If you were a Google engineer what would you do?

**RE e-Broker** · 01-30-2010, 11:59 PM

I am starting this thread because I think it will help people to understand how search engines really work. The reason I am doing this is because there is so much misinformation online about search engine optimization.

SEO has become a RELIGION because no one really knows how Google works, people believe what they read and follow gurus. Truth to be told, some of them actually are very good. Just remember, if they are really good, they will not spill out beans for free. They may give you some good advice but usually it is too general to be produce maximum effect. I personally understand why. These people spent thousands of hours starring at the computer monitor figuring out the best way to compete online and SEO is like a poker game, you have to keep your cards close to your vest. High competition means high stakes.

Even if you are a Google engineer and you sworn to secrecy, still, you will not know the Google’s mechanism in its entirety - it is too complex. What we know about Google is that its public motto is the creation of the "Ultimate Browsing Experience" meaning that people will find precisely what they are looking for instantly. If you will start thinking in these terms, it will help you to understand how this sophisticated search engine really works.

So, if you were a Google engineer, what would you do to maximize users' experience?

**TexasLeaseHouses** · 01-31-2010, 02:06 AM

Well, as someone who works heavily with SEO, I agree there's a lot of misinformation to sort out along with the great information. When we started updating our site (which we had outsourced to a 'web designer' initially), I saw that he was doing such awful things to our SEO that I wanted to scream.

Here are some simple tips:
1) Make sure your urls use good keyword structure. We have 5 different branches to our company so we have 5 different websites, but here's an example of one of ours that we took over:

BAD: http://texasleasehouses.com/kdurless...e.kdhr12233%-k
GOOD: http://texasleasehouses.com/available-rentals.php
or http://texasleasehouses.com/owner-services.php

2) Make sure your meta tags include keywords relevant to your site...but understand that anything more than about 200 won't be read. AND Google is smart enough to know when you have bogus keywords. When we took back over managing our TexasLeaseHouses.com site again, we saw how the designer used keywords such as this:

african american dancers, exotic, pleasure, auto zone, meet singles, apple iphone

good keywords for our site would look something like: texas lease houses, rental houses, properties for rent, properties for investors, security deposit, etc.

So make sure to use the power of your meta tags, but most importantly make them relevant to your site.

3) This is my favorite because it's easiest. When you're writing a blog post or new page on your site, make sure to use the anchors in your text. So when you're picking a topic, for example, 'foreclosures', you want to structure your article around that article in this manner:

Foreclosures: 2010's Key to Real Estate Wealth <(that is your title and notice how the keyword is listed first)

(content)> Foreclosures seem to be popping up as fast as weeds these days due to the downturn in the economy. However, as a Real Estate Investor, there are many ways to be able to use a foreclosure to attain wealth as well as to help the family in need.

Unfortunately, as our neighbors are losing their homes to foreclosures, we sometimes forget that ....(blah blah blah)

When you BOLD, underline or italicize a word/phrase, google reads it as important so you would want to use these for words and phrases that you think people are actually 'typing' into the google search function.

This has helped me countless times in getting my other websites and blogs to rank quickly and rank well.

I hope that is of some help! So much for a short 1st post...Nice to meet everyone here.

**RE e-Broker** · 01-31-2010, 03:59 PM

These are valuable tips but I abandoned keyword meta tag a year ago because it doesn't really do anything for Google except gives your competitors instant access to your keywords if they look at the page code.

Keyword meta tag was heavily abused when search engines where in their infancy and relied on categorizing content by the keyword meta tag. As a result spammers quickly started taking advantage of it. Actually, this is what made Google the leader of search engines. They abandoned keyword meta tag grading and went for content analysis and linking. This resulted in much more accurate results.

I would be careful to keep bolding out every keyword on the page. If used excessively, it may trigger negative response from Google.