How Google tackles Meta Tags

Links to a variety of services are provided by Google Services Guide.

If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, you can track how well all your Adwords campaign are doing with Google Analytics. Google says it should mprove your site and increase marketing Rate-On-Investment (ROI).

If you are a publisher, you can Sign Up / Sign In For Google AdSense.

Google has an excellent description of what to do for higher PageRank. Just click on Google_Webmaster_Help

This page explains Google submitting tips, ranking high at Google, Google ranking tips, pagerank algorithm and Google algorithm guide. Remember these guidelines are only for Google SE. You still have your keywords and description meta tags for other SEs.

Google, unlike other major Search Engines (SEs), actually publishes information on its site about how it gets information to index websites so that it can more accurately match searcher's entered keywords or search words and phrases.

Google's popularity stems from the fact that its turn-around for indexing and re-indexing is a lot shorter than other SEs - on the average approximately a month. So if you edit your pages, you can expect that Google will re-spider (re-index) it in about a month.

There are two main parts to the algorithm Google uses to index pages in its search engine. The first is its text matching system whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered in the search box. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank system.

Text matching system
One thing to keep in mind is that Google does not use meta tags such as the keywords meta tag or the description meta tag. This is because the text within these tags can't be seen by visitors to a website. Google creates description from the first few lines of text on your pages e.g., Home - index - page.

That means it becomes your responsibility to have the make-up of first few lines on your pages, especially but not limited to index page, contain the keywords that you think the searcher would enter in Google search field. It certainly looks at the HTML title of the page.

Pagerank system (PR)
As the name suggests, Pagerank is a ranking system of pages. I think an example will clear the concept. Let's say a website abc.com has a link pointing to mywebsiteworkout.com. Google thinks mywebsiteworkout.com must have some good content and therefore Google will count the link from abc.com as a vote for mywebsiteworkout.com. You can check your Pagerank on Google by downloading the Google toolbar from google toolbar.

The Pagerank scale goes from 1 to 10 on the Google toolbar and from 1 to 7 listings in the Google directory, 7 or 10 being the highest rank. Google states that it looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

That means the website that has a link to your page that has a good quality content counts in Google house. If a website has no good quality and has a pointer to you page, Google says it does not count. However, if a website has already a PR = 6 or greater with a link to your page, you should get better or higher ranking.

Like I stated in the directories chapter, getting listed in directories especailly DMOZ (ODP) will do the trick of your website getting a higher ranking.

Regarding Yahoo and Looksmart, Pagerank will usually allocate a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed. Read Yahoo Directory Submission.

If you are a non-commercial site, you can get into the Looksmart directory through ZEAL. Just like Google obtains its directory results from ODP, Looksmart obtains its non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory.

In conclusion, be sure to have your main keywords and key phrases in your title tag and well spread throughout your page, use header tags wherever possible. Get as many links from websites of the same subject as yours with high PR. Get listed with Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.