How to find what you're looking for on the Internet, and allow yourself to be found along the way.

Good search results positioning and how to be first in Google.

On 5 May 2006 Gustave Stresen-Reuter gave a talk on how to find what you're looking for on the Internet and how to make sure you're found if you have a web site.

In short, the best method for achieving good placement is as follows: make sure each page has the same elements as a scientific/academic manuscript. In other words, each page should have some of the following elements explicitly defined:

A clear and accurate title that summarizes the content of the page
The date of publication
Headings and subheadings defined with the tags H1, H2, ...
A summary (description) and keywords that actually reflect the contents of the page
Inbound and outbound links
Valid HTML (which is very difficult to achive, by the way)
An absence of technologies such as Flash, Java, and JavaScript

Furthermore, you should make sure that the title of each page is unique. Repeating the same title on each page doesn't count and, in our opinion, is detrimental to good placement.

What follows is a our presentation (in Spanish) released with a Creative Commons license.

Cómo encontrar lo que buscas en Internet, y cómo dejarte encontrar
Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons.

If you think your web site is not performing as well as it should in the search engines, feel free to contact us about performing an analysis on your site pinpointing where it's failing. Or if you so prefer, you can host your web site with us. Our web sites are already optimized for inclusion in search engines and for showing up at the highest possible level in the search results. Contact us for more information.

Links of interest (with related information):

AboutURL (several web sites that can help you improve your placement)
Webmaster Toolkit (webmaster tools, but everyone can learn something here)
Webconfs.com (tools for optimizing your web site)
Keyword Density Checker (keyword density analysis)
SEO Bench (more tools for testing and improving your search engine results placement)
Google Search Engine Ranking Factors