The Best Practices for Google Rankings
When your website is listed on Google's front page search results for an often-searched for keyword, you can expect to receive considerable free traffic. Although the exact algorithm for how Google ranks a website is a closely guarded secret that is subject to constant change, the company does disclose some optimal practices that will help your site to rank well.
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Website Navigation
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Google's own website is uncluttered, loads fast and is easy to navigate. These are just some of the attributes that Google thinks are important and awards with higher rankings. Your site should have a clear page hierarchy, and all the pages should be reachable from one or more static text links. Check your site regularly for broken links; if you have a large site, use free software to do this, as links that no longer link to the intended page can hurt your rankings.
Meta Tags
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Metadata elements, or meta tags, should be placed withing the <head></head> section of each of your pages. Each page should have a keyword-rich title that indicates the topic of the page. Include a meta description that contains your main keyword. Google may display the meta description in search results instead of a snippet from a page relevant to the searcher's query.
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Images
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When saving images that will be used on your Web pages to your hard drive, give them a name that is related to the image, rather than a number. Include an "alt description tag" with all images, as this tells the Google crawler the subject of the image.
Backlinks
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Your site's position in search results is partly determined by the sites that link to yours. Google sees incoming links, or backlinks, as a vote. The more votes you have from high-quality, authoritative sites, the higher your pages will rank. However, Google wants the backlinks to your site to be natural and attained because you provide useful content. If Google suspects you have gained backlinks because you have paid for them or are part of a link scheme that swaps links, it will penalize your site with lower rankings. Create content others want to link to and speed your backlink strategy by submitting articles and press release to directories for syndication.
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