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Search Engine Operators

Google (and other search engines) can be instructed to return results via Operators as a means of querying site-specific metrics Example: site: www.9flights.co.uk - How many pages Google has in it's index Google's link operator is an inaccurate public measure of the number of sites linking to you The Yahoo link operator is actually more useful than Google's equivalent for viewing backlinks Bing has a useful tool for tracking links OUT List of Search Engine Operators coming soon

Anchor Text

Anchor Text is the text that makes up a link. It's the actual words in the link, and this is what Google will rank you for in SERPS when other sites link to your website. That's why it's good to get targeted anchor text from either a lot of sites or a few very high quality sites. Make your internal anchor text keyword rich too but do not overdo it. Keep links to under 55 characters?

Link building

Key to better ranking in Google is getting lots of real sites to link to your website with desired keywords in the anchor text. Link building should be a mixture of organic and manufactured links, its important to vary anchor text in your linkbuilding or Google might respond negatively. Just about every form of linkbuilding is grey hat, and sometimes then defined as black hat by Google at a later stage. Consider our Introduction with Jim Boykin

A Sitemap

Most sites could benefit from having a plain html site map, just in case Sitemaps help Google identify your pages Sitemaps are good for keeping your pages in Google SERPS Large sitemaps should probably be broken into pages of no more than about 100 links to be on the safe and usable side. Sitemaps should be linked to from every page on your site Sitemaps help spread Pagerank throughout your site ensuring pages are included

site Structure

A google friendly site structure spreads builds link equity to internal pages and allows them to rank better in Google over a prolonged period. Link to important pages on your site often IN TEXT CONTENT. If you have a large ecommerce site, consider a directory structure setup - Home > Category > Sub Category > Product (and link to related products on product pages). Be careful not to create spammy looking internal link structures and be rewarded with a 'penalty'. It's incredibly important to add a great diversity of keywords to your internal link profile (I think)

Google Pagerank

Google Pagerank is one metric Google uses to rank pages in it's index IMO You only need a lot of pagerank if you have a lot of pages - Consider this on Google PR Having a high pagerank page is pointless unless you are spreading that Google PR to other pages on your site via internal links It's thought Google Pagerank is a deciding measurement that allows pages to rank in Google's main index. Pages without Google PR may end up in obscure, hidden supplemental results 'In The Wild' A High PR page alone will not necessarily outperform a low PR page

Original Content

Original content is something you create yourself, write and express yourself, and is not present in that form anywhere else on the internet Original content is generally rewarded by Google with fast indexing and good stable rankings usually above copies of that content. Popular timely content can quickly find it's way to the top of Google especially if it has been promoted well or gained traction in Google friendly social media sites like Digg or Mixx. Make no mistake - content is the future of SEO and it's here already and only going to get more important.