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What Google Thinks Of Your Site?
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008

How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed
online because Google has become the dominant search engine on
the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market.
In other countries around the world that percentage rises to
80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly
permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google
will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic.

If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is
to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic
keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic
from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is
extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates.

In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most
webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of
my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always
geared my online marketing towards Google. I have spent years
building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the
fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a
positive experience.

This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for
anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content.
The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be
to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come
your way.

SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts

And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google
as is humanly possible, but Google doesn't give up its secrets
easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true
opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs - if
your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in
Google's "Search Engine Results Pages" then Google must think
your site or content deserves to be there.

However, there are other ways of finding out how Google is
viewing your content. Below are several Google webmaster tools
and things you can do to discover just how Google views your
site or pages. They will give you a better picture of what
Google thinks about your site.

Checking Your Content/Keywords In Google

One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages
consist of is located here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will
get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content.
If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you
have to do some re-writing.

Checking Your Backlinks In Google

If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in
Google, just open up Google Search and type in:

link:yourURL

and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.

Since Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, many
webmasters also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links
your site has on the web.

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

Now whether Google is using or considering all these backlinks
is the big question? Finding the exact number of backlinks you
have in Google has always been a problem because Google is not
giving you the exact number or at least this is the general
opinion of most SEO experts.

Another way I monitor my links in Google is to place quotation
marks around my site name or my name "bizwaremagic" or "titus
hoskins" and do a search in Google. This gives me the pages
containing references to me or my site. This is usually 50,000
to 100,000 pages, I have also noticed my online income usually
correlates as this number goes up or down.

Checking Your Indexed Pages In Google

Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content
the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also
check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any
titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by
using the site command.

Just type into Google Search:

site:yourURL

A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google's
Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed
Google was judging these pages as "second class" pages. Since
then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading
pages but that doesn't mean a supplementary index doesn't exist;
just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages
as well in any search query.

Checking Your Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by
using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last
retrieved.

Just type into Google Search:

cache:yourURL

Checking Your PageRank Within Google

Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the
heart of Google's ranking system created by Larry Page and
Sergey Brin; each link is considered a "vote" for your page and
the higher the number of "votes" you have, the higher the PR
your page receives. However, again Google is using "smoke and
mirrors" to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse
and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank
still counts, other say it doesn't.

You can check your Google PageRank here:

http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

From my own experiences, I have received more traffic when my
site was at PR4 than I received when it was at PR6. What's
important is getting high rankings for your targeted keywords...
if you get top spots, it doesn't matter if your main index page
(site) is PR4 or PR6, you'll still get the same amount of
traffic. In other words, don't become too fixated on PageRank
because Google in many cases is not letting you see the true PR
of a webpage.

I would like to add one point to the whole PageRank issue and
that has to do with perception. If you're running an online
business, then having a PR8 site does matter for it will bring in
more business and customers (especially if you're in the SEO
industry) mainly because of the "perceived value" of your site
or business.

What Google thinks does matter!

In other words, what Google thinks of your site can play a major
role in your success. Mainly because, like it or hate it, Google
has become the supreme authority on the web and what they say,
counts. Therefore, you should always be paying special attention
to just what Google is saying about your site and acting upon
that knowledge accordingly.
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The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Marketing
Tools (http://www.bizwaremagic.com). Everyone is profiting from
Google, find out how you can too! Click here: Google Cash File
(http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Google_Cash_File.htm)

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may
be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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