Ranking High In Google

Widely argued as the most thorough and used search engine today is Google. Many other search engines get their content from Google than you might think. Everybody from regular web surfers to experienced webmasters like this site. Surfers like it for the speed and thoroughness of their search. Webmasters like it for a variety of other reasons, such as the Google API, and the fact that Google publishes most of their search engine optimization secrets right on the site, so you can rank higher in Google just by reading Google's FAQ section. This alone has helped many a webmaster get going to a better PageRank.

What's PageRank, you say? PageRank is actually a patented technology owned by Google to rank higher. It is a major part in the ranking that your site receives from Google. The other part of the success of your site is keyword matching, which is also extremely important. You don't want to have people coming to your site looking for something that you can't offer, which is why your keywords need to be meticulously picked in regards to the content of your site. Let's look at the individual elements of a plain HTML page and detail their importance in ranking high in Google, shall we?

1. Title tag
This is the part that shows up the top of the browser window (usually followed by " - Microsoft Internet Explorer", in the case of you having IE). It is said that Google looks at the title tag more than any other tag in order to define your page or site and help it rank higher in Google. The title tag should contain your keyword or keyphrase, if possible. Have a complete sentence though, not just "used cars for sale" in the title tag.

2. Meta tags
It is widely known throughout the webmaster community that Google places very little importance on meta tags in determining your rank in Google. The reason is quite simple: meta tags are transparent to the user, so they could essentially contain whatever information you want, relevant to your site or not. When a meta tag or HTML comment is placed into a page with the express intent to bring searchers based on those keywords, it's called "keyword stuffing". This is a pretty dangerous practice, and I would advise against it.

3. HTML tags
Usually, most sites will have a graphically oriented site. This is not a bad idea, but must be dealt with differently than what I am about to discuss. Regular HTML pages, without a lot of graphics, must use different levels (headings) of text. These are defined in HTML as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, and <h6>. Placing keywords inside of these tags is thought to increase your relevance for these keywords and help you rank higher in Google.

4. ALT tags
As discussed a minute ago, when a site has a large number of graphics, it might be a bad idea to have a large amount of text, due either to size restraints or some other reason. This is why the ALT tag was introduced. The ALT tags role in a web page is very simple - to provide an ALTernate view of an image; in this case, text. If your browser is configured to not view images while online, then you will see the ALT tag (considering that the web designer placed the ALT tags in the page). Google looks at the ALT tags pretty sporadically, but I have heard of webmasters saying that the ALT tag alone increased their ranking in Google dramatically.

5. Keyword Density
Try not to have your keyword or keyphrase repeated more than a few times in your page. The recommended amount of 6-10% of the content on your page should be enough for your keyword or keyphrase to rank higher in Google.

6. Incoming Links
Try to get as many incoming links as possible from high ranked sites. Have your keyword or keyphrase in the link that points to your site.

With all of these things in place, your site should be on it's way to a decent PageRank. It's important to point out that the geniuses at Google often slightly modify the algorithm used to rank pages, which is why you might see a slight dip in your PageRank when your traffic hasn't changed and your incoming links are the same.

 

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