Here are 4 ways to get the love:

1. Relevance: Someone doing a search on Google is looking for information that is trustworthy, from an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, and includes original content. This original reporting, original research, and original analysis are top qualities in Google’s eyes, so create the one-of-a-kind content your audience is looking for.

2. Speed: Website visitors are not a patient lot. Studies show that users are happier with faster sites and less satisfied with slow sites, so speed is now a factor in Google site ranking. Make sure your web coding is lean and mean, uses the latest web standards, and uses CSS to minimize bulked-up code.

3. Comprehensiveness: Web users want to get all the information they need in one place. Include plenty of helpful information about your subject and links between content on your site so users can find everything they need without having to search elsewhere. Be smart about your tags, meta descriptions, and site architecture, and include relevant keywords in your copy to help Google find your content and rank it higher.

4. Freshness: Web searchers are looking for the latest information on a given topic, so Google ranks sites that have regularly updated content higher. While Google will crawl virtually every page on the web eventually, the more frequently your content changes, the faster Google comes back. Regularly create content with catchy headlines and cool stories covering the latest information on your specialties.

Remember: If Google doesn’t deliver, searchers will go elsewhere to find what they need, so it’s in Google’s best interest to deliver what searchers want: relevance, speed, comprehensiveness, and freshness. Make sure your site delivers these and Google will love your site.

Resources:

Learn why you shouldn’t launch your website without SEO and the art and science of SEO. Catch details about getting Google to love your site in the Marketing Profs class What Marketers Should Know About Google. And Google Webmaster Central is a great place to get all the inside help you need to optimize your site and keep your loving relationship with Google going strong.

It’s no surprise that Nielsen shows a dramatic increase of 36% in the number of mobile internet users worldwide over that past year. What may be surprising is that 14% of this group view sites exclusively on a handheld device, not on a desktop or laptop computer. As the number of mobile-only surfers grows, and mobile computing becomes a part of the daily routine, it will become more and more important to make sure your site provides a good user experience for everyone, no matter how visitors access your website.

So, how is developing a website for mobile devices different from developing a site for desktop computers?
If you’re using good web development practices, your adjustments should be minor. We’ll assume you’re already using web standards, optimizing your images for the web, creating an organized site with simple navigation, and providing clean copy for your visitors. Keep the three following ideas in mind and you’ll be well on your way.

1. Keep it simpler.
With slow download speeds on some mobile devices, you need to keep it small. Provide minimal navigation at the top of the page, limit use of large images, and provide a text equivalent for each image. Serve up information in small pieces over a series of pages. And, don’t have an auto refresh or anything that requires repeated downloads from the network.

2. Design with device limitations in mind.
Make sure your website doesn’t use any of the known hazards of mobile devices. Limit scrolling to one direction, don’t rely on fonts or colors as a way to distinguish between elements, don’t depend on cookies, make sure the site works well with or without CSS, don’t use pop ups, and avoid Flash and JavaScript.

3. Design with device capabilities in mind
Mobile devices do some things better than desktops  and laptops. For example, you can customize your site for mobile phones by making phone numbers dial when clicked.  Or, you might want to include capabilities to send and receive MMS and SMS messages on your site.

Test your site on as many devices as you can.
There is an ever-growing number of smartphone operating systems, each with its own web browser: The biggies today are Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Linux, iPhone, PalmOS, and the recently released Android OS. While you can run your code through a validator and check your site with online emulators, there’s no substitute for testing your site on actual handheld devices.

If you don’t have 6-7 extra smartphones lying around, don’t be shy—ask your friends to let you take a peek at your site on their phones. If you’ve done your job right and followed the three steps above, it should look awesome!

If you want more information, take a look at the the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 guidelines, developed this year by the W3C, the international organization that develops standards for the web.

Still in the dark about what CSS is? Check out my presentation “Why Tables for Layout is Stupid” on why following Web Standards and using Cascading Style Sheets makes for superior sites. This cult classic, originally presented at Seybold, is now available in 20+ languages.