[Gloucs] howto google

[Guy Edwards]

Hi,

Last night someone was asking how the site got ranked on Google?


We include these tags on each page in the header:

(a short description of the page)

<meta content="The Gloucestershire Linux User Group (GlosLUG) webpages -
Linux information and local meetings" name="description" />

(some keywords that you might type into a search engine to find it)

<meta content="Linux Gloucestershire GlosLUG Linux User Group
gloucs.lug.org.uk Linux support Cheltenham Stroud Gloucester Cotswolds
Forest open source mandrake redhat suse" name="keywords" />

(tell it to revisit quite often because the site changes)

<meta name="Revisit-After" content="14 Days" />

The text for each page should be near the top too, on the index page the
description of the group is right near the top so you see something
meaningfull (hopefully) in the google summary.

The articles now have individual descriptive tags but thats within the
pask week so I doubt they'll come up in a search.

We also made sure the site was registered with them by filling in one of
thier site submission forms.

--------------------------------

They've got a faq covering what they blacklist you for and lots of other
things at:
http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/

---------------------------------------------------------
How the page ranking is decided, from:
http://www.google.co.uk/technology/index.html

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by
page A, for page B. But, Google 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."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google
remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages
mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines
PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that
are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond
the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of
the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to
determine if it's a good match for your query. 


Hope it helps,
Guy