You may ask how does Google understands what my site
is about and then rank it for people who are conducting
searches? To understand how to improve your web site
so it ranks higher, you should have a good idea how
Google does its thing. This article will detail the
three elements related to its searching and ranking
processes.
First of all, you need a web site. Got one? Great.
So now what? How does Google know your site is out
there on the web? Through what is called "crawling." This
is the process where Google can discover and investigate
the size and content of a web site. The web is a big
place so this process doesn't happen every day. When
you place a web site on the web for the first time,
it may take a few weeks or a few months for Google
to crawl your site. The actual process of crawling
is done with the Googlebot (also known as a spider
or just bot).
Next the Googlebot has to digest all this data on web sites such as yours
and index it within the vast amounts of web data already in their system.
Indexing is a storage process that is used when people enter search terms
in the Google interface (at www.google.com). The critical SEO factor here
is Google is trying to understand what your web site is about. You can help
this process by using as many words and phrases related to your subject matter
as possible. The Googlebot can't discern what images are about, so it is
also important to create alternate ("ALT") text within the HTML for each
image. Some rich media and dynamic pages do provide a barrier to the bot
and cannot be indexed, so be wary of that.
Lastly, Google serves up results when people enter search terms. This is
called a query. Google is always trying to match the best (i.e. most relevant)
web sites to each query. It looks to its vast index and pulls back a list
of web sites it thinks are the most relevant given the text you entered.
Google relies on over 200 different factors to decide how well a web site
should be ranked for a given term or phrase. Even the number or quality of
other web sites linking to yours can help tremendously.
To make sure your web site can be easily crawled by the search engines, add
numerous terms and phrases within your site that relate to your main topic
and if possible get outside web sites to link to your site. Google is not
the only search engine out there, but understanding how it gather web site
data and uses it can be a tremendous help is optimizing your web site to
rank at its highest.
Paul Kaufman
President
Pitch Perfect Marketing
