Every company wants their website to be the first listing in a Google search. Some spend thousands of dollars making their Web sites search accessible. This process is called search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO isn’t just for companies. Google actually publishes its general guidelines for search rankings.

At one time, the main key to increase rankings was to add keywords to their HTML. However, search sites no longer give much weight to that. Instead, the bots scan the sites. Based on what they find, they select keywords themselves.

People sometimes seed their sites with preferred keywords. However, Google warns that excessive keywords can be ignored.

I wouldn’t try to cheat the system. That can be tempting, but think twice. Google knows all the tricks. It even tells you what not to do. The best strategy is to know and follow the rules.

The first step is making sure your site is in Google’s index. This is a list of every known searchable Web site. You can suggest your site to Google directly.

The Google index isn’t only a list of sites. It also includes each site’s content and links. The content is distilled into keywords. These keywords are used to find relevant sites during searches.

All the index information is gathered by Googlebot. This program intelligently scans Web pages and analyzes content.

Once Googlebot is done with one page, it moves on to the next. After it finishes an entire Web site, it moves to another one. The next site is determined by links from the first site.

This raises two important considerations. The first is how your Web site displays information. Googlebot only scans text; it can’t process images.

If all your important information is in images, it won’t see anything. Your site might as well be empty. Fortunately, Google explains the best way to design a site for indexing.

The second consideration is links. Googlebot uses links to find more sites to index. So, adding links to other sites is good. But it is even better when other sites link to you.

The more incoming links you have, the easier you are to find. This indicates to Googlebot that your information is relevant. More relevancy increases your search rank. But don’t go overboard with linking. Search rank is determined by 200 additional factors.

Good site design and linking will get you into a Google search. But you still might be listed way down the page. What can you do to improve things?

Google has a collection of webmaster tools to help. These are accessed using a free Google account. If you already have Gmail, that account will work.

These tools include things like a Crawl error page. This tells you what parts of your site Googlebot couldn’t read. You can also submit a sitemap, which summarizes your Web site.

Additionally, a search-based keyword tool identifies keywords associated with your site. It’s possible your content doesn’t communicate what you think it does. You might need to alter your site.

Be sure to look at the Google checklist. This is a step-by-step summary of all the things to try.

Some people don’t want their site showing up on Google. This is easily managed as well. You simply add a bit of code to your Web site. This will force the Googlebot to leave it out of the index.

Search is one of the things that make the Internet usable. Search is how most people who don’t know you find out about you, who don’t know about your website, products or information, find you. Google is the number one search engine in the world today.  And if your site isn’t optimized to work with Google, you aren’t getting the exposure you could be getting.