You surf the Net. You chat. You use the e-mail. But most often, you ?Google? when you hook on to the Internet. Given that the Internet is a veritable minefield of information, people mostly throng the Net, the search engines to be precise, to hunt for information. And when it comes to search engines, Google is head and shoulders above the field. So webmasters definitely have a stake to have their sites in the good books of Google. That is to say, webmasters want their sites to get a higher ranking in the Google search engine.

Before delving in to the how-tos of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or bagging a good rank in the search engine, it is imperative that you understand the workings behind it. And this would involve knowing all about the Google spiders that crawl the Net.

?Googlebot?, Google?s proprietary spider software, like its counterparts at the other search engines, goes through all the web sites that are on the Internet and stores the text and the keywords that are present in the web pages. This data is then stored in a database to be raked up in the future when you ask for information based on a particular keyword.

There are ways and means not to get entangled in the web spun by these spiders, also known as ?crawlers? and end up right at the bottom of the rankings, or worse, find yourself out of reckoning, the index that is, altogether. These are pretty intelligent and principled spiders and if you are dead serious about having your site optimized, then forget about including cloaking, JavaScript redirecting and other such fishy measures in your websites. Google has come up with an improved spider that can look right through all these and penalize you for employing devious means.

To have your website optimized, it is also important that you keep it updated. The Google spiders have the habit of banishing websites that they feel have not been touched since the days of the Stonehenge. But there?s a catch to this. Don?t expect to skyrocket to the top either, if you are in the habit of renovating your site only once in a blue moon. The Google spiders reward only those sites which go through upgrades frequently.

There are certain other things about the update mode that are worthwhile to follow. And upgrade doesn?t mean including a ?the? or changing the font style of the content. The upgrade must be something meaningful like including information in the major portions of the website like the body copy containing the keywords.

Don?t go overboard with your content upgrades. That means you don?t go into a topic changing spree, and that means adding and chopping off topics merrily. Any drastic changes, and the Google spiders will think that the website has changed hands and it will consider your existing ranking null and void. And this goes for the keywords and the links too. The key to search engine optimization is being consistent and not too speak of, being relevant. Sudden spurts in the number of links and the variety and amount of keywords won?t fool the spiders into thinking that your web site is something too grand for words.

The basics of search engine optimization are actually all about ethical business practices. Nothing martyr-like is expected from you. Just follow the above rules and stop looking for loopholes to tweak your way around the search engine spiders because there aren?t any.