Google Search – SEO Style

January 7, 2009 · Filed Under SEO Resources, SEO Tips 

There are a wide variety of ways to use Google to search that will help you when you’re optimizing a page.  Here are a few of my favorites.

  1. intitle – intitle:keyword – If you want to know what web pages are optimizing for a keyword phrase you’re considering, type intitle:yourkeyword in the Google search box.  This will return to you a list of web pages that are using that keyword in their title – an important on-page SEO technique.  If you’re looking for a particular keyword phrase in the title use quotes like this:  intitle:”Keyword Phrase Goes Here”.  And finally if you want to see who isn’t optimizing their pages at all, just for fun, try intitle:”Untitled Document”.  You can also use this for a specific command we talk about below called site.  To see the web pages that are optimizing their title for a certain keyword or keyword phrase within their site then use:  intitle:”Keyword phrase” site:nameofsite.com.
  2. inurl – inurl:keyword – If you want to know what URLs contain a specific keyword phrase in their URL (web address) then simply type inurl:keyword.  If you’re looking for a phrase in their URL then type inurl:”keyword phrase”.  Note that this will pull back the pages on a website that contain this phrase in their entire URL including any web pages within their site.
  3. inanchor – inanchor:keyword – If you want to know what web pages contain a specific keyword within their anchor text on their page, then simply type in inanchor:keyword.  If you’re looking for a specific keyword phrase, use quotes: inanchor:”keyword phrase”. Alternatively if you want to find a link on a specific web page that contains certain keywords, you’d then type in: inanchor:”keyword phrase” site:nameofsite.com.
  4. site – site:nameofsite.com – If you want to see how many pages of a website are indexed in the search engines then type in site:nameofsite.com.
  5. link – link:nameofsite.com – If you want to know how many links are pointing to a site you can enter in link:nameofsite.com.  Note that Google is notorious for not giving you all of this information to take it with a grain of salt.
  6. filetype -filetype:file_extension.  If you want to know how many web pages have a certain filetype extension you can type in filetype:fla for example.   This will show you all of the pages indexed with the .fla extension.  A great way to see how well Google is indexing flash.  Also try filetype:pdf.  This also works well with the site search.  If for example you wanted to locate a pdf file on a certain website you’d then enter filetype:pdf site:nameofsite.com.
  7. intext – intext:Keyword – the intext command allows you to find all web pages that contain a certain keyword within their text.  intext:keyword.  You can also use this with the site command as well to search for a specific word or phrase within a websites text: intext:keyword site:nameofsite.com.  Use quotes to search for a phrase intext:”keyword phrase”.
  8. cache – cache:nameofsite.com.  If you want to see the last cached version of a web page or site type in cache:nameofsite.com.
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