Every once in a while I stumble across some very interesting 
information. This happened to me this week and I thought that I 
would share with you what I have found. If you are interested in 
improving your google search engine rankings and your page rank 
you must make sure that you are doing exactly what Google wants 
you to do. As you probably know already, Google is the largest 
search engine on the Internet. To receive a high ranking from 
Google means that you will generate huge amounts of traffic to 
your website. People are always searching for ways to improve 
their search engine rankings and ways to appease the Google Gods. 

One of the primary things that Google and its algorithms look at 
is whether or not you are providing a "value-added service". Now 
that we know this we need to figure out exactly what Google means 
by the term "value-added service". A value-added service is one 
that can stand on its own merits. By this I mean that the website 
is not simply a redirecting website. The website contains 
information that offers value to the reader. Many people use 
websites that are what Google refers to as a "sneaky redirect". 
That means that when a user goes to that site, he or she is 
simply sent elsewhere. A sneaky redirect is not a value-added 
service by Google standards. In fact, if you operated websites 
that are simply redirecting people to other sites, Google will 
actually deem your site as being "offensive". 

Another way to determine if you are offering a value-added 
service according to Google is to ask yourself "Would this site 
remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to the affiliate 
were taken away?" This of course applies to those of you who 
are trying to generate revenue from sources such as Adsense, 
Overture, or similar affiliate linking programs. If Google 
decides that your website would not remain as a coherent whole, 
your site will again be deemed as "offensive". Google does not 
like for a website to be set up solely for the purpose of 
generating affiliate links. It is however ok to have affiliate 
links as long as the site offers something to the reader other 
than affiliates links. This is where unique content comes into 
play. Having unique content on your site that offers the reader 
some type of information, entertainment, etc. will help your 
website to remain a coherent whole after the affiliate links are 
removed. Google wants to differentiate between whether or not 
the affiliate linking is "central or incidental" to the sites 
existence. If it is central, then you are in trouble, if it is 
incidental then you should be fine according to Google. 

This is where the concept of a value-added service comes in 
again. Your website needs to be able to stand on its own two feet 
so to speak. Your website needs to offer something that other 
websites do not. Whether it is unique content, a specialized 
product, or a specialized service, your site needs to be able 
to stand alone without links. 

There are many other things that Google will penalize websites 
for. One of these is irrelevant repetitive text. This used to 
work in the past, but Google and the other major search engines 
have come up with algorithms to deal with this. If you remember, 
a few years ago webmasters would simply put in keywords at the 
bottom of their web page over and over again. They would put in 
all the variations of the keywords in an attempt to get more 
hits. There would literally be hundreds of thousands of these 
keywords listed at the bottom of the web page, so that no matter 
what a person was searching for on the Internet they could get 
directed to these pages. This no longer works. Nowadays people 
are writing keyword-optimized articles and adhering to certain 
keyword densities in the articles, so that they do not get in 
trouble with the search engines. 

Another issue that Google looks at when determining whether or 
not you are providing a value-added service is that your website 
has been designed for the users, not the search engines. This 
means that your website does not employ what Google calls 
"cloaking" techniques. Google defines cloaking as deceiving 
users by presenting different content to search engines than 
what you present to users. This will automatically result in 
an "offensive" designation from Google. 

These are just some of the basic guidelines set forth by the 
Google Gods. You can read more about these guidelines at 
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ Always remember that creating 
unique content for your website is one of the best ways to be 
deemed as providing a value-added service by Google. I encourage 
you to read the information at the above link and to educate 
yourself so that you get the search engine results that you are 
looking to receive.  

Trey Pennewell is a writer for http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com
"Links and Traffic" is a value-added service designed to help 
generate, of course, "links and traffic" for their clients. 
Using high quality content as the foundation, LATC will create 
high quality links to your website, AND they will Guarantee 
Their Results.