Hari ini salah satu client saya complain karena websitenya yang baru saya selesaikan belum nongol di Google dan Yahoo, padahal sudah saya daftarkan di kedua search engine itu. Bahkan sebenernya ga perlu didaftarkan loh… Saya lakukan ini hanya untuk kepuasan client, mengingat banyak web developer di luaran yang meng-claim bisa menjamin situs bikinannya dapet ranking tinggi di Google. Read this: What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?

Komik yang saya dapet dari WebDesignerComic.com ini kayanya cukup mewakili kondisi market ^^

So, kalo Google-nya aja bilang “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”, then How do I add my site to Google’s search results?

Inclusion in Google’s search results is free and easy; you don’t even need to submit your site to Google. Google is a fully automated search engine that uses software known as “spiders” to crawl the web on a regular basis and find sites to add to our index. In fact, the vast majority of sites listed in our results aren’t manually submitted for inclusion, but found and added automatically when our spiders crawl the web.

…website macem apa yang akan ditemukan oleh Google dan ditambahkan ke dalam direktorinya? Situs yang “Google-friendly”. Nah sekarang pertanyaannya: How can I create a Google-friendly site?

1. Give visitors the information they’re looking for
Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.

2. Make sure that other sites link to yours
Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our view of a page’s importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives as part of its PageRank assessment, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

3. Make your site easily accessible
Build your site with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link. Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to examine your site. Most spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.

Google juga menyarankan kita ga gampang percaya ama search engine optimization service. Alih-alih dapet ranking utama di Google, web kita malah dibanned.

Some companies claim to “guarantee” high ranking for your site in Google’s search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index.

I have my website done by the expert! Then kenapa masih belum nongol juga? Read: How often does Google crawl the web? Mungkin website Anda online tepat setelah sistem Google selesai melakukan crawling periodiknya? Please be patient, Anda pastinya tahu jumlah web di dunia ini tidak hanya dalam hitungan juta. Bisa milyar, trilyun…

Yang jelas, saya ga pernah berani kasi guarantee bahwa website bikinan saya pasti nongol di Google. Lha Googlenya sendiri aja ga ngasi jaminan apa-apa, siapalah saya ini?