How to feed, indulge and guide Google's robot

1. How to feed, indulge and guide Google's robot

Many people think that Google searches the Internet when you perform a search on Google. That's not the case. Google does not search the Internet when you search Google uses a so-called robot to surf the Internet. This robot is a simple software program that parses all web pages that it finds on the Internet and then stores the information it finds in Google's database. When you search on Google, you're actually searching the database that has been collected by that robot. If you want to get high rankings on Google, you must make sure that Google's robot finds the right information on your website and that the robot writes the right information about your website in Google's database. 1. Feed the robot: optimize more than one web page It's not enough to optimize your home page. You must optimize each page of your website individually. Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords so that Google's robot sees that your website is relevant to the topic. The more pages you optimize the better. It takes some time to optimize your pages individually for Google but the results are worth the effort. There are no shortcuts to high rankings on Google. If someone promises you a quick solution, be very skeptical. 2. Indulge the robot: optimize the structure of your web page elements Google's robot does not see web pages as you can see them in your browser. Google's robot sees the plain HTML code and it has to get all information from that code. For that reason, you have to make sure that the HTML code of your pages contains everything in the right places so that Google's robot can write the right information to Google's database. A single web page has many elements that can be read by Google's robot: The title tag, meta tags, headline tags, links, keywords in the body text, etc. These elements must come in the right order and they must contain your keyword in the right density if you want to get high rankings on Google for that keyword. You should give Google's robot exactly what it wants. If you want to find out if your web page structure is alright, you can analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. 3. Guide the robot: optimize the structure of your whole website In addition to the structure of your web pages, the structure of your whole website influences the rankings of your web pages on Google as well. A very important aspect is the structure of your website navigation and the internal links. Your website should have easy to follow text links to every page on your website that you want search engines to see. If your website has a poor design or if it does not link to all pages of your site, then Google's robot will skip these pages. If you design your website in Flash or if you put most of your web page content in images then Google's robot won't be able to read most of your content. If you make it as easy as possible for Google's robot to index your web pages then you will get the best possible rankings. Optimizing your web pages takes some work but it will help you to get high rankings on Google, more customers and more sales. Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google widened lead in search in December "Google expanded its usage share in the U.S. search-engine market last month when it handled a whopping 72.1 percent of all queries, up from 65.9 percent in December 2007 [...] The other three main search engines all lost share. Yahoo came in a very distant second with 17.8 percent [...] Microsoft was third with 5.6 percent [...] Ask.com ranked fourth with 3.4 percent [...]" Microsoft to put Live Search on Dell computers and Verizon cellphones "The five-year deal with nation's second-largest carrier, and the three-year deal with Dell, come hand in hand and just in time to stop further erosion of Microsoft's four year old search engine [...]" Google, now with 58% more ads "Google led the competition during the fourth quarter with 58% growth in the average number of ads it showed on the first search results page per keyword (4.01 in 4Q vs. 2.54 in 3Q). Google ran an average of 4.84 ads per keyword in December 2007 [...]" Yahoo!'s new controversial advertising terms and conditions "Yahoo has sparked controversy in the search engine marketing world by taking control of search advertising campaigns... without advertisers consent. Included in new 'terms and conditions' of their Search Marketing program, Yahoo! have given themselves the right to change ads and keywords of their advertisers." Does Google penalize site wide Webmaster Tools accounts? "There is a webmaster [who] claimed his sites are clean and he complies with Google's terms of service. But they were all penalized soon after adding them to the same Google Webmaster Tools account."