How to improve your site's Google page rank

Measure your Site's Google Ranking

A simple way to measure your site's Google ranking is to install the Google toolbar for your browser.  You can get it at http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/; search for "Toolbar".  One of the toolbar's features is a display of the current site's PageRank. 

If you don't want to install the toolbar to find your PageRank, try instead the web sites listed at http://blogging-ideas.blogspot.com/2007/09/find-pagerank-of-site.html.

• http://www.rankwhere.com/google-page-rank.php

• http://www.google-pagerank.net/

• http://www.findpagerank.com/

• http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.ranking.htm

Check your site's PageRank using the toolbar before and a few days (weeks?) after you make the following changes.

Expose your site's auto-generated site map to Google

To do this, use Site Setup -> Site Settings, and check the box for

Expose sitemap.xml.gz in the portal root

Exposes your content as a file according to the sitemaps.org standard. You can submit this to compliant search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. It allows these search engines to more intelligently crawl your site.

Add your site to the Google search index

Get yourself a Google account, sign in with it, and add your site to the Google search index.  To do this:

• go to http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

• Add your site's URL to your Dashboard.  

Verify you own the site

To see detailed statistics on when Google crawls through your site, you must prove that you control the site ("verification").  To do that:

• choose the method that requires you to create a page ("upload an HTML file") in your site's top level folder; this page should be given the unique name that Google specifies, e.g. "google89fdda744be78326.html". 
  
• In your Plone site, log in, and at the top level of the site, click Add New, Page, and give it the title that Google specified.  In the body of the page simply type a space (otherwise Plone may complain about the body not containing anything).  Before you click Save, click on the Settings tab and check the box next to "Exclude from navigation".  Click Save. 
  
• Change the state of the new page to "visible" (preferable) or "published". 
  
• Back in your Google Dashboard, continue the process of verifying your site by clicking on the Verify button.

Tell Google about your site map

To further improve your Google search rankings, tell Google where to find your site's sitemap.xml.gz that you exposed in step 1 above.  To do this:

• In your Google Dashboard, click on the Add a Site Map link.  Choose the "general web sitemap" type.  
• Where it asks you for the location of your site map, put    sitemap.xml.gz   in the text field.
• Click on the Add General Web Sitemap button.

Once you have done all of the above, Google will update its search index for your site within the next few days.