Michael Kratz

I’ve made a few websites in my time (not all listed on this site), and I believe that they have fairly good rank on Google for what they’re designed for. So, here’s my personal tips for getting your site listed well on Google.

Write/construct valid HTML and CSS - not only does this ensure that browsers (and people) will be able to understand and read your site correctly, but I believe Google look upon this positively and it may result in your site getting a slightly better listing. You can check the validity of your HTML using the W3C Validator, and your CSS using the CSS Validator.

Be efficient with your code/site - make sure your site doesn’t suffer from code bloat, and don’t use javascript to write all your HTML… use standard HREF links, don’t try to obfuscate your code too much. Don’t make your site bigger than it has to be. If googelbot has trouble reading your site or following your links, your site might not get indexed properly. This also has the added benefit of ensuring that your site loads fast (even on dialup), and works well for all end users.

Keywords, make your content valuable - Make sure that your website has plenty of well written text, not just images. Make sure the text is related to your content and what you’re trying to convey on your website. Choose your words carefully, make sure that you include important keywords in all the right places.

Use Heading Tags - H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, etc. many sites forget to use these tags, and they really should use them. Formatting or placement issues can be gotten around with CSS, you can style heading tags however you like. Using Heading tags also has other added benefits: they help you to break up your content, all browsers understand headings, even some text browsers and screen readers, so those who can’t see CSS styled large text, or choose not to load CSS, will still see your headings breaking up your content.

robots.txt - use one, even if its blank, just create one in your site root so that search engines don’t get a 404 when they request it. If you do choose to populate it, make sure its valid. If you don’t know what a robots.txt is, look here.

Sitemap - This is a new Google feature which has only recently popped up and a lot of people still don’t know about it. Make one for your site, register it and verify it with Google. This will help Google to index your website more accurately and at the appropriate times. There is also the potential for additional control in the future, Google have already added extra options (e.g. selecting whether your site is indexed with www or not in the URL). For more info see here.

Get Linked - get others to link to your website, part of Google’s PageRank algorithm weights your site based on how popular it is around the Internet. If it has more incoming links, its ‘more popular’. This isn’t the holy grail though, and don’t go registering with link farms or you’ll likely have the opposite effect. Get good, relevant links from other popular websites. One way to get good links is to write good content, if people see something they like which is valuable, they may link to it.

Use Description and Keyword Meta Tags - A lot of people will say that these are pretty much useless these days, due to people abusing them in the past. I beg to differ, make sure you put a valid, short and concise description in for your webpage. Also add some keywords in for your site. Even if they’re not used by Google or other search engines, its not going to take you long to add them, so do it anyway. In my personal opinion, I still believe they do contribute somewhat, just not as much as they used to.

Use best practices, make your site accessible - Fill in the ALT text of all of your images, add TITLE text to your hrefs and other relevant text and forms. Make your site as accessible as possible to the broadest community of users possible, including those using non-graphical browsers (e.g. screen readers, text browsers, mobile browsers, etc.)

Read Google’s own tips - Google have a section of their website just for webmasters, check it out here.

Do the right thing, don’t do bad stuff - this is the most important one of all. Google have some very smart geeks working for them, they know what they’re doing, and they’ve been around, they know the tricks of the trade. Don’t try and outsmart them, you’ll always end up losing. Don’t use link farms, don’t host spammy content, don’t hide keywords or try to falsify content. Don’t make popups which block or hinder users access to content, don’t be deceptive with your content, don’t host viruses, exploits, spyware or other nasties.

Google for other tips, tricks and best practices - there’s plenty of valuable information out there on the Internet, search around and read up!