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Did you know these simple Google SEO Secrets?

Originally published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Thursday, March 7, 2002.

Did you know these simple Google SEO Secrets?
(Hear this article at: http://www.BlueGrind.com/seo-secrets.html)

Some of these are new secrets, but most of the ones are common sense secrets that have been out for a long time. I will discuss them and I am sure they will help you get better ranking within a couple of months of implementing some of these strategies. So let’s start with some of the newer secrets.

Did you know that when a website is new to Google, the site will not receive good ranking for the most important keywords for the first few months. This is called the Sandbox effect. It doesn’t matter how good the site is and how relevant and however many links it has, it will have to go through this “Probation Period”.

Google tries to minimize spammed listings so I am assuming that this is one of the ways they think spammers will be deterred. Spammers, or those that guarantee website owners, Top 10 listing in10 days, etc. cannot wait that long, but a legitimate site owner can wait.

Also from the recently filed patent by Google, some other things effect ranking, like, how old the registration of your domain name is. If it is less than a year old (Probably registered to get ranking), then it will not get good ranking. If your domain name is only registered for one year (vs. Multi year registration which you can get from http://www.buildwebsite.com/domainname.html) it will not get favorable ranking.

The name of the game is getting a good page rank so it shows the Google system that you have a site that is relevant and more importantly, significant in the space you are occupying. Another consideration you should keep in mind is the very quick building of links. This signals spam to Google. You are probably buying links or just placing links in sites that have no relevance to the space you occupy.

So what can you do if you have just launched your site and you are legitimate? Well, some of the things you can do are fairly obvious. First of all if your domain name is registered more than a year ago, you have a good chance of getting listed based on your content. You can go to (http://www.google.com/addurl). This would let Google know you have a site, and they can schedule it for inclusion.

But a better step would be to create a sitemap of your site. You can go to http://www.sitemaps.org (There is a layman’s explanation at http://www.buildwebsite.com/seo-secrets.html) and learn how to create a sitemap that will speed your inclusion to Google, as well as Yahoo, and MSN, because this is a standard that was put together by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, to make it easier for their webbots to scan your site.

Of course the most important thing is to have good content on your site. One that is relevant to your space or field. If you sell shoes, have information about shoes, shoe polish and maybe clothes, but not necessarily cars or houses etc. If you include Houses or cars, it will make your site less relevant and it will make sure you do not get a good rank. Also try to make separate pages for each subcategory. If you sell shoes and shoe polish, then have them on separate pages but linked from each other’s page.

Good housekeeping techniques are important for good ranking. Ah, the last thing, that has been a rule since Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet, use Meta Tags; At least the Description and the Keyword Meta Tags. Make sure it is different for each page, by different I mean more relevant to what that page is all about. The more relevance there, the higher the ranking in the search engines.

These techniques will get you 90% of the way there, and they are all clean, “White Hat Tricks”, meaning they are all welcomed by the search engines,  after all, the search engines want your site listed and offered to the user if it is relevant to the user’s needs.

Article by Diran Afarian
CEO of BlueGrind.com
http://www.BlueGrind.com