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All About GoogleCourtney Heard If you read The Search Engine Showdown at www.abalone.ca/resources/searchenginetest.html, you know Google is my favourite search engine. Why Google always offers the most results for any given search they currently have over 8 billion pages indexed, its faster than the Audi Quattro we test drove this morning, and 9 times out of ten, in my experience, all the front page results are relevant to my search. In fact, I usually find what Im looking for within the first few sites listed. I also really respect the fact that two college kids started it kinda like Abalone! and that those two college kids seem not to have forgotten where they came from. If you check out the images at Googles press center http://www.google.com/press/images.html and scroll down to the Everyday Life Inside Google section, youll get a feeling that life at Google is fun. Google is the most used search engine on the web. In May, 2004, 36.8% of all searches on the web were done using Google. Also during that month, Google powered 54% of all searches done on the web. Google owes their success to their mind-boggling algorithm. This intricate formula sucks in a web page, considers its keyword density, its link popularity, domain name, how often it is updated, the amount of content in the site, and a myriad of other things that few know and spits out a number called PageRank. There is absolutely no way to be sure how to get your site to number one on Google, but there are a few things that we know can help: 1. Make sure your site is well organized, visitor friendly and useful. Google seems to like sites that are listed in the Open Directory Project, and my theory is that its because the Open Directory Project is human edited. This means real human eyes have looked at each site that is included in the directory and deemed it useful in some way or another. If your site has a link on The Open Directory Project, youre on the right track. 2. Avoid "spamming". Spamming refers to many different things. If you add keywords to your site that are out of context or hidden from plain view, its considered spamming. Resubmitting your site to Google can be looked upon as spamming. The basic principal is to make sure every page on your site is professional looking, clean, organized and has its own unique information to offer. 3. Try to trade links with good quality sites that you like, cause if you like them, chances are they have something to offer and Google will recognize that. The more good quality sites around the web that have links pointing to your site, the higher your link popularity will be. 4. Stay away from hi-tech sites unless you offer an alternative. ie. If your site has been designed in Flash, try to offer a plain HTML version of the site. Google can index flash but its not likely that it will be indexed well, and your ranking will suffer. Frames are also a no-no. Although Google can index framed sites as well, again, the ranking can suffer and more importantly, frames are universally recognized in our industry as hideous! 5. Keep the content on each page to a decent level. You dont want too much content, but you definitely do not want too little. A good way to judge what a good content level is, is to search for the #1 ranking site for the keywords you wish to target, and see how much content they have. Make your content keyword-rich, but dont make it so full of keywords that it sounds ridiculous to visitors. You want to keep the visitors you get from Google, right Google almost always offers you the best resource for your query due to the fact that all of these things matter to them. They are also always trying to find ways to improve on the Google Algorithm so they can continue to offer us the best service. Every once in a while we hear about this new search engine and that new search engine, but no one seems to have been able to catch up. As long as this remains true, these simple tips will be applicable.
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES Creating A Quality Web Site Design! In this article, I will attempt to cover the basics of creating a great quality web design template for your site. Now its a known fact that the layout or "eye candy" as I put it will determine whether your visitors will stay more than 15 seconds or they will just become another statistic. The Reality of Successful Web Site Today For a number of reasons, the analysis of customers feedback is too often given little attention. Still, people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals c David Ogilvy. Its an inexcusable omission for those, who strive for having a successful web site. There are dozens of ways to receive feedback and unlimited ideas for your customer service improvement in it. But you cant afford phone everybody from your CRM list or correspond with each customer via email or regular mail. It will flatter them but bother you. Fortunately there is such a magic tool as web-based forms, which allow site owners to automate the process and to use the received data in your analysis; the analysis, aimed at your web site usability optimizing. Web Sites Share Your Dream With The World With over 16 million web sites on the Internet, how do you get your home-based businesss site noticed Forums – Should you have them on your website Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forums. But is it wise to add forums to your website Tapping Into The Visual Stimulus Of Your Web Site Visitors "Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What an eye sore. Quick, click away! Click away!" Linking out is good Many websites I come across dont have a single link to another website. Ask the webmaster why not, and the answer you get is simple enough: "If I link to other websites people might leave my site." At this point I break the news that site visitors will leave your site. And theres nothing you can do about this. Text Is King! Are you building your website If so, STOP! Take a look at what you have done so far. How many images do you have How much text do you have 7 Steps to Web Sites that Sell There is a hierarchy of information and elements you need to present to prospects to make it easy for them to become customers and clients. This is not what most small business owners provide on their web sites. Most sites lead with a boring description of services and credentials. This tends to push prospects away. Accessibility... The Basics. An accessible website is one that allows as many people as possible to access the infomation contained within it. An inportant subset of accessibility is allowing people with visual, aural, or physical disabilities full access to the information and services available in the same way as able-bodied people. Ensuring that your website is not dependant on particular hardware or software is also an important consideration when building accessible websites. Website Maintenance: What does it take to manage your website Every action has a beginning phase where you launch your activity, a middle period in which you must sustain and develop it and a conclusion. Many people set up a website enthusiastically but then they find that they don’t have the skills or knowledge to maintain and develop it. So, what are the challenges in this middle phase of a website’s life and how can you meet them "Get It All" with Good Web Content No matr how goud th infomation... why wood you tak content like this seriusly No mater how good the infomation, if is riddiled with typos its asta lavista baby. You lose. Marketing Your Web Site Congratulations!Your Web Site is finished!Now whatYour first instinct is to submit to every search engine possible and leave it up to them to bring traffic to your site.Despite what you may have been told, it doesn’t happen quite that way.Yes, you will need to submit to the search engines, and they will eventually bring traffic your site.It will take anywhere from 3 – 6 months for a search engine to even get you listed.After that another year or so to make it to the top of the listings, that is, if you are extremely diligent in promoting to them monthly and following all the different rules for each search engine. Having Your Personal Portfolio On The Internet Will Help You Infiltrate The Workforce And Get Your Identity ‘Out There’. If you’re an up and coming graphic/web designer just out of university, you’ll know it’s quite hard to break into the workforce. You have to contact employers one by one, spend your time traveling and lugging your portfolio to their offices. Well, things have changed, and for the better let me tell you. Now you can make your own on-line portfolio on the Internet, and send its web page address to numerous design companies at once so they can all see your work easily. You don’t even have to leave your house and organizations all over the world can access your work easily. Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works How To Get Repeat Visitors To Your Site When you have a website online it is important for you to try and get new visitors to your site, but it’s also important to take care of the visitors that you actually already have. This is because you will want your existing visitors to keep returning to your site again and again. Learn the Language of the World Wide Web If you are already on the web or thinking about it then you must know the terminology used on the web. Here is a Glossary of a few must know Web Terms. The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they dont realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors. 8 Steps to Design a Surfer Friendly Website That Search Engines Love! 1 Crystal Clear Source Code HTML/CSS Dotcom Business Plans Archive project One of the most important initiatives in the domain of business documentation is that of professor David Kirsch from the University of Maryland, who thought of a dotcom Business Plan Archive - , a project that consists of collecting business plans for posterity. The project was started in 2002, through the Web portal businessplanarchive.org. The site was built by Webmergers.com and the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business, in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.The project received financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Advantages of a Simple Design Easily maintained |
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