Why optimize for Google? The answer is simple. Google is the most widely used search engine, and powers over 70% of the searches done worldwide. Optimizing for Google is a cheap and sure way of getting quality traffic to a website. Compared to other PPC (Pay Per Click) and PPI (Pay Per Inclusion) search engines, Google provides traffic at very affordable price. The price being optimization of website for Google traffic. It may also be noted, the optimization for Google nearly optimizes for other search engines like AltaVista also. The primary factors that contribute to Google traffic are:

• Content of the website, original and theme based.
• Webpage/website popularity or back links. This refers to the number of sites that are linking to your site.
• Title,Key words or Key Phrases.
• Listing with other directories such as ODP, and Yahoo.

Things that are deemed as spam and should be avoided:

1. Heavy cross linking between sites, with the objective of improving the link popularity,

2. Cloaking, a technique that is used to display different pages to the search engine spiders than the ones normal visitors see. This is considered as spam by most search engines, including Google.

3. Redirects - Webmasters often use redirects, or refreshes, on websites for any number of reasons. This should be avoided. The redirect has often been the cause of penalization within Google as well as other search engines.

3. Hidden text - This is a trick that used to work, but has since been regarded as spam. If one was to use this method, it is safe to say your website is going to get banned.

4. Any thing that is aimed at artificially increasing the link popularity, and not contributing to the user experience.

When promoting for Google (for that matter, any search engine) avoid spam at all costs. A website that contains spam is very likely to get banned.

Google uses what is called Page Rank. A better page rank with keyword optimization, and back links is important for success with Google.