How to Improve Your Website's Google Ranking

Google's search engine, www.google.com, uses a variety of methods to determine which pages are displayed first in the results. Their exact formula is a secret, but there are a few things you can do to improve your positioning. The term for this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These tips may not make your website the first one to appear in the list, but they just may help you move up a little. No matter what you do, make sure you make a site that you want to visit. If you're gaming the system, sooner or later Google will figure it out and change their formula. You'll end up plummeting in the search results and wonder why.

 
Ignore spam and websites that offer to submit your website to hundreds of search engines. At best these are wastes of time or money and at worst they can actually hurt your ranking.

Link Early, Link Often

One of the biggest factors Google looks at is the hyperlink. Google looks at both links to and from your website. Google looks at the words you use in links to help determine the content of your page. Use links within web pages as a way to emphasize keywords. Rather than saying, "click here to learn more about SEO" you should say: Read more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Social Networking

Social networking sites can be a good way to promote a site, but most will not affect your rank directly. Google+ promotion may be an exception


Good Design Is Popular Design

In the end, strong, well organized pages are pages that Google tends to rank higher. They're also pages that tend to become more popular, which means Google will rank them even higher. Keep good design in mind as you go, and much of the SEO will design itself.