Optimization for Google

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

By this point in the book, you should have a pretty good idea of how Google works, including how your sites are indexed and what you should avoid doing. But there are a few more things to understand about Google and how your site is ranked. These additional tips will help you to improve your rankings.

The first thing you need to understand about Google is that, given time, if your site is on the Web and has at least one link to it, you will eventually be crawled. As an example, I have never done anything with my personal web site by way of SEO. I haven’t checked the code to ensure that it’s written with search engines in mind. I haven’t used or invested in keywords, and I haven’t submitted my site to a search engine.

Yet, if you type my name into the Google search engine, my personal web site will be the first result returned. I’m ranked number one for my name, because (presumably) there is only one of me. If someone searches for my name, I’m at the top of the list. And that’s good. But your site is probably going to be much more diverse than mine, so how do you get Google to take notice? Again, be patient. Google will crawl your site in a short period of time (sometimes it takes less than a week). And once your site has been crawled, you can begin the slow climb through the search results.

On my personal site, it took nearly a year to reach the top ranking slot for my site. But I never did anything to boost that rank. It’s my personal web site, so I don’t put a lot of effort into it. In short, it is what it is, without any type of SEO strategy at all.

If your site is topically related to other sites, however, you probably won’t be able to throw your site on the Web and wait for it to be indexed at number one. And although you will be indexed automatically, you’ll have to compete for top placement.

Google doesn’t sell placement, either. There are ads above and to the right side of the search results, but ads are the only placement that’s available for purchase. That means that where your site places is based on your SEO and search marketing efforts.