Make Your Web Site Google-icious

For many Web users, Google or Yahoo are their first stops when searching the Web. And, when those search results appear, it is our goal that K-State Research and Extension sites top the list, and that our descriptions within those results are captivating enough to get users to click on our links.

So, a question we ask is how to make our sites more “Google-icious!” Here are a few tips:

-Title your site. Make sure your page has a descriptive, accurate title. It’s the first thing people will see from your site when they do a search. And keep it short. If you look at Google search results, Google only displays about the first 64 characters of a title.
-Always add descriptions to documents. When making PDFs with Acrobat, use Control D, and put a good title in the title field.
-Include alt text on navigations, graphics. Without alt text, search engines cannot “read” what your graphics represent. Adding the alt text lets a visual item be read as content.
-Create a network of links. By linking to other sites and encouraging them to link to your site, you can move up the ranking of search results.
-Add metadata. These are the descriptive words that explain what is in your site, and it also appears in the site description in a Google search.
- Register your site at Open Directory Project, a web directory of Internet resources, including Google: http://dmoz.org/add.html. Or use http://www.google.com/addurl.html

For more tips to make your site Google-friendly, check out these resources:
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/Help_Google.htm
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/Help_Google_Find_Ext.pdf
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/Help_Google_Find_Kansas_U.pdf

If you need more information on search engines, please contact Amy Hartman at 785-532-6379, or email ahartman@ksu.edu.

Make Your Web Site Google-icious