• Validate HTML - sites with valid HTML allow search engines to quickly and easily index your web site. Use http://validator.w3.org to check your code.
• Use simple URLs - http://www.udel.edu/yourweb site is much easier for the search engine to index than URLs with a lot of variables and parameters.
• Have other sites link to your web site - the more frequently the search engine finds links to your web site on reputable web sites, the more important it thinks your site is.
• Use robots.txt - a robots.txt file helps search engines determine what content they should index and what content to ignore. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt.
• Check your page rank - the higher your page rank, the more important Google thinks your web site is. Therefore, your web site will appear at a higher rank in search results. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.
• Use keywords in your content - if you want the web site to appear in search results for a specific keyword or phrase, make sure to use the word(s) in your content.
• Include alt on images - search engines cannot read words within images, so be sure to include alt="words in images" within your image tags if they are important for a search engine.
• Add a site map - if you think the search engine is missing pages while indexing your web site, add a site map with links to all your pages. Also, make sure the index page links to the site map.
• META tags – help improve your search results with relevant META tags.

Questions about UD's Google search may be directed to the Help Center at (302) 831-6000, e-mail to consult@udel.edu, or link to www.udel.edu/help.

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