Google Apps Hacks

317  - OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE FOR SEARCH ENGINES

HaCK

# 130

HaCK 130:

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This section is a bit of a nonhack, actually. Hacks are supposed

to be quick and clever ways of doing things—the kind of trick that,

once known, creates a shortcut to a desired outcome.

And that’s the thing with search engine optimization (SEO), the art of trying to rank the pages

of your web site well in Google and other engines for a variety of search queries. If SEO were an

effortless craft, then millions of us could easily apply it—but there are still only around 10 pages in

every search result! This means there will always be competition for this scarce resource.

In addition to that, Google and others work hard trying to prevent any “shortcut” to a precious #1

ranking, unless the site is really good and worthy of that ranking. So in reality, the best SEO tip is

this: have a site that’s good.

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Offering terric products, content, or services on your site is a way to make it rank well—because

then your site will attract backlinks. And backlinks are at the heart of the ranking algorithm of most

search engines today.

A backlink happens when someone sees your site and likes it, and then links from their site to yours;

this sends you visitors as well as “link love.” Google and others, upon nding the link, will check out

the authority of the linking site, which ...