Well, what can you say about Google, it’s everyone’s favourite, Google always offers the most results for any given search (they currently have over 8 billion pages indexed), it’s faster than the old Porsche 911 we test drove this morning, and most of the time, all the front page results are relevant to my search. In fact, I usually find what I’m looking for within the first few sites listed.

Google owes their success to their great search algorithm. This complex formula digests 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 which in turns returns the resulting search to you in a pre-sorted order. 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 all web masters 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 (ODP), and my theory is that it’s because ODP is human edited and seen as the authority source. This means real human eyes have looked at each web site that is included in the directory and deemed it useful in some way or another. If your site has a link on ODP, you’re on the right track.

2. Avoid “spamming”. Spamming refers to many different things. If the keyword density is too high, or the keywords are out of context or worse hidden from plain view (not seen by visitors, just search engines), it’s considered spamming. Continually submitting 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, this acts as another form of “human editing”, 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 sites which contain the latest and greatest rich internet clients for displaying content. Only use these technology types for customer interaction. If you do use these technologies, offer alternative views ie. If your site has been designed in Flash, try to offer a plain HTML version of the site. Google can index the rich internet clients, such as flash but it’s not likely that it will be indexed well, and your ranking will suffer. On the HTML front, frames are also a no-no. Although Google can index framed sites as well, again, the ranking can suffer and more importantly, frames are unanimously seen as clumsy!

5. Keep the content on each page to a decent level. You don’t want too much content, drowning your readers, 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 don’t make it so full of keywords that it sounds ridiculous to visitors.

Google nearly always offers you the best resource for you to check your efforts against since all of these things matter to them. They are also always trying to find ways to improve on the Google Algorithm, in turn offering improved service to their customers (you and I).

Every once in a while we hear about a new search engine being born, but no one seems to have been able to catch up. As long as this remains true, these simple tips will be applicable.

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