How SEO can Help your website date Google

Best SEO tip ever - SEO is like dating etiquette guidelines for how your website stands a better chance of getting noticed by Google and the other search engines.


Let's face it - we want Google to marry our websites and yet Google wants to date us and practically everyone else on the face of the internet. So its up to us to know how to best grab Google's attention and keep it.


Hygiene
Hygiene is important - just like in the offline world.
You want your content to be clean - stay away from adult content OK if you want to stand a chance for positive organic search engine results.


Build a site that loads quickly and easily. First impressions mean a lot even in the Google bot world. If your site takes too long to load for Google - they aren't going to let you near their customers.

Make sure you don't have HTML errors - they don't have to be visual to you to be seen by Google. You can run your site through an HTML checker to find if you have any and where they are.

Make sure your links are working. Broken links are seen by Google and they don't like them.


Be Friendly
Make it easy for Google to see your site.
If you're doing a lot of flash development on your site - especially the first page - there's nothing for the search engines to READ. They need WORDS. So if you ignore this point expect for Google to walk past you on the street and not say hello. No matter how pretty you are, Google can't see you without words.


Be Yourself, Know Yourself
Like in real life
If you are being yourself you may not have a million friends but the ones you have will really be your friends.
So being yourself in terms of your website is knowing what you are about and then being that.

Know your keywords - don't try to make every page or the home page of your site reveal the entire purpose of your life, site or business.
Focus on adding pages or posts and then optimize those for that one search term.


Google LOVES the clarity and simplicity of that. If you use so many terms on a single page Google thinks the first one is the most important but when it sees the second one it adds a little weight onto that one and same thing to the next one. Pretty soon NONE of your keywords has enough weight for Google to "take you to met the parents" on Page 1.


Your Friends

At some point when you've been dating long enough, you might introduce your friends to your date. In terms of Google, your website's friends are other sites that link from their site to yours.


Now you don't introduce all your friends right away in the offline world and that's true in the online world of Google as well. In fact, if you were to suddenly have 1000's of links to a new site, Google would be highly suspicious. So if you've been around for a long time Google is comfortable and that makes sense to Google and you won't spook anyone.

But if you're brand new and you know everybody? Not likely unless you were doing something to trick the system. And Google will stop returning your calls.


What's interesting about Google is that it actually cares about the quality of those other sites. Google wants you to have friends because it means they aren't your only connection to the outside world. Google can then relax a little - that you're not just dating them for the rankings.


So find out who Google likes and make friends with them.


Google loves active social sites - its a bit like dating a high maintenance date - they want you to look good to them at all times and go dancing every night.
You or rather your website needs to stay in shape, be interesting, be its own person and know that if you're cheating Google will dump you on the dance floor.


Carolyn is the owner of an SEO company in Austin Texas. As an Enlocal representative, Austin Local Business, she has a proven record for taking websites from nowhere to page 1 of Google for their areas.
You can follow her on Twitter Enlocal Austin