Web Resources > Driving Traffic > Search Engines > Google

Google is one of the most popular search engines. It has a reputation for providing very accurate results. It is also different to the other search engines in the way that it calculates its search results.

A key factor for Google is the number of links to your site from sites that relate to the same subject as your site. Google assigns your site a score called PageRank (0 - 10)

You can submit your site to Google (Google URL submit) but submitting your site does not mean you will even be listed in Google. Typically you will not be listed unless Google finds a link to your site while it is crawling another site. The more on-topic incoming links you have the higher your PageRank will be.

Google uses the logic that if many sites link to you and these sites are related in topic to your site then your site must be an authority and therefore valuable to somebody searching on that subject.

Google also uses a themes approach. Themes are where a whole domain is filtered and a theme or key phrases are extracted. If the sites that link to you are on-theme to your site then your site will become more relevant.

It is also important to optimize your pages for Google, but there is no quick and easy solution to gain a good ranking with Google - it takes work and effort to make your site valuable. Once your site is valuable it is only a matter of time before you rise up in the rankings at Google.

Google Strategy

• Find the right keywords, use the Overture suggestion tool or Wordtracker to find out what keywords and phrases people are actually using.
• Use important phrases (that you found using overture or wordtracker) in your text (especially the top 3rd of the page) and title.
• Use the alt tags on your images and ensure they contain the important keywords and phrases.
• Link every page to every other page in your site
• Find sites related to yours and attempt to have them place a link to your site on their site
• Content is king with Google - Ensure you have good solid content. This will not only help you with Google it will help your site naturally gain links from other sites, which will help drive traffic to you.

Resources For Google

Very Informative 21 page pdf article on how Google PageRank works

Webmaster world - Google Forum

Google Toolbar plug-in - Lets you see the PageRank of each page you visit.