The very best links, in Google's eyes, come from "authority sites". An authority site is one that is very well established and respected such as mainstream news sites (CNN, TIME, NYTimes, etc...) other search directories, industrial leaders (Macromedia, HP, Pitney Bowes, Nike, etc...), and other highly credible sources such as the regional tourism bureau mentioned above. While a website doesn't necessarily have to represent a large corporation to be considered an authority site, the sheer number of pages and references, combined with high visitor numbers generally associated with large corporate sites helps. Some personal Blogs, smaller companies and alternative news sources/blogs have also enjoyed "authority" status. This status is, in some ways, flexible and situational. A link from the tourism bureau mentioned above will not tend to help a business outside of its region unless a tangible relevancy factor is somehow introduced.

In practical terms, the "authority" status of a website is irrelevant for SEOs since the vast majority of sites in Google's index are just regular, run of the mill websites run by regular, run of the mill folks like us. Small businesses, researchers, governments, NGOs, musicians, artists, families, hobbyists and others write websites to offer the world access to their information. 99.999999% of these sites contain links of some sort or another and the vast majority of those links lead to topically relevant documents. While not "authority" sites, Google still considers these links extremely important when sorting and ranking sites. Again, the stress is on topical relevancy as Google places enormous value in good, solid links.

Google Does Not Live On Links Alone

Much has been written in this article and thousands of others about Google and links. If links were the only factor Google looks at, the SEO business would not exist and Google's index would be as off-kilter as a Batman set. As stated in previous paragraphs, Google has the ability to read sites and understand what it is reading. Google is able to reference a world of information when figuring out the context of text used in Titles, Meta Tags, Body Text and Anchor Links. Since we know that Google is actually reading and comprehending content, we need to place specific content in places we know GoogleBot likes to look for it. Writing and placing this information is where SEO becomes an artful science that stems from simple common sense. Think about what Google knows about your website before it even visits.

It finds your site by following links. Therefore it "assumes" your site is topically relevant to the site it acquired the link at. Google knows the address of the site, the URL. It also knows what anchor text the original linking site used when phrasing the link to your website. Keyword enrichment of both elements is beneficial with Google. In other words, if you can, use a target keyword phrase in the URL of your site, and request that others linking to your site use your target keyword phrases as the anchor text of links directed to your site.

Once Google hits your site, it learns a lot more very quickly. It sees the title, tags, text and links, and records these elements as it moves through the site. These are the basic elements SEOs examine and modify when working on your site.

The first thing GoogleBot sees is the title of the site. Keyword enriched titles are very useful but webmasters are cautioned to be very conservative in the number of keywords or phrases they place in the title of a page. We generally use two or three keyword phrases when writing titles. Page titles should be page specific with keywords focused on the topic of the page. The second (or third) keyword set in the title is used to provide an overall context to the site. For example, <title="Blue Widgets :: Preformed Blocks and Spacers :: Construction Materials"> Overloading the title with keywords is useless and may be considered spam in extreme cases.

Next, Google looks at the meta tags. Unless you wish to exclude Google from sections of your site, there are only two really important meta tags, the description and the keywords tags. Of these two, the description is the most important. Google uses the description tag as a topical reference and may draw from the description tag when generating the two to three sentence site description shown under links in the SERPs. As with titles, each page should have a page specific description tag that outlines the topic of that page and the theme of the overall site. The keywords tag is of much lesser importance but is still considered to carry minor weight. Mentioning keywords that might be associated with your website, including common misspellings doesn't hurt. Packing the keywords tag with dozens of mentions of the same word, or using keywords that do not relate to your website might. We still use the keyword tag on client sites and still use page-specific keyword tags.

After the meta tags, Google looks at page content or body text. Again, relevance is extremely important. The Internet is a very big place and Google's index is pretty big itself. Finding documents in an 8-billion page universe requires precision. Webmasters can help themselves by simply addressing one topic or issue per page. Google is extremely intelligent and intuitive, but even the smartest robots get confused. Keeping it simple for GoogeBot makes good ranking much simpler to achieve for your site. Since Google reads information from left to right in columns, like we read a newspaper, placing your keyword phrases early in the body text of pages in your site is very beneficial. Well written sentences that are topically focused are the best spider food for Google since it has become wary of words that "float" on a page without supporting words to provide context.

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Lastly, GoogleBot comes back to links. GoogleBot moves through your website following links you place there. It reads the text that phrases the links to determine what it might find when it gets to the next page. For example, the second page in most websites is the "About Us" page. Billions of websites use "About Us" as the anchor text linking the index page to the about us page. A better link would read About "Blue Widgets Inc." because the keyword phrase Blue Widgets is used as the anchor text from one page to the next. Keyword enrichment of anchor text also affects Google's perception of external links. Going back to our tourism bureau example, a link to a local bed and breakfast might read "Humboldt House" Bed and Breakfast or it might read Humboldt House "Victoria – Bed and Breakfast". The anchor text used in the second example would be far more beneficial than the first.

Remember, links provide the pathway for GoogleBot and other spiders. A final element that should be included on all pages is a text-based sitemap that links to all pages in the site and is linked to from the Home or Index page.

In a nutshell, that's how GoogleBot examines a site. Here is a quick rundown of which elements GoogleBot is looking for:

Relevant Incoming Links
Good URLs that are not too spammy
Easy to follow link paths including a sitemap
Keyword enriched titles Well written Description Meta Tag
Well written Keywords Meta Tag (less important than Description)
Topically focused Body Text
Keyword Enriched Anchor Text
NO Sp@m
Relevance, relevance, relevance

Next week, we'll look at MSNBot.

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim works with a limited group of clients and provides consultancy services to StepForth Search Engine Placement. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be reached at jim.hedger@gmail.com.

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