Archive for June, 2008

If you’re a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates. 

In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my onlíne marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience.

SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts

And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google as is humanly possible, but Google doesn’t give up its secrets easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs – if your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in Google’s “Search Engine Results Pages” then Google must think your site or content deserves to be there.

Checking Your Content/Keywords In Google

One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here:

    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing. Checking Your Backlinks In Google

If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:

    link:yourURL

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

Checking Your Indexed Pages In Google

Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

    site:yourURL

A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google’s Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as “second class” pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn’t mean a supplementary index doesn’t exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query. Checking Your Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.

    cache:yourURL

Checking Your PageRank Within Google

Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the heart of Google’s ranking system created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; each link is considered a “vote” for your page and the higher the number of “votes” you have, the higher the PR your page receives. However, again Google is using “smoke and mirrors” to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank still counts, other say it doesn’t.From my own experiences, I have receíved more traffic when my site was at PR4 than I receíved when it was at PR6. What’s important is getting high rankings for your targeted keywords… if you get top spots, it doesn’t matter if your main index page (site) is PR4 or PR6, you’ll still get the same amount of traffic. In other words, don’t become too fixated on PageRank because Google in many cases is not letting you see the true PR of a webpage.

In other words, what Google thinks of your site can play a major role in your success. Mainly because, like it or hate it, Google has become the supreme authority on the web and what they say, counts. Therefore, you should always be paying special attention to just what Google is saying about your site and acting upon that knowledge accordingly.