<p>The WaxJelly internet bait stand has been in business just over a couple of months. Already we’ve had so many requests for bait we’re not even sure we’ll be able to meet the demand! Since we started allowing people to buy bait online we’ve had people doing just that.</p> - Use ALT along with all of your images
The “ALT” tag is what to show if an image isn’t found. It not only provides usability for people that are using text-based browsers only, it also includes extra points from Google for going that “extra mile” it takes like 5 seconds to implement. So don’t short change yourself in this area.
Example
<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”buy shrimp bait online“> - Use title tags on all of your links
Be sure to use the dang title tag on all of your hyper references! (links) Google for some reason loves these things. I noticed a huge jump in traffic once I applied all of these rules. Be sure to make the title tag a keyword mixture with some extra like “Check out our Google search engine optimization article”. I’m not just rubbing your face in keywords, but I’m not exactly making it subtle either. Either way, not a lot of people look at title tags that much (on links) but Google does!
Example
<a href=”http://www.crainbandy.com” title=”Check our our online bait stand, at crainbandy.com!”>Buy bait online at the WaxJelly bait stand</a>
Google sitemaps
Use Google sitemaps and build up your inbound links! The most fundamental way to increase your index position and your sites traffic is just to increase your inbound links. One reason blogs get so much traffic is because of other blogs linking to them. People might even link to this article because it helped them. That’s more traffic for me, and a better page rank and a higher index position. I hope this was helpful. Stay tuned for more articles on Search Engine Optimization.
In a nutshell, too much keyword density isn’t always a bad thing. Just keep it in tune and use the same ones repeatedly. A cool trick is to search for something like “italian shoes” and then go to the top result in Google and (If you’re using Firefox) Search for “italian shoes” and then click “highlight all” and count the amount of times it appears in the content, the page itself, the title tag and the keywords/description just to get a feel for how they got that position. I use this method constantly. Simple, but effective.
