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View Full Version : Tips on how to get best search ranking in Google?

Jan
06-15-2004, 02:48 PM
Hey!

Is there any good rule one should follow to get high rankings in Google? I'm currently making a website in XHTML1.1 and CSS, and what's good to keep in mind for good search results? Meta description, keywords, headers etc...?


~Jan
Vladdy
06-15-2004, 03:28 PM
Signal to noise ratio
mindlessLemming
06-15-2004, 03:45 PM
To expand upon Vladdy's statement - Code to content ratio is important.
If you want to check your page's ratio, go to http://slayeroffice.com - there is a bookmarklet there called "Page Info" that is very helpful.
Also, proper use of header tags can go a long way.
Start the page with an <h1>, even if the text is being replaced by a logo or similar. Use <h2> for your page's sub-heading, then <h3> and so on...
Keywords and description are ignored by Google; in fact, if you use the keywords meta tag and those words don't appear on your page you can be penalised.
Jan
06-15-2004, 03:58 PM
Thanks for your replies!

Okay, I've actually tried constructing my website semantically correct, and by separating style and content. I've used <h> tags and actually tried to keep unnecessary tags (in a coding point of view) in the mininum.

I checked my code to content ratio, and content was at 48 %. Is that good or bad?

Quite interesting what you mentioned about the meta tags mindlessLemming. So, practically I don't need to add keywords, but how about the description?


~Jan
mindlessLemming
06-15-2004, 04:18 PM
If it's a small page, 48% is great. If it's a larger one, then it's still a hell of a lot better than a table site would be! :D
There's no reason not to include description and keyword meta tags, as many older search engines still use them. Just be careful, you're better off using 3 -4 keywords that you know will be on the page (preferably repeatedly) than to get stung.


**edit: just looked at your site: Lovely work :) and you're even serving it as application/xml+xhtml. I'm impressed :thumbsup:
Vladdy
06-15-2004, 04:42 PM
Actually this particular bookmarklet will give lower number for smaller pages because it considers the <head> element as markup.
Better indication of the "signal to noise ratio" would be using body element only for such calculations. Still you need to be careful with such tools. For example the value of title and alt attributes should be considered "content", but most tools like that would count everything within <> as a markup...
Jan
06-15-2004, 05:04 PM
mindlessLemming: Thanks for the postive criticism on my website, but it just so happens that it's not the one that I'm talking about ;). I still need to do some improvments on scanactive.com (adding <h> tags among others). Thanks again!


~Jan