Using Google's Webmaster Tools to Help Your Backlinking and Ranking

When you're trying to rank your website to get organic search traffic, backlinking is the key. In short, the more back links you get, the higher you will go in the SERPs. Now of course this is a relative thing, but it's important to understand why.

Trying to rank against strong "authority sites" that have high Pagerank and thousands of backlinks can be an exercise in futility. But generally speaking, the more links, the better your site will do. But all back links aren't created equally. Links from strong sites, those with a high Page rank, are worth more to your site than those with lower rank. It's actually the passing of this "link juice" that gives your target site it's boost. This means you want higher value links.

Just as important however, perhaps even more pertinently is whether or not Google sees and counts your links. Though they may index nearly every page, not every link they come across counts towards your SERP ranking. How do you know which is which? That's where Google's Webmaster Tools comes into play.

Webmaster Tools was designed to show the webmaster where their links are coming from. As such, you can see which of the backlinks you are taking the time to get are being seen AND counted by Google. If it isn't in Webmaster Tools, it isn't doing your site any good, at least as far as boosting your ranking is concerned. Another great use for Google's Webmaster Tools is for you to see which links you might be able to take more advantage of. When you see that your links are sticking for instance from your blogs, Squidoo lenses, other sites, etc., you immediately know they are more valuable links. So why not go back and re-visit those web sites? You might just be able to post more links, or put in links to your other sites.

I spend a lot of time in Webmaster Tools. I look to see where my backlinking efforts are paying off, focus further efforts where they count, and reduce the time I put into those that aren't paying me dividends. Plus I comb through the results always looking for new and better sites to go back to with more links. It's also worth noting that Webmaster Tools will show you the specific pages where you are linking to. You should make sure to vary your links, vary your anchor text, and don't just link to your home page, but your inner pages as well.

Make Google Webmaster Tools a routine part of your own "site intelligence". You'll find you can spend your time in a more valuable manner, and that you avoid going through the process of building, checking, waiting, checking some more, all for something that won't help you in the long fun anyway.

The author is working on more mundane topics including Miele Vacuums On Sale and Baby Potty Training for some homemaking publications.

How to Use Latent Semantic Indexing Technology Principles to Improve Search Engine Ranking: Part 2

Google is continuously updating its algorithms to provide searchers with useful, relevant and fresh information. Every time it updates its algorithms, savvy internet marketers are always at the top of search engine, because these webmasters always follow Google quality guidelines. They work based on the core and fundamental principles of the search engine.

Unlike savvy webmasters, lazy webmasters are always chasing the holes of the search engine. They implement different techniques to cheat the search engine. But, as search engine, especially Google is becoming smarter and smarter from time to time, Google uses different techniques to identify cheaters.

Evidence suggest that, Google is using LSI in its algorithm to provide its searchers with relevant and useful information, identify poor content websites, identify duplicate content and examine link profile.

Let's see how Google uses latent semantic indexing:

1. Provide searchers with relevant and useful information;

Latest semantic indexing allows a search engine to determine a relevancy of a page not only with its search query, but also with the context of the search query. In other words, LSI helps search engine to retrieve data based on the context of the search query. There fore, it is important to design your website with LSI in mind.

Several webmasters use automatic content generation software to create articles which are centered on specific keywords. These articles simply created to cheat search engine. Search engine line Google uses latent semantic indexing technology to identify articles created using automatic content generation tools. LSI uses the context of the content to examine its relevancy and usefulness.

3. Identify duplicate content

One of the quality guidelines of Google is to avoid similar pages created across different domains or sub domains. Search engine employ latent semantic indexing technology principles to filter out duplicate pages.

4. Examine link profile

Search engine use link popularity as a major factor to rank web pages. Several Webmasters has long been using different software tools to increase the popularity of their websites, consequently spamming the search engine to deliver irrelevant information. To fight link spamming, search engines use Latent semantic Indexing to identify link spamming by examining the link profile.

There fore, it is important to correctly build links to your website. That is, you have to vary the anchor text of your website. You should not only use the main keywords of your website, but mix with semantically identical words. You should build links to your website in a natural way. Building links semantic in mind will help you boost your ranking.

How to optimize Your Web Site with LSI in Mind

As Google is giving weight to Latent Semantic Indexing, it is important to optimize your website LSI technology in mind. Search engine understand the theme of a website through Latent semantic Indexing technology.

Here are some tips to use :

1.keyword research analysis should incorporate using latent semantic technology principles;

2.Boost Theme of your website by creating content around the main keyword and semantically related words;

3.Search engines use LSI technology to examine your link profile. There fore, you should build links in a natural way, Vary anchor text of your URL;

4.Exchange links only with industry related websites. At the same time you should not exchange links with bad neighborhood.

Summary

Undeniable sources prove that search engines like Google are using latent semantic indexing in their algorithm to provide searchers with useful, fresh and relevant information. Therefore, it is important to optimize your website with LSI in mind.

Is Ranking in Google As Easy As Using Google?

Google's algorithm which helps websites rank, or boots them out of the search results entirely has many variables to it. The thing is - Google can only use what it knows. If you think about it - using as many of Google's services like Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Email, Google RSS Reader, Buzz, and the rest of it - makes sense if you want to rank in Google.

Google has access to heaps of data through these services they offer for your website. Do you think they're using the data from them to decide how you should rank? They are screening emails to decide what ads you might like to see above your email inbox... I think it's a pretty safe bet to say they are using whatever information they have to decide where your site is ranked for top terms important to you.

Google employees like Matt Cutts have said again and again that Google wants to index the best pages online and answer the queries that Google users type into the search engine.

Google wants the best sites to rank very highly because it shows the world that Google's service is irreplaceable. It shows that they know which sites will answer your query. If they had AOL, Geocities, or MySpace profiles showing up in the top results for a keyword searches - how would that look? Not so good.

By using Google's services you are telling them everything about your site possible. You're telling them how many people are using it, what the bounce rate is, the demographics of the people using the site, whether the site is for ecommerce or other use. Whether it's being updated frequently, and many other variables Google must be using to decide how well your site compares to other sites.

Currently Google has a long list of services - nearly all free, that you can put to use for your business.

Here are some:

Analytics Calendar Checkout Documents - including presentations, docs, spreadsheets, forms Email Maps Photos Reader Sites Webmaster Tools YouTube

Why would using Google applications give you a jump on other businesses that don't employ this tactic?

For the simple fact that Google created all these tools to help you create quality content online. For instance, in Google Webmaster Tools there are many tips that can help you better format your site to be optimized for Google. Someone not using these must be losing out. In webmaster tools you can configure many options too.

You can tell Google:

every page you want indexed by using a 'sitemap' which country you prefer your site to be found in above all other countries whether your website should be know as http: //www.yoursite.com or just yoursite.com how quickly the Google bots (spiders) should crawl your site in case you have a server that is subpar.

One of Google's top tools you could use to add content to your site is by embedding YouTube videos directly onto the pages of your site. Google loves multimedia.

If Google is using all the information they have from customers that are taking advantage of all Google has to offer with the services mentioned above and how they relate to website ranking, they will probably never tell us about it. We can only guess that they are doing it because it just makes a whole lot of sense, and enables them to give us the best results for our Google queries.

Use Google for everything, all their services are free - and  they offer some great ways to beef up the content and formatting of your site so it's more easily found.