Search Engine Optimization Improving Your Page Rank in Google

 

As long as you're not doing it deceptively or fraudulently, there's nothing wrong with trying to improve your site's search engine rankings. This is what search engine optimization (SEO) is all about.

Do You Crawl Here Often?

Improving your site's search engine rankings is a slow process because it depends on how often search engines crawl your site, and that may happen as seldom as every few weeks there's no set schedule.

There are two basic techniques for improving a page's ranking.

The first is to ensure that the page has good content and good keyword density. This should be a no-brainer,you should already be creating your pages this way if you want AdSense to display relevant ads. Watch for missing keywords, though try to figure out what people are really searching for and make sure your page gets included in the search results.

The other technique is to get highly ranked pages to link to your page. This increases the relative importance of your own page, especially if the anchor text of the link (the text that the user clicks to activate the link) contains keywords relevant to your site. While this technique works especially well with Google, where the popularity of a page is a fundamental part of the PageRank formula, all search engines use incoming links as an important ranking tool. Note that the reverse can also be true: Incoming links from poorly ranked pages especially those that have been removed from search engine indexes due to overt attempts at page-rank manipulation will drag down the page's ranking.

As you might imagine, obtaining high-quality incoming links to your site can be a challenge. You can try to initiate a link swap with the other site, whereby you both agree to link to each other's sites the classic "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" situation. But link swaps only work if both parties feel they have something to gain from the relationship.

Of course, if you have unique, useful content, other sites will start linking to yours without any prompting on your part. This can be a mixed blessing, however, because you have no control over the quality of those incoming links.