subject: How to rank well on Google.com [print this page] Google has laid down certain guidelines that allow Google to find, index and rank your website. Google looks for design and content, technicalities and the quality of your site to put it though the ranking list. Following are the guidelines:
1. Design and Content Guideline
For a good SEO on Google, make sure the site has clear text links and hierarchy. Every page should be accessible from at least one static link. Make sure to have a sitemap with links which helps user locate the important parts of the website. If the number of links are in large numbers, break the sitemap into multiple pages. Links on the page should be restricted to a reasonable figure. Site should be created in a manner that it provides accurate and
clear info on the content and to be rich on information. Use the keywords in the site that
the users would use to search the information for the content like yours on the internet. Use the text instead of images for important names, links or the content. Make sure to have "ALT" attribute if you must use image for the textual content to rank well during SEO Link building. Make sure to have accurate and descriptive title elements and ALT attribute. Make sure of no broken links or HTML. Review the Google guidelines for best practices on
publishing images.
2. Technical Guidelines
Use Lynx text browser to examine your site since most of the search engine spiders see your site as Lynx would do. If the text browser has problem seeing your site due to the fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, frames or flash, then the search engine spider would also respond in the same way .Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This allows the web server to tell Google whether your
content has changed since last time it crawled your website. Having this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead. Make sure to utilize the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. If you use a content
management system, make sure that it creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.
Make sure that your website appears correctly in all the different browsers. Keep a check on your website's performance and optimize the load time since it is essential for SEO.
3. Quality Guidelines
Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects. Avoid the use of hidden link or hidden texts. Keep the pages clean of irrelevant keywords. It's a complete no-no if you want to rank well in SEO. Don't have duplicate content for multiple pages, domains or sub domains. Do not create pages with malicious ware like phishing or installing viruses, trojans. Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. If your site participates in an affiliate
program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives
