How to improve your Google search engine ranking
Google’s page ranking system
Google is the top search engine, so it makes sense to do what you can to understand how they rank websites and follow their rules. Google ranks a page according to the number and quality of links leading to that page. For example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it, it will rank higher than another page that has only 20 links pointing at it. Quality links come from pages that Google considers “important.”
Google does not try to hide this information and actually publishes information about their ranking algorithm on their website. You can read it for yourself at http://www.google.com/technology/.
Improving your Google page ranking
There are certain tips you should follow to improve your ranking in search engine results on Google.
1. Get inbound links!
I will say it again: Google ranks your pages according to the number of links. Did you hear me? If that is how Google ranks your site, get as many links pointing at your pages as you possibly can. OK? It is so simple, and it is so important.
2. Use Title tags
Google gives weight to the title of your page, which is the text in the HTML <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like “New Page”, make sure to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords.
3. Keyword density
Google places a lot of importance to keyword density, even more than many other search engines. You can read more about keyword density and how you can improve it on your pages from my other article, Improving your keyword density for search engines.
4. Use keywords in your links
Don’t you dare use a link that says “click here.” Google will rank your site higher if you have relevant keyword text in your links. For example, a link with the text “Baseball Equipment” pointing at your site will rank higher than if the link says “click here”.
Other Google Tips
1. Dynamic pages
Unlike some other search engines, Google can index dynamically generated pages as long as a link exists to those pages somewhere. For example, a page like “http://example.com/baseballs.php?page=19″ can be indexed by Google.
Therefore, if you have a dynamically generated page that you think should be indexed, make sure you put a link to it somewhere on your site.
2. Use ALT tags on your images
Google indexes the text given in the ALT tags of images, so make sure you add ALT tags to all of your images.
3. Google ignores the META keywords tag
I think some of the engines look at your META keyword, but Google does not. It is fine to include META keyword tags in your website, but be aware that Google ignores this tag.
The Google Toolbar
If you want to know where your site ranks, the Google Toolbar can be obtained for free. It will tell you the Page Rank of any page that you visit.
Keep in mind that the toolbar actually transmits information about the pages you visit to Google. If you are worried about people tracking your Internet activity, you might want to only use it when you check your site’s ranking. You can easily enable or disable the Page Rank feature from the Options menu.
You can also consider advertising your site to improve your ranking. You can find information on how to use Google Adwords, read the article, How can you use Google AdWords to increase your search engine ranking?
