Google is huge, VERY huge. To capitalize that word is still an understatement. Google is full of information, so full that the words "information highway" should be trademarked by Google. After making myself clear as to how huge Google is, its not so hard to understand that with the right techniques it can make your life -- as a web designer -- mucho' easier.

Now we should get something straight before you read any farther - If you want quick and easy traffic to your site, make a Google Adwords account. It may cost you some money but if that's not a problem for you, there is nothing wrong with that. I myself have used it and it does what Google tells you it will do. This article is for those of you that don't want to take the easy road, don't want to spend the money, or just want to learn great techniques on how to improve your Google -- and other -- search engine results.

First things first, and possibly the easiest thing to do is make your website useful. After all, what is the point of making a website rank high on Google if it has no information to give or sell? I'm sure you -- as well as I -- have stumbled across those websites that tell you they have the information you are looking for but then turn out to be fruitless. Whether it be some money making scam or just some Joe Schmoe trying to get the hits on his website. Regardless, please avoid this at all costs. Make your website useful, full of information whether it be for a product/service you are selling or just knowledge for other people.

Making your website useful leads to the next thing. Linking! Google ranks a website by the links pointing to it, not just by the amount of links but by the score of the site that is doing the pointing. You want other useful websites (ones that are already ranked high) to point to your website. The more useful your website is, the more reason other useful websites have to link back to you.

Hint: Putting links on your website to other useful websites will give incentive for them to backlink (the website that you linked to, putting a link back to your website).

Make an image in your head of the "world wide web". What do you see? I can tell you what I see; I see Earth wrapped tightly with an endless maze of intertwined string, almost like a spider web or chain linked fence. Maybe that's why -- whomever it was -- decided to call it the world wide web, in hopes to bring the entire world together with information that is linked to other information through a giant web of wires and computers. Think of every country in the world being it's own little island. If we never invented boats, how could we share things with each other? So to put an end to this escapade, think of links as the ships that our ancestors sailed on to bring the world and it's people together. Maybe a bit over the top, but I'm sure you get the point.

So at this point you may be thinking; What's the best way to link to other sites, and how can I get them to link back to my site?

Let's start with the best ways for you to link to other sites. Avoid using any kind of image as a link. Google (the Googlebots that is) cannot see the information in an image link. The information in a text link (or Hyperlink, which comes from the word Hypertext) is very important. Google will use the information in a text link to rank the website, So you should be sure to include keywords in the text link. For instance, if I'm linking to Wikipedia.com It proves better for me to make the link have information in it like so: Wikipedia.org is full of information as opposed to: Wikipedia.org is full of information.

Getting other sites to link back to you may not be so easy. As I mentioned previously, putting links on your website to other useful websites will give incentive for them to backlink, boosting the sites Google rank. Think about this while you are creating the content of your site. Other sites will sometimes check to see where the traffic hitting their site is coming from. If they notice that you have sent some traffic to their site, they may link back. Or you can try the old-fashioned way and send them an e-mail asking to link to you, pointing out that you have linked to them!

By the way, if you have found this information useful so far, feel free to link to this page with the code provided below.


<a href="http://www.ooshie.com/higher_google_search_ranking.php">How to get a higher search rank on google and other search engines.</a>

Hint: Google allows you to buy sponsor spots for certain search words. You only get charged if your link is clicked, and it only costs a few cents.

Stay away from link farms, they will destroy your Google rank for sure. If you don't know what they are, don't bother trying to figure it out! You will know when you see one. I try to steer clear of reciprocal link sites. I have heard they work for some people but it just doesnt sit right with me. Googlebots are smart, they can detect when you are trying to trick them with simple reciprocal link code that these sites will usually give you.

So making sure your website is useful, full of information and has good links both to and from other useful sites is the most important, first two things to do. So what else can we use to support these things, a little icing on the cake? Make use of your meta tags. Meta tags give a lot of information to Google and can help better your page rank. They can give a description of your website, keywords and even the date the page was originated. Here is an article I wrote about meta tags.

Another great thing to utilize are sitemaps. We have two kinds of sitemaps, one for the visitors to your website and one for the search engines. Your sitemap for visitors will basically be a white page with a bunch of links to all the pages on your website. This is for people that may have a hard time navigating your website or just want to find exactly what they are looking for without having to roam around to much. Sitemaps for search engines are usually created in XML, listing all the pages on your website with some information about each page. The Googlebots will look at this information more frequently then they will crawl your website, so using them is a great idea! Google Webmaster Tools will help you create a sitemap and allow you to submit it. It is also very useful for other information regarding your website, so check it out!

To sum it all up -- Make sure your website is useful, and be sure to link to other useful websites. In return they will link to you with or without a little encouragement. Never overlook the small things (meta tags) and make sure you research and utilize the big things (sitemaps).