I'm Googled Therefore I Am...

The purpose of a website is not be be found on search engines, but without being seen there isn't a lot of point is there? Paradoxically the more that people try and 'game' the search engine pot of gold the more they are at risk of being penalised by Google. I have been reading about the blacklisting that can happen to websites who's webmasters resort to 'dirty tricks' such as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is, just like it sounds, a method of stuffing lots of keywords into the code that don't form part of the content of the site. Affiliate adverting is another practice that Google dislikes strongly. (You may have seen the adverts - to get rich quick, work from home on your computer ...etc - don't go there!)

There are other 'tricks' that Google doesn't take kindly to, like link farms - sites which are just a huge list of links. It's not a good idea to get linked on one of those sites as you can be judged by the company you keep, as it were.

There are a lot of sensible things one can do to improve your websites visibility, however, without falling foul of the all seeing, all knowing 'eye in the sky'. Keeping your content clear and concise with the searchable keywords scattered prudently and infrequently through your text is one, and keeping it relevant to what your website is about. Putting 'Michael Jackson' in the text simply because it's a newsworthy topic that is likely to be searched is probably not going to do a lot of good. Not using pictures as links is another handy tip. The bots that crawl the web don't read the links in pictures, so put your link before the picture.

So the next philisophical question is: If a website has a video of a tree falling in the forest, and Google doesn't find it, does it still exist?