Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Included in the Index vs. PageRank

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important aspects of your website design and site content. This article will focus on the practices that will get your site indexed specifically on Google but if you do a good job you should also be successful on Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines.

Why is it So Hard to Get a High Google PageRank?

There are billions of web pages on the internet, almost every business or organization is promoting themselves online. Additionally, the internet is dominated by smart and hard working people and many of their sites have been around for years and have tons of great content and a large, loyal user community. Existing websites have many other sites and blogs linking to their pages which is the key to getting a good Google PageRank.

The competition is stiff when it comes to Google PageRank and organic search keywords. The big sites already have a head start on you in terms of content and other sites linking to them. If you want to move up in the Google PageRank, you are going to need to find a way to make your site stand out against the rest of the crowd.

"Included in the Index" vs. "PageRank"

There are a few terms that you should understand before getting deeper into the Google SEO issues. It is worth talking a bit about the difference between being included in Google's index and having a Google PageRank assigned.

The day you turn on your website, you are not included in Google's index and you have a PageRank of 0 out of 10 (0/10). Once you are ready for the public to see your site, you will want to immediately get listed on Google. By using Google's Add URL page, you are requesting that Google include your site in their index.

After submitting the site you should expect to wait for about a week, or more sometimes, to see your site's status (in the Google Webmaster Tools) as "Included in the Index." Another way to see if any of your pages are currently in the Google index, you can go to www.google.com and enter a search specifically for your site / domain. The search syntax is like this: site:yourdomain.com.

Once your main home page is showing up in the index, it is very likely that you will still have a PageRank of 0 because Google does not immediately assign a new website a PageRank.

If you want to make sure that Google knows about the other pages on your site, besides your home page, you can use the Google webmaster tools to submit a sitemap. When you submit a sitemap, which can be a simple list of URLs to your site, you are directing Google to add this list of pages to the index. After submitting your sitemap for the first time, you should expect to wait a while, maybe even as long as a month, before any of the back-pages (all of the pages other than your main home page) show up in the index.

Next Steps in Improving Your PageRank

So you might be wondering what you should be doing for a month while you anxiously wait and check the Google Webmaster Tools page every day. This is where PageRank comes in to the picture. PageRank is a measure of how many directories and other websites link to your website. Basically PageRank is just a big popularity contest, the number of sites that link to your site is a measure of how "important" your site is.

If a website that has a high PageRank has a link to your site, then you get to share in some of their popularity and Google will give your PageRank a boost. What this means is that you should try to get the popular sites for your subject matter to include a link to your site - this can be accomplished by participating in forum discussions or publishing articles that have links to content on your site.

If you are not seeing any of your pages on Google for a week or two then don't sweat it too much, it's just a matter of getting your pages written with good content, submitting your site and sitemap, getting listed on directory sites, and waiting.

Get Listed on Some Good Directory Sites

What is a good directory site anyhow? A good directory is one that people know about, one that has a high PageRank, and one that is either completely dedicated to the same type of content as your site or has specific categories that relate to the type of content on your site. In addition to helping your Google PageRank, being listed on online directories will directly drive some traffic to your site and the more focused that the directory is on your site's topics, the more likely you are to get quality traffic from that directory.

Where to Focus Your Energy

I really believe that when you are just starting out there isn't much you can do about PageRank and you really shouldn't be too worried about it. Sure you can get your site listed on some directories but that will only take you so far. You not will get "first page" organic search results on the Google search page just because you are listed on a bunch of directory sites.

The key to building PR (PageRank) is having great content. If your site has great content it will start showing up on some organic searches and people will come to check out what your site is about. If people really like it, they might link to your website on a blog as something worth checking out. This is how you get a PageRank of 6/10 or 7/10, no matter how many directories you are on, you will not get that kind of PageRank without the help of your user community promoting your site for you.