PART I – Getting Started
This section of the book lays the foundation for your work. It is highly recommended
that you understand the concepts and perform the tasks discussed here, even if you
feel they are basic or you already know them.
The first chapter deals with how Google works, while the second chapter discusses
the important concept of
keywords
and how they form the basis of your future efforts
and success with Google.
Before we continue, there are a few basic terms that you should understand right off
the bat. These terms are the most often misunderstood by beginners. There are
other terms you’ll need to know, but let’s get through these first.
Rank, ranking:
a website’s actual placement or position on the free (unpaid) listings
section of a search engine results page for a certain search term or phrase. It is
meaningless to speak of website rank without specifying what search word or phrase
you are ranked on. When someone says to you “My website is #1 on Google”, you
need to ask “OK, but for which search term?” Your ranking on Google is dependent
on a number of different factors, which is the subject of a significant portion of this
guide.
PageRank:
Google’s patented system for specifying a web page’s
importance
,
which is but a single, albeit important, factor that determines rank. Many people
confuse a page’s rank (what position they are on a search results page) with a
page’s PageRank (PR) value. They are totally separate. Because of the confusion
around PageRank, it will be discussed in detail later on.
Keywords:
Keywords for those words and phrases that best define what a web
page is all about, and are found in a variety of places on web pages. When someone
enters a search term or phrase into Google, Google tries to find those web pages
whose keywords match the search phrase the best. This is an oversimplification
here, but you should get the idea. Some people confuse keywords with the META
“Keywords” tag. They are not the same thing. The days of filling up the META
Keywords tag with as many terms as possible are over. Google, along with most
other search engines today, ignore META tags as they have been so abused.
Page title:
The title of a web page is the text contained between the
browser window. It is
not
the first heading of a web page or any other large text that
may be displayed at the top of a web page. This is an important distinction to know.
For a complete list of terms and their definitions, see the
Glossary.
