Build High Web Site Ranking

A word on convergence

2006-05-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Convergence is an important mathematical aspect of PageRank, which allows
Google to provided unprecedented search quality at comparably low costs. This is
a semi-complex topic but it is important to your understanding of how and why
PageRank works. We've tried to make it as simple as possible but, unless you're
Sergey Brin or Larry Page, you'll still need to concentrate!

Whilst it will take some concentration, it isn't that hard to understand.

We've shown that the outlet values (final values) of one stage of the
calculation become the inlet values (starting values) of the next stage, and
that we keep on doing this (it's known as a recursive procedure). But the really
big question is how and when does the recursive procedure stop?

The answer is "convergence". Provided the dampening factor (d in our equation) is less than one, then convergence will occur. Nominally we set it to 0.85
(because that's the value mentioned in the Stanford papers).

This convergence basically means that whatever values we start at, after running
the calculation a number of times we will end up with the same final values and
that these values will no longer change if we do further iterations of the

calculation. These final values are known as limiting values.

Once the limiting values have been reached, Google no longer needs to expend
processing power on calculating the PageRank. They can finish there!

This is easier to understand with an example. Let's take a look at the following
structure:

PageRank for pages A, B, C, D at various stages of iteration

How PageRank is calculated

2006-05-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

On a simple level, we can tell quite a lot about how PageRank is calculated. This is because when Google was just a university research project, the creators of PageRank published a paper that detailed a formula for calculating it. This formula is now more than a handful of years old, and we suspect that it has changed somewhat since then. However, for detailing the over-riding principles of how PageRank works, it is as accurate today as the day it was written.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1) /C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn) /C(Tn) )
Where PR(A) is the PageRank of Page A ( the one we want to work out ) .
D is a dampening factor. Nominally this is set to 0.85
PR(T1) is the PageRank of a site point ing to Page A
C(T1) is the number of links off that page
PR(Tn) /C(Tn) means we do that for each page point ing to Page A

Source: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Couldn't be simpler right? Depending on your mathematical competence, this is either remarkably easy to understand, or remarkably complex. So here's the deal ? this isn't a one-time calculation. It looks pretty above, but you can't just do one simple calculation and get an answer with the PageRank of a page! If you look at it, to calculate the PageRank of Page A, we need to know the PageRank of all the pages pointing to it. To calculate the PageRank of those pages we need to know the PageRank of all the pages pointing to them (one of which could, and is quite likely to be Page A!). If this seems like it could go around in circles forever, that's because it nearly does. We have to do a whole lot of little calculations many times over before we actually get the answer. What this formula tells us is that however you slice it, and however the formula may have changed since it was written:

The PageRank given to Page A by a Page B pointing to it, is decreased with each link to anywhere that exists on Page B. This means that a page?s PageRank is essentially a measure of its vote; it can split that vote between one link or two or many more, but its overall voting power will always remain the same.

This really is important. So to be totally clear, let's put some numbers to it (these numbers are made up for demonstration purposes only, and have no relevancy to any particular page). Say Page B has a PageRank value of 5 and has a single link on it pointing to Page A. Page A's PageRank is improved by a proportion of Page B's value of 5 (Page B doesn't lose anything, but Page A gains). If Page B has two links, that PageRank improvement would be split, and Page A would only gain half the PageRank that it did before.

Now put the formula out of your mind for a moment, as it's easier to understand how it works using a diagram. Let's say we have a hypothetical set of pages imaginatively titled Page A, Page B, Page C and Page D. They link to each other as shown below:

To begin with, in our example at least, we don't know what the page's starting PageRanks are. There's nothing special about the number that we pick to start with (in fact, if you read forward to the section on convergence ? you can see that we can start at any number we want). Since in the last version of this paper we performed the calculations by setting these values to 1 ? we're going to set them to zero this time around in order to prove that it doesn't matter what the starting values are.

Next, we perform the necessary calculation to obtain the PageRank for each page. The rules are:

1. We take a 0.85 * a page's PageRank, and divide it by the number of links on the page.
2. We add that amount on to a new total for each page it's being passed to.
3. We add 0.15 to each of those totals.

The first calculation is easy. Because we've started at zero ? 0 * 0.85 is always 0. So each page gets just 0.15 + 0. Meaning each page now has a PageRank of 0.15. Clearly we're not done ? we want to show the importance of each page based upon links, and they're all the same; so we need to run the calculation again.

Page A links to pages B, C and D. Page A's PageRank is 0.15 so it will add 0.85 * 0.15 = 0.1275 to the new PageRank scores of the pages it links to. There are three of them so they each get 0.0425.

Page B links to page C. Page B's PageRank is 0.15 so it will add 0.85 * 0.15 =0.1275 to the new PageRank score of the pages it links to. Since it only links to page C, page C will get it all.

Page C links to Page A, all 0.1275 passes to page A.

Page D links to Page C. Again all 0.1275 passes to page C.

The new totals for each page them become:

Page A: 0.15 (base) + 0.1275 (from Page C) = 0.2775
Page B: 0.15 (base) + 0.0425 (from Page A) = 0.1925
Page C: 0.15 (base) + 0.0425 (from Page A) + 0.1275 (from Page B) + 0.1275
(from Page D) = 0.4475
Page D: 0.15 (base) + 0.0425 (from Page A) = 0.1925

So we've got:

Pretty neat huh? Already we're begining to see that Page C is probably the most important page in the system (but we can't be sure yet ? it could well change). We carry on doing these calculations until the value for each page no longer changes (this is called convergence ? there's more about this in the next section). In practice, Google probably doesn't wait for this convergence, but instead run a number of iterations of the calculation which is likely to give them fairly accurate values (more on this later as well). If we carried out all the calculations for the example given, it would take us 143 calculations [ Excel Example 1] and we'd reach final values of:

As suspected, Page C is the most important. If we take a quick look at these raw values we can see something about the number of links pointing out from a page. Look at Page A, which has a link from a high PageRank page (Page C), which has only one outbound link. Then look at Page B and D; both share links from a high PageRank page (Page A), with three outbound links. The number of links significantly alters the way PageRank is distributed.

Really heavy competition

2006-05-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

No explanation of PageRank strategies would be complete without a final statement regarding heavy keyword competition. There are some queries where competition is so intense that you must do everything possible to maximize your ranking score (for example "web hosting"). In such situations it is impossible to rank highly through Non-PageRank factors alone (as you will not initially be listed high enough to be noticed and linked to). That is not to say that Non-PageRank factors aren't important. Consider what your final rank score is:

Final Rank Score = (score for all Non-PageRank factors) x (actual PageRank score).

Improving either side of the equation can have a positive effect. However, because the Non-PageRank factors have a restricted maximum benefit, the actual PageRank score must be improved in order to compete successfully. Under really heavy competition ? it holds true that you cannot rank well unless your actual PageRank score is above a certain level. In other words:

There exists a query specific "Minimum PageRank level". For queries that do not have heavy competition, this level is easy to achieve without even trying. However, where heavy competition exists, Non-PageRank factors are just as important (and easier to get) until they reach the Non-PageRank factor threshold. This is why careful keyword choice can help you avoid the extensive work associated with highly competitive search phrases.

Using the threshold to derive the worth of two ranking strategies

2006-05-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

The threshold explains principles and the different ways that search engine marketers work. It also demonstrates why some of the misunderstandings about PageRank occur. Let's consider the strategies of two people, Person A consders PageRank to be unimportant, and Person B considers PageRank to be very important.

Person A says "PageRank" is unimportant. They have optimised pages for years and know how to use "on the page" factors very successfully. They understand the basics of anchor text but they couldn't care at all about PageRank.

What's happening: person A is reaching the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold very quickly because they are maximising the "on the page" factors. Through carefully choosing keywords they jump-start themselves up the SERPs. As long as their content is good, high-ranking sites (over time) tend to get linked to. Whilst they didn't directly ask for it, a slow trickle of sites will begin to link to them and give them PageRank, which helps consolidates their position.

Person B says "PageRank" is important. We've all seen those pages in the results that have no content, but great rankings (With big brands, this can often occur naturally even when they have no idea what PageRank is. This would be Person C who is not relevant to the discussion at hand.) Person B understands lots about PageRank and concentrates heavily on it.

What's happening: person B is doing the reverse of person A. Whilst person A concentrated on the Non-PageRank factors and found herself getting PageRank anyway, person B concentrates on the PageRank Factor and finds himself getting Non-PageRank factors. The reason for this is that increasing

PageRank requires links, and links have anchor text. Thus, through carefully choosing the anchor text linking to his page, person B automatically increases his Non-PageRank factor scores whilst obtaining his high PageRank score. Obviously, these are two extremes, but we can use these to extrapolate the advantages and disadvantages of each approach:

It is clear that both strategies can and do work. Both strategies are using PageRank as part the mix of factors that will ultimately improve their ranking in the SERPS. Because there is such a mix, we can use them to different degrees, depending on the strategy that best suits your style. My personal strategy is to use a combination, but to save some of the ?on the page? factors for later, in case I need a quick boost if the competition heats up at a later time.

Non-PageRank Factor Threshold

2006-05-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

Having written about the difference between PageRank and other factors, and how PageRank is harder to get, it should now be clear that whilst we could use many methods to get good rankings, there is a threshold which defines when high PageRank is worth striving for and when it is not.

With ranking factors other than PageRank, there is a score beyond which the slow down in the rate that any factor adds to this score is so insignificant that it is not worthwhile. This is the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold. To illustrate this,
let?s put an example figure on this of 1000.

If we have a query where the results are Page A and Page B, then Page A and B have scores for that query which are the total scores for all ranking factors (including PageRank). Let's say Page A's score is 900 and page B's score is 500. Obviously Page A will be listed first. These are both below our hypothetical Non-PageRank Factor Threshold, thus without any change in PageRank, it is possible for page B to improve their optimization to beat Page A for this particular query. There are lots of queries like this on Google; they're more commonly thought of as less competitive queries!

Now assume Page A raises its score to 1100. Suddenly page B cannot compete in the SERPs (search engine results pages) without increasing its PageRank. In all probability, page B must also improve for all the other ranking factors, but an increase in PageRank is almost certainly necessary. There are also lots of queries like this on Google, which are more commonly thought of as more competitive queries!

Generally, when querying Google, the group of pages in the SERPs will contain some pages that have a score above the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold, and some that do not.

There is an important point to be made here:

To be competitive you must raise your page's search engine ranking score beyond the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold. To fail to do so means that you can easily be beaten in the search results for your query terms. The quickest way to approach the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold is through "on the page factors", however you cannot move above the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold without PageRank.

The obvious question is what?s the numerical value of the Non-PageRank Factor Threshold, and how much work do you need to do to get past it. The answer is that it has no value; it is a hypothetical line. Google could put a value on it, but that would not help us unless we know what the page's individual scores are. We need only be aware that the threshold exists, and that it gives us information about principles.

The difference between PageRank and other factors

2006-05-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

To assess when PageRank is important and when it is not, we need to understand how PageRank is different from all other ranking factors. To do this, here's a quick table that lists a few other factors, and how they add to the ranking score:

All other ranking factors have cut off points beyond which they will no longer add to your ranking score, or will not add significantly enough for it to be worthwhile. PageRank has no cut off point.

Google's First 1000 Results

2006-05-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Remember, PageRank alone cannot get you high rankings. We've mentioned before that PageRank is a multiplier; so if your score for all other factors is 0 and your PageRank is twenty billion, then you still score 0 (last in the results). This is not to say PageRank is worthless, but there is some confusion over when PageRank is useful and when it is not. This leads to many misinterpretations of its worth. The only way to clear up these misinterpretations is to point out when PageRank is not worthwhile.

If you perform any broad search on Google, it will appear as if you've found several thousand results. However, you can only view the first 1000 of them. Understanding why this is so, explains why you should always concentrate on "on the page" factors and anchor text first, and PageRank last.

Assume that you perform a search on Google and it returns 200,000 results. If we were to calculate every factor for each 200,000 pages ? do you think it would really take just 0.34 seconds to search? The answer to speeding up the search is to get a subset of documents that are most likely to be related to the query. This subset of documents needs to be larger than the number of search results. For example, let's say that number is 2000. What the search engine does is query the whole database using 2 or 3 factors, finding the 2000 documents that rank highest for them. (Remember, there were 200,000 possible documents, and that's the number that actually gets shown). Then the engine applies all the factors to those 2000 and ranks them accordingly. Because there's a drop in the quality of the results (not the pages) at the bottom of this subset, the engine just shows the first 1000. PageRank is almost certainly not one of those factors. Notice how before, we highlighted the word "related," in creating the subset of 2000 pages. The search engine is looking for pages that are on-topic. If we included PageRank in that list we?d get a lot of high PageRank pages with topics that are only slightly related (because of the second factor), but that?s not what we want.

Why this is critical:
You must do enough "on the page" work and/or anchor text work to get into that subset of 2000 pages for your chosen key phrase, otherwise your high PageRank will be completely in vain. PageRank means nothing if you do not have enough ranking from other factors to make it into the first subset.

Is PageRank a good determination of the quality of a page?

2006-05-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

To examine the worth of PageRank, we need to first look at its premise, and how accurate it is. Basically PageRank says:

1. If a page links to another page, it is casting a vote, which indicates that the other page is good.
2. If lots of pages link to a page, then it has more votes and its worth should be higher.

The basic implication here is: People only link to pages they think are good.

It shouldn't be hard to convince you that this premise is wrong. A few of the reasons people link to pages other than ones they think are good are:

1) Reciprocal links ? "Link to me and I'll link to you."
2) Link Requirements ? "Using our script requires you to put a link to our page." or "We'll give you an award solely because you link to our page."
3) Friends and Family ? "This is my friend Pete?s site.? or "My mum?s site is here, my dad's site is here. My dog's site is here."
4) Free Page Add-ons ? "This counter was provided by www.linktocountersite.com."

Furthermore, anybody who has a top-ranking site will tell you that it tends to get links from new sites. This is not necessarily because it's good (although they generally are). Assume a Webmaster is setting up a new site and they are looking for some outbound links. Nowadays, one of the first things they do is a Google search for similar sites. The links they end up with may not necessarily be the best sites, but merely the easiest ones to find. If PageRank influences rankings, and if they subsequently link to those pages ? the new Webmaster will be adding to the inaccuracies in the judging of the quality of a page. The same is true when these new Webmasters use the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator to choose whom to link to.

To put this another way:

How significant is PageRank?

2006-05-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

The significance of any one factor in search engine algorithms depends on the quality of the information it supplies. A factor's importance is known as its weight. To demonstrate how weighting is arrived at, it's easiest to move away from
PageRank for a second and look at Meta tags. Originally, when the Meta keyword tag was new, you could write something like this in your document:

In theory, the Meta keyword tag was a very good indicator of what the page was about. However, as most are well aware - the weighting for the keywords tag is fast approaching nothing. Two things have contributed to this:

1. The ease at which Webmasters can manipulate it.
2. The level of manipulation by Webmasters.

These two things are separate factors, but with human nature being what it is, the easier something is to influence - the more it is manipulated. The combination of these factors determines the "weighting" - i.e., how much we trust the nformation provided by that factor.

So it makes sense to look at these factors in relation to PageRank first.

PageRank is, without doubt, one of the hardest things for a Webmaster to manipulate ethically. However, it is possible to generate links to your site from other sites fairly simply through the use of link farms and guestbooks. Google frowns upon this kind of abuse, and many sites that have tried this have had their PageRank influence blocked. But it must be said that the abuse is still rampant, and that it can have an influence on PageRank. So, whilst not easy to do, PageRank is still subject to manipulation.

The extent to which PageRank is manipulated has also changed. Most people no longer believe Google?s old line of people not being able to influence PageRank and the results based on it. However, there is more information about PageRank available than ever, and people are more aware of manipulation techniques.

So whilst PageRank is valuable, you should be careful not to over-estimate its usage and capabilities. Your final ranking in Google is due to a mix of factors, of 6

which PageRank is only one. We?ll get into more details later by discussing how PageRank is different than the other ranking factors, and thus, when it applies and when it doesn?t. Ironically enough, PageRank's weighting factor is undeniably declining. Since the original version of this paper gave out detailed information about PageRank, in all likelihood it may also have contributed in some small way to the decline in weighting of the very subject it talks about!

How accurate is the Google toolbar?

2006-05-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

The Google toolbar is not very accurate in showing you the actual PageRank of a site, but it?s the only thing right now that can give you any idea. As long as you know the toolbar?s limitations, then at least you know what you are viewing.

There are two limitations to the Google toolbar:
1. The toolbar sometimes guesses. If you enter a page, which is not in its index, but where there is a page that is very close to it in Google?s index, then it will provide a guesstimate of the PageRank. This guesstimate is worthless for our purposes because it isn?t featured in any of the PageRank calculations. The only way to tell if the toolbar is a guesstimate is to type the URL into the Google search box and see if the page shows up in the SERPS. If it doesn?t, then the toolbar is
guessing!

2. The toolbar is just a representation of actual PageRank. Whilst PageRank is linear, Google has chosen to use a non-linear graph to portray it. So on the toolbar, to move from a PageRank of 2 to a PageRank of 3 takes less of an increase than to move from a PageRank of 3 to a PageRank of 4. A comparison table best illustrates this phenomenon. The actual figures are kept secret so we?ll just use any figures for demonstration purposes:

The PageRank shown in the Google directory (http://directory.google.com) suffers from the same problems. The PageRank shown in the directory is also on a different scale. There have been attempts to cross-reference these two scales but because they are non-linear, the results really do not tell you anything more than you already know.

Also of note is that a programmer managed to generate a tool to look up PageRank without using Internet Explorer. This tool has since been withdrawn, but whilst originally the numbers given by this software and Google?s toolbar matched - presently querying with such software sometimes produces different numbers than querying with the toolbar. This is Google?s right to protect their data, but is the strongest indication that:

How can you tell what a page's PageRank is?

2006-05-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

To learn what a page's PageRank is, you can download a toolbar for Internet Explorer from http://toolbar.google.com. Once installed, there will be a bar graph at the top of the browser showing a version of PageRank for the page you're browsing. When you hold the mouse over the bar, you see a number from zero to ten. (If you don't see the number, you may have an older version of the toolbar installed. You will need to completely uninstall it, reboot your computer and reinstall the latest version. Once this is done, you should be able to see the PageRank number.)

How is PageRank determined?

2006-05-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

The Google theory goes that if Page A links to Page B, then Page A is saying that Page B is an important page. PageRank also factors in the importance of the links pointing to a page. If a page has important links pointing to it, then its links to other pages also become important. The actual text of the link is irrelevant when discussing PageRank.

What is PageRank?

2006-05-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

PageRank is Google's method of measuring a page's "importance." When all other factors such as Title tag and keywords are taken into account, Google uses PageRank to adjust results so that sites that are deemed more "important" will move up in the results page of a user's search accordingly.

A basic overview of how Google ranks pages in their search engine results pages (SERPS) follows:
1) Find all pages matching the keywords of the search.
2) Rank accordingly using "on the page factors" such as keywords.
3) Calculate in the inbound anchor text.
4) Adjust the results by PageRank scores.

In reality, it?s slightly more complex and we?ll discuss this in more depth later, but for now the above description serves our purposes. It?s worth noting that PageRank is a multiplier and is not just simply added to the score. Thus, if your page had a PageRank of zero, it would rank at the very end of the SERPS.

SEO For Yahoo!

2006-04-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

by Dave Davies

This article is part two of a four part series on optimizing your website for the the three major search engines. Part one, titled "SEO For MSN" covered optimizing your website to rank highly on MSN. In this article we will cover optimizing your website for Yahoo!

Yahoo! is the second biggest of the three major engines and includes an enormous network of websites. The algorithm is based on that of Inktomi which Yahoo! purchased back in 2002 as part of their plan to stop serving Google results to search queries. The algorithm itself can pose a problem for some SEO's as we optimize client website to rank highly on multiple search engines due to the way that it deffers from Google and MSN. That said, any issue can be addressed provided that the right attention is given to the right details.

The Factors

To optimize and rank highly on Yahoo!, as with any of the major engines, specific areas need to be addressed. On Yahoo! the major areas are as follows:

Keyword density
Site structure
Backlinks
Aging
Keyword Density

As noted in the article on MSN, it would be unwise for me to specify a keyword density for you to target on your website. There are two reasons for this. First, if there is a delay between the writing of this article and when you read it specific numbers could well send you off in the wrong direction. Second, you will need to analyze your specific competitors to determine what the best density is in your area and for your type of website. Optimal keyword densities are no longer a one-size-fits-all calculation. Your industry and site-type will affect the optimal densities and thus, a complete analysis using a tool such as Total Optimizer Pro will be necessary.

Additionally, optimal keyword densities change on a regular basis and so you will need to periodically reanalyze your densities and compare them with others in the top 10 to insure that your densities remain within the optimal levels. When using Total Optimizer Pro for the onsite analysis we generally aim our densities for the upper end of the top 10 results but not aiming to be the top. Generally you will see a range that appears much like a bell curve with a couple sites in the very low range (0.5 to 1.0%) and a couple site in the very high range (5.0 to 8.0%). The rest will generally fall in the middle. Ignore those in the very low and very high range and target towards the upper end though not the highest of the remaining sites and you will be on target.

Site Structure

On no other engine is site structure more important than on Yahoo! While having a good site structure is important for a vaiety of reasons, it was on Yahoo! that Beanstalk noted the most significant gains when we brought our homepage and key internals into compliance with W3C standards (the rest of the site will be brought into compliance as part of our complete redesign scheduled for launch on April 24th). While slight gains were noticeable on both Google and MSN they were so minor that they may well have just been part of the ebb-and-flow of the results. On Yahoo! however we noted a three page jump the day the changes were picked up. No other changes to the site were performed during this time.

The site structure is important for two key reasons. First, the site structure determines the order in which your page content gets seen by the search engines and thus, whch content will be given the highest priority. Content that occurs higher up in the code of your page (not necessarily in your browser) is given a higher weight than content lower down in the code. Second, a properly structured site will be lower in code through the use of CSS, reduced or eliminated table use, etc. The reduction in code will push the content higher up the page as far as a search engine is concerned and thus, it will be given more weight.

Backlinks

Like the other two major engines, having a solid backlink count from relevant sites using good anchor text practices is a major factor on Yahoo! for any reasonably competitive phrase. When it comes to calculating backlinks Yahoo! is far more similar to Google than MSN. Aspects of backlink counts that must be taken into consideration when optimizing your website for Yahoo!:

Quality of site - like Google has attempted to do in the past with PageRank and is learning to do with TrustRank, sheer numbers aren't what will get you high rankings on Yahoo!, the quality of those links is more important. We must remember than PageRank is a Google calculation, not Yahoo! and so it alone cannot determine the value of a link when we are optimizing for this engine. It can be used as a quasi-benchmark however when determining if a link is a quality link on Yahoo! we are better off to considered whether it is from a site that is ranking well on Yahoo! for the same or related phrases, does it come from a site that it related to ours, does the site link to a site that is ranking well on Yahoo! and does the link come from a trusted domain. For these purposes a trusted domain can be considered any domain that is over 3 years old, has a solid number of backlinks coming from a wide variety of sites and which at least a solid number of are non-reciprocal links.
Position of link - like all the major engines, the position of your link on the page is important. A link at or near the bottom of the page is less valuable than a link nearer to the top. Also, if your link is on a page with other links, the effect that link will have on your rankings decreases respective to the number of links on the linking page.
Anchor text - the text used to link to your site will help reinforce that the keywords in that anchor text are associated with your site/page. Also, if that anchor text in in the midst of the content it will hold greater weight than if that anchor text is in a directory-style format above a description (i.e. link a standard links page)
Non-reciprocal links - reciprocal links are certainly still valuable on Yahoo! however it is important to supplement these links with non-reciprocal links in the form of directory listings and other one-way links.
Aging

The bane of new websites is the aging delay. Many focus on Google's "sandbox" when they think of aging delays however Yahoo! employs one as well, though it is lighter and lasts a shorter duration of time. New sites and links are not given the same weight as sites and links that have been around for a while. The aging delay on sites has been extended over the past couple years however it isn't as severe as that imposed by Google. New sites can expect to find it extremely difficult to rank for competitive phrase inside of 6 months even if everything else is in place. To add to the difficulty is a delay on the value of links. When a new site launches it obviosly has no links. These links are subjesct to a delay that appears to be somewhere between 3 to 4 months before they hold their full weight.

The combination of these delays can make it very difficult for new sites to rank for competitive phrases inside of 8 to 12 months however because the restrictions are lighter than those imposed by Google one can expect to see rankings for secondary, tertiary and completely unexpected phrases far faster on Yahoo!

Conclusion

If is important to note that a very important area that needs to be considered is coming in part four of this series. Simply optimizing your website for Yahoo! will likely not get you the traffic you're hoping for. Part three will cover optimizing your website for Google and part four will be titled "SEO For The Big Three: Tieing It Together" and will outline how to tie all the optimization tactics together into a concise strategy that will result in top rankings on all three major engines.

SEO For MSN

2006-04-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

by Dave Davies

This is article one of a four part series on optimizing your website for the "Big Three". Part two will focus on Yahoo!, Part three will focus on Google and part four of this series will explain how to perform SEO on your website to attain high rankings across all three major engines. We are beginning with MSN as rankings are generally faster attained on this engine and thus it is a good place to begin, especially if you have a new site that is likely still in the sandbox on Google or are just at the beginning stages of link building.

Like all of the major search engines, MSN builds their index of sites using spiders to crawl the web finding new and changed information. This information is then processed by the MSN servers using complex algorithms to determine which sites are most relevant to the search query entered. This may seem like an extraordinarily complex process and it is however the resulting environment is simple: all search engine algorithms are mathematical and thus, there is a fixed set of rules and factors which, if addressed correctly, will result in a high ranking. In short, because it's math we have the benefit of knowing that if we take action x and action y we will get result z.

The Rules For MSN

Assuming that you are following the right rules, the results you can achieve on MSN can be fast and solid. MSN does not apply the same types of aging delays that the other two engines do and thus, when you change your content the change in results can be realized as quickly as they reindex your site and as quickly as your incoming links get picked. This differs greatly from Google and Yahoo! in that those two engines age both domains and links requiring a longer period of time before the full effects of your efforts are realized.

As an additional note on MSN, users of MSN are 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online than the average Internet user according to a comScore Media report.

So what are the rules for MSN that can help us get top rankings? As with all the major engines, there are two fundamental areas that need to be addressed to attain top rankings. The first is the onsite factors, the second is the offsite. Because they are fundamentally different we will address them separately.

Onsite SEO Factors

The problem with writing an article about the onsite factors is that by the time many of you read this some of the weight these factors hold and the optimal levels noted may well be out-of-date. Thus, rather than listing overly-specific-and-sure-to-change factors we will focus on how to know what the factors are, how to get a handle on what you need to adjust and by how much, and how to predict what will be coming down the road. And so we'll begin:

How To Know What The Factors Are:

Unfortunately there's no one over at MSN Search calling us up weekly to let us know what the specifics of their algorithm are, we have to figure it out for ourselves with research, reading and playing with test sites. From all of this there is only one conclusion that an SEO can make: the details matter. When we're discussing onsite factors this includes:

the content of the page including keyword density
the internal linking structure of the site (how the pages of your site are linked together)
the number of pages in your site and the relevancy of those pages to your main topic and phrases
the use of titles, heading tags and special formats
There are a number of lower weight factors however the ones noted above, if addressed correctly, will have very significant results on your rankings if the offsite factors noted below are also addressed.

Page Content:

The content of your page must be perfect. What I mean by this is that the content must appeal to both the search engines and the algorithms. In order to write properly for the visitors you must be able to write clearly and in language that is both appealing and understandable to your target market. While there is much debate about whether the keyword density of your page is important I am certainly one who believes that it is. It only makes sense that a part of the algorithm takes into account the use of the keywords on your page. Unfortunately the optimal keyword density changes slightly with each algorithm update and also by site type and field. For this reason it would be virtually impossible for me to give you a density that will work today and forevermore. For this reason you will need a keyword density analysis tool which you will want to run on your own site as well as the sites in the top 10 to assess what the optimal density is at this time. You may notice a variation in the densities of the top 10. This is due to the other factors including offsite which can give extra weight to even a poorly optimized site. I recommend getting your site to a keyword density close to the higher-end of the top 10 but not excessive. Traditionally this percentage will fall somewhere near 3.5 to 4% for MSN.

Internal Linking Structure:

The way your pages link together tells the search engines what the page is about and also allows them to easily (or not-so-easily) work their way to your internal pages. If your site has an image or script-based navigation it is important to also use text links either in your content, in a footer, or both. The text links are easy to follow for a spider and perhaps more importantly, the text links allow you the opportunity to tell the spiders what a specific page is about though the anchor text and, in the case of footers, allows you to add in more instances of the targeted phrases outside of your general content area.

The Number Of Pages & Their Relevancy:

MSN wants to please their visitors. For this reason they want to insure that highest likelihood that a searcher will find what they need once they get to your site. For this reason a larger site with unified content will rank higher that a smaller site or a site with varying content topics. (note: this assumes that all else is equal in regards to the other ranking factors)

When you are optimizing your site for MSN be sure to take some time to built quality content. Do a search on your major competitors to see how large their sites are, over time you will want to build yours to the same range through general content creation or the addition of a blog or forum to your site.

Titles, Heading Tags & Special Formats:

Titles are the single most important piece of code our your entire web page for two reasons. The first is that it holds a very high level of weight in the algorithm. the second reason is that it is your window to the world. When someone runs a search the results will generally show your page title in the search results. This means that a human visitor has to be drawn to click on your title or rankings your site is a futile effort (this isn't about bragging rights, it's about return on investment).

Heading tags are used to specify significant portions of content. The most commonly used is the H1 tag though there are obviously others (or they wouldn't bother numbering them would they). The H1 tag is given a significant amount of weight in the algorithm provided that it is not abused though overuse (it should only be used once per page). Try to keep your headings short-and-sweet. They're there to tell your visitor what the page is about, not your whole site.

Special formats are, for the purpose of this article, and text formatting that distinguishes a set of characters or words apart from the others. This includes such things as, anchor text, bold, italic, different font colors, etc. When you set content apart using special formats MSN will read this as a part of your content that you want to draw attention to and which you obviously want your visitors to see. This will increase the weight of that content. Now don't go making all your keyword bold or the such, simply make sure to use special formats properly. Inline text links (links in the body content of your page) is a great way to increase the weight of specific text while actually helping your visitor by providing easy paths to pages they may be interested in.

Offsite SEO Factors

With MSN, the offsite factors are much simpler to deal with than either Google or Yahoo! MSN will give you full credit for a link the day they pick it up so link building, while time consuming, is reworded much quicker on MSN. When dealing with MSN and offsite SEO there are two main factors we must consider when finding links:

Relevancy. The site must be relevant to yours to hold any real weight.
Quality is better than quantity. Because PageRank is Google-specific we can't use it as the grading tool for MSN however upon visiting a website it's generally fairly clear whether we're visiting a good site or not. Spending extra time to find quality is well rewarded. Also, finding one-way links as opposed to reciprocal links is becoming increasingly important and I'd recommend utilizing both in your link building strategies.
You will have to begin your offsite optimization by running link checks on your competitors to see what you're up against. This is also a good place to start for potential link partners though those of you using a tool such as Total Optimizer Pro or PR Prowler will find it far faster and more effective to use these tools.

Conclusion

This entire article may seem fairly simplistic and there's a reason for that, what we've noted above is a list of the more important areas however to save you frustration and me from receiving hundreds of emails a few months from now noting that the keyword densities don't work, etc. I've tried to keep it general. Below you'll find a list of recommended resources. These are tools and SEO resources to help keep you updated and on top of the rankings.

SEO for Google

2006-04-27T02:33:00.000-07:00

by Dave Davies

The Factors

To optimize and rank highly on Google, as with any of the major engines, specific areas need to be addressed. On Google the most important of these factors are:

Backlinks
Age
Content
How it fares in the results

Backlinks

More than on either Yahoo! or MSN backlinks are key to attaining top rankings on Google. More importantly, Google's methods for calculating the weight of backlinks is very different than either of the other two engines. Once upon a time backlink acquisition was mainly a numbers game. If you had more links you had higher rankings, it was basically as simple as that. Today however Google has an algorithm inside their algorithm for determining which links are more valuable than others. This algorithm has a number of factors itself, however there are some that are more important than others. They key factors that determine the value of a link in regards to its contributions to the ranking of your site are:

The age of the links - Like domains, links gain weight with age. The longer your links have been on a web page the higher their value. Basically this means that your link building efforts today aren't going to pay off for a number of months. The weight seems to age gradually. In a month your link will hold partial weight, in two months it'll hold a bit more and so on. Links hold the majority of their weight after about 5 to 6 months.

The location of the link - The physical location of your link on the page is an indicator to Google of its value. A link buried in the footer of a page will hold virtually no weight whereas a link near the top (i.e. where a visitor is likely to see it) will hold much more. Another location factor is how this link is situated relative to the content around it. A link that is located within content holds more weight than a link in a typical link-page or directory format with a title and description. The inline nature of the aforementioned location indicates that the link itself is more natural.

The anchor text and formatting - The linking text used is obviously important. If you are targeting a phrase such as "seo firms" then using these two keywords in the anchor text is going to attach relevancy between your site and these keywords. Be careful though, building a thousand links using all the same anchor text is going to look suspicious. Vary your anchor text, perhaps include other keywords and you'll find your efforts rewarded. The formatting of the link is also relevant. A link that uses bold, italics, etc. is obviously meant to be seen by a visitor and is thus more highly regarded by Google.

Relevancy - The relevancy of the site linking to you is of key importance. Getting a link on a health site if you're an SEO firm is going to hold little weight whereas a link from an SEO resource site will be much more valuable.

PageRank - While the value of PageRank is arguably dropping when one is considering it's importance in link building it is still a factor. A link from a PageRank 5 page is worth substantially more than a link from a PageRank 2 page.

Age

In a patent application from back in 2004 Google told SEO firms (and anyone else for that matter) that age was an important factor. Google has since become a domain name registrar which gives them access to whois data and thus they can clearly see the age of a domain, who it is registered to, where it is hosted, etc. The older your domain is the more legitimate Google sees it and thus the more likely they are to rank it. Additionally, domains that are registered for longer periods of time are also seen as more legitimate and thus will tend to rank higher.

Content

Google is more picky than either Yahoo! or MSN when it comes to content. While the phrase, "content is king," may be overused it is still relevant. The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they're looking for when they get there. Thus, the more content you have on your site the more likely Google is to believe a searcher will find what they're looking for there. This does not mean that you should grab every bit of content you can find and build a 500,000 page site about potatoes. The content needs to be relevant and preferably well written. While a search engine spider may not be able to tell if your content is truly well written it must appeal to a human visitor. The reason for this will be made more clear below.

A blog is a good option for the easy addition of relevant content provided that you can dedicate the time (generally only a few minutes per day) to post some new and interesting information on your industry.

Keyword density is not as large a factor on Google as on Yahoo! or MSN however it is a factor and in the SEO "game" any factor that holds weight needs to be taken into consideration in all but the least competitive areas. While a site targeting a phrase such as "bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere" can afford weakness in some of the areas most of us cannot. As noted in the articles on MSN and Yahoo! it would be unwise for me to specify an optimal keyword density here as the optimal levels vary by site type, topic, and fluctuate with the algorithm updates. Keyword densities need to be reanalyzed approximately monthly or any time an update is noted.

How it fares in the results

How your website fares in the results is a growing factor and will only continue to gain importance as time passes. If your website appears in the results for a specific phrase yet no one click on is your website will drop out of the rankings. Arguably worse, if your website is clicked however after a few seconds Google detects that the searcher has returned to the results to find a new site your site will drop. It is for this reason that it is important to insure that the titles you write for your website are both search engine and human friendly. You want Google to rank it highly and you also need humans to click it or Google won't rank it highly (circular logic I know but valid nonetheless).

You also need to make sure that what people see when they first land on your page either is the information they are looking for or alternatively, clearly indicates where that information can be found. This point may seem obvious simply from a usability standpoint however the number of sites out there that violate this basic principle is vast. As part of your SEO efforts you will want to take a look at your site from a user's standpoint or better yet, watch real users navigate it to see if they can find what they're looking for quickly. You have about 3 seconds to get a visitor's attention so make sure that your visitor can find what they want in that time. You may need to hire experienced web designers to bring your website up to speed however the cost of this is lower than the cost of losing rankings and business due to poor design and the falling rankings that will follow.

Conclusion

Google has the most sophisticated algorithm of the three major engines and must be treated as such. Tricks rarely work and when they do they tend to work only for a short period of time. Build a strong site with lots of quality content that is easily navigated and will appeal to your human visitors and you're off to a good start. Optimize your keyword densities and secure quality links to your site and while it may take a bit of time to get past the aging delays, you will succeed on Google.

Recommended Resources

Total Optimizer Pro - A keyword density and backlink analysis tool. This tool breaks down a variety of onsite and offsite factors giving you a full snapshot of how the top 10 got their positions.

Google Press Releases - Read the latest press releases from Google. This may not give you the algorithm but it will tell you the direction they're going. Understand this and you'll be better equipped to deal with changes down the road.

Matt Cutts Blog - Read this blog from Google software engineer Matt Cutts. Obviously he's not about to give you the algorithm (or he wouldn't be a Google engineer would he?) but he does give great advice and the occasional head's up on updates. He allows comments on his blog and many of them are useful as well.

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic

2006-04-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

If you?ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you?d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site?s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn?t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It?s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

2 - Google Will Talk To You or Your Webmasterwith the Webmaster Section

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase ?Google can show you the following information for this URL?.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There?s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called ?Driving Traffic?, the other ?Converting Visitors.?

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google - the search engine - really isn?t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret's Out

2006-04-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

Google recently filed a US patent which reveals a great deal of how they rank your web site. Some of it you could never have guessed at...

Google recently filed a US patent which reveals a great deal of how they rank your web site. Some of it you could never have guessed at...

How many years did you register your domain name for?
If it was only one then Google could hold that against you.

Why?

Because the majority of Spam websites only register a domain name for one year. A domain name registered for a longer period implies that the owner is more likely to be legitimate and serious about their web site.

This is just one of the unusual factors possibly considered by Google when indexing and ranking a website. Factors you could never even have guessed at in some cases.

How do I know this?

Google recently made public, March 31 2005, the contents of their filing of United States Patent Application 20050071741.

In which many of the search giant? secret ranking criteria is revealed and it makes very interesting reading. You must read this if you are serious about ranking well in Google. The days of Spamming Google are drawing to a close. With this patent they reveal just how hard they're coming down on Spam sites. You Do Not want to get caught out.

Listed below you will find the hard facts, I recommend that you bookmark this page now. You will need to reference it each time you optimize a new site.

?Links.

It's common knowledge that Google relies heavily on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they explain exactly how it works.

As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link. Google seems to also consider historical factors. Apparently the Google 'sandbox' or aging delay begins count down the minute links to a new site are discovered.

Google records the discovery of a link, link changes over time, the speed at which a site gains links and the link life span.

With this in mind, fast link acquisition may be a strong indicator of potential search engine Spam.

Gone are the days of pages and pages full of links. You must grow your links slowly to stay below the radar and be careful who you exchange links with. That means no more buying hundreds of links at once or other underhand tactics.

PR is now very valuable.

Your link anchor text should vary but remain consistent with your site content. No more using your main keywords on every link exchange you gain. That's 'anchor Spam'. Instead vary them around your top five to ten keywords.

Link exchanges are still very important but you must work and utilize them ethically. If you don't and you get caught, the recovery from a ban can be months and your host and IP may also be recorded.

Softly seems to be the message. The fact is fewer but better quality links will benefit you more and they will be much more likely to be over the long-term which is good too.

?Site click through rates (CTR)

CTR may now be monitored through cache, temporary files, bookmarks and favorites via the Google toolbar or desktop tools. Many have suspected for some time that sites are rewarded for good CTR with a raise in ranking. Similar to how Adwords works.

CTR is monitored to see if fresh or stale content is preferred for a search result.

CTR is also analyzed for increases or decreases relating to trends or seasons.

?Web page rankings are recorded and monitored for changes.

?The traffic to a web page is recorded and monitored over time.

?Sites can be ranked seasonally. A ski site may rank higher in the winter than in the summer. Google can monitor and rank pages by recording CTR changes by season.

?Bookmarks and favorites could be monitored for changes, deletions or additions.

?User behavior in general could be monitored.

As Google is capable of tracking traffic to your site you should closely monitor the small amount of copy returned in search results. Ideally you will want to integrate a call to action in there to increase your listings CTR.

Clicks away from your site back to the search results are also monitored. Make your site as sticky as possible to keep visitors there longer. As mentioned above it may also help if you could get your visitors to bookmark you.

?The frequency and amount of page updates is monitored and recorded as is the number of pages.

Mass updates of hundreds of files will see you pop up on the radar.

On the other hand, few or small updates to your site could see your rankings slide --unless your CTR is good. A stale page that receives good traffic may hold it's own and not require an update. So don't update for the sake of it.

Depending on your market, fresh content may not be a requirement. If the information your pages contain do not go out of date then updating may not be necessary. If your market is more news based for example, then changes regularly are a must. In general changes don't necessarily have to mean fresh content. They could involve simple edits to current content.

A further indicator that Google is really cracking down on Spam is made clear in the following extract from the Patent. Reference is made to changing the focus of multiple pages at once.

Here's the quote -
"A significant change over time in the set of topics associated with a document may indicate that the document has changed owners and previous document indicators, such as score, anchor text, etc., are no longer reliable.

Similarly, a spike in the number of topics could indicate Spam. For example, if a particular document is associated with a set of one or more topics over what may be considered a ?table?period of time and then a (sudden) spike occurs in the number of topics associated with the document, this may be an indication that the document has been taken over as a ?oorway?document.

Another indication may include the sudden disappearance of the original topics associated with the document. If one or more of these situations are detected, then [Google] may reduce the relative score of such documents and/or the links, anchor text, or other data associated the document."

There's still more to look out for:-

?Changes in keyword density is monitored and recorded as are changes to anchor text.

?The domain name owner? address is considered, most likely to help in a local search result.

?The technical and admin contact details are checked for consistency. These are often falsified for Spam domains.

?Your hosts IP address. If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spamming. If so, your site will suffer since you share the same IP.

The impression I get here is that Google has learned from the Spam 'attack' they suffered in early 2004 and they are determined to eradicate it from their listing results.

So what do you do?

There's a lot to take onboard here and consider. But you can't go far wrong with your SEO if you try to grow your site as organically as possible.

If you know what you are doing you can take short cuts. Carry on with link exchanges but consider each site carefully and slow down in your gathering of them. Vary your anchor text. Add small amounts of good quality content to your site regularly. Check your search engine listings and edit your site to include a call to action in them if possible. Make your site more 'sticky' to encourage visitors to stay a while. Encourage visitors to Bookmark your site. Oh, and register new domain names for at least two years.

Before you do anything remember to reference the above info first. It may just save you months of misery as your site gets banned and 'Sand boxed'.

Overall keep it ethical and you can't go far wrong.

Do not be tempted to Spam. Stick to the guidelines above and you are much more likely to outlast and out rank your competition.

Link Popularity

2006-04-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

Link Popularity and Top Search engine rankings

What is Link Popularity ?

Link popularity is defined as the number of web sites or web pages pointing to a site. It is a measuring factor used by many search engines in determining the relevancy and popularity of a web page. Google uses link popularity as the single most important factor for a site to achieve top search engine rankings. Content is the next most important factor Google uses to rank a web site.

Role of Link popularity in search engine optimization

In the past, search engines ranked a web page based on the meta content the page offers considering the keywords, key phrases, titles and description tags. The principal factor in rating a web page, were the keywords and key phrases. As time passed, many web sites cleverly utilized this factor by spamming a page with unnecessary and irrelevant keywords and phrases. The search engines faced difficulty in analyzing these spammed and irrelevant pages resulting in improper ranking of these pages. Search engine specialists and research developers after months of thorough study and analysis discovered that a page could be best ranked on the basis of its popularity. The popularity of the website was determined by the number of other websites which had links pointing to the home website. They also considered the popularity of the websites that pointed to the home website. This strategy proved to be effective and paved way to the concept of link popularity. This technique is very safe as it is quite difficult for a website to get into the eyes of many similar websites leading to top search engine rankings. There are no easy means for website owners or spam experts to easily manipulate the pointers to their site in any way and increase their site popularity. Google was the first search engine to implement link popularity as a part of its search engine ranking strategy. Later, almost all the search engines followed suit thus establishing a very strong base for link popularity as a primary decision factor in search engine optimization strategy and achieving top search engine rankings.

How to achieve Link popularity?

We have just seen that Link popularity holds the key in determining and ranking a web page. It is also evident that search engines accord top search engine rankings by looking at the number of sites pointing to it. However it is not simple to achieve link popularity for a site.

Any website links to our site if and only if useful and meaningful content is present thus evoking interest in the visitors mind to introduce a pointer to our website. So, primarily good content is the first and foremost aspect a site should provide in order to increase link popularity. Content always forms a fundamental feature in search engine optimization.

The second aspect is usage of reciprocal links or link exchange programs wherein two website owners include a link pointing to the others. In this way, both the sites are assured of a link from the other side. One can also submit to Free for All Pages (FFA), which automatically ensure links to your site. FFA pages place the site URL in a common page consisting the URLs of many other sites. It is really a painstaking exercise to really submit and monitor FFA pages. Sometimes you would have to submit on a weekly or daily basis and if you are really fortunate enough, all these links stayed tuned to your site for a period of time. Banner Exchanges is another means by which one can achieve pointers to their site. But all these methods are considered as spamming techniques by search engines.

Link popularity is not just a measure the number of links to a site but more than that. The following factors are useful in measuring link popularity.

Number of Links - The more the number of links pointing to our site (Inbound links), the higher the Link popularity is.

Relevance - Link popularity is based on the relevance of the inbound link. The incoming link should share the same subject of that of the current site as search engines detain irrelevant links.

Link text - The text in the links also can affect the ranking of your site. Search engine spiders see if any text in the links pointing to our site is relevant to the context. So if websites use keywords or phrases that coincide with that of our website, there are greater chances of a site achieving top search engine rankings.

Search engines merely do not consider the quantitative aspect of link popularity but also the quality of inbound links. In other words, it is of no use if hundreds of irrelevant links point to your site. Few quality links, which are relevant to the subject and theme, will go a long way in ensuring top search engine rankings.

Search for similar sites, which share the same content that of yours. Study the site and send an email requesting to link back to your site, clearly explaining the purpose of the link and the site. It is a good idea to send the link text that you want to have in the other website including the html code. Recommend including the keywords and phrases in the link text. Also explain where to position the link in their site, whether in the home page or secondary page etc.

Each search engine has a different approach towards implementing link popularity of a site. For instance, one search engine may show that a site has 200 links pointing to it, but another may display only 50 links are pointing to it. A site will get a boost in ranking if the sites linking to it are already indexed by search engines and directories. So, ensure and crosscheck whether the site, which is linking to your site, is submitted to the search engines. All sites linking to your site should be indexed by that particular search engine. Incorporating outbound links to relevant sites may also add to link popularity. Ensure that no dead or broken links exist in your site.

Finally, here is a brief do's and don'ts about how to achieve good link popularity.

Do's

Study the links of your competitors and contact them
Use quality links, rich with keywords
Link to relevant sites only
Place the link in the home page if possible as it boosts your ranking
Check for broken and dead links
Ensure that all sites linking to your site are indexed by the search engines
Submit pages with new links to search engines on a timely basis
Don'ts

Do not use FFA pages
Do not use exchange programs
Do not use banner exchanges
Avoid using images as links
The reasons being the above factors are considered as spamming techniques and artificial link popularity by popular search engines.

Analyzing the above factors, it is clearly visible how link popularity forms a basis for search engines to rank web pages and the importance of link popularity in formulating an effective search engine optimization strategy.

Link Management

2006-04-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Link Management for effective search engine optimization

A website may be huge in size and rich in content constituting large number of pages. But it serves no purpose if a website surfer would not be able to navigate easily to the page he desires. The designer along with the search engine optimization expert should try and formulate a link management strategy to achieve two ends.

Ensure smooth and intuitive navigation
Ensure search engine optimization with proper placement of links for, proper link management is a key to top search engine rankings
Link management forms an important basis in evolving a robust search engine optimization strategy and is a broader concept in the sense that it is not just confined to linking of pages but it encapsulates the different concepts like link popularity, click popularity, reciprocal linking which greatly aid in achieving top search engine rankings.

In the first place, study the website and evolve a site map which clearly depicts the linkage between different web pages. Checking the site map, start connecting the pages using appropriate links. The link text should give an indication of the destination topic to which the link points. In other words, the text in the link should be very much closely related to the context of the destination page as most search engines rank a page higher if the link text speaks of the subject of interest. Use keywords and key phrases as and when necessary in the link text extensively. In this way, one can attain good keyword density and keyword frequency enabling top search engine rankings. It would also be a good idea to use appropriate tool tip text for the links as some search engines do consider this factor while indexing. Do not forget to include the keywords in the tool tip text.

Let us now discuss the different types of links existing for a web page and study how each link affects the search engine optimization. Primarily we have two types of links namely internal links and external links. Internal links are links which link to pages present in the website only. On the other hand, external links are links which point or link to pages outside the website. The various external links a web page can consist are inbound links, outbound links, broken links, dead links, reciprocal links etc. An inbound link is a link from a page external to the website pointing to the web page in the website. An outbound link is a link from a page internal to the website to a page external to the website. It is quite necessary to have proper inbound and outbound links in our website as they greatly determine the website position in search engine rankings. Inbound links actually determine the number of sites pointing to our site. The more number of inbound links, the more popular the website is. The more popular a website is, the more traffic the website receives. The more traffic the site receives, the more chances of generating business, which is the ultimate objective of any website. Relating to search engine optimization, inbound links add to link popularity which is defined as the number of links outside the site pointing to the website. The more number of inbound links, the higher the link popularity is. Usage of outbound links to sites relating to similar subject and content will incredibly boost the link popularity of the site.

Utmost care should be taken while creating links and one has to ensure no broken or dead links exist in the site. Broken links are links which when clicked return an error without actually displaying the required page. Dead links are links which when clicked do not perform any action. They neither display the required page nor return an error. These two types of links are very dangerous as they lower the link popularity.

One has to take time out in formulating an error free link management system. The links in the site should be created such that the user can freely navigate the entire site from any page. The links should emulate the traffic road signs clearly directing the user to the destination of his choice.

Now at this point we can clearly come to a conclusion stating that link management of the site is an essential feature for an effective search engine optimization strategy and also a very important decision maker in achieving top search engine ranking.

The basic tenets of link management as far as search engine optimization is considered are

Have as many inbound links as possible
Have as many internal links as possible in each page.
The internal links should use keywords and key phrases
Wherever you find keywords create a link and point it to the page, which has more information about the keyword.
Name the destination page in such a way so as to include keywords and key phrases. E.g instead of naming a destination page as services.html name it as search_engine_optimization_services.html

Content Strategy

2006-04-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

A good website is best described in terms of the content it offers. The content should convey the subject, functions and the objective of the website. Internet surfers would like to visit a website more than once if the content of the site exactly matches the subject of their interest. From this it is clear, that good content always prompts users to visit more often thereby generating the necessary traffic. The content forms the backbone of any site. A site visitor would immediately leave the web page if the necessary and useful information he is looking for is not available. Even an extremely visually appealing site will suffer if the right content is not available. Content is the king any day and is the core element on which every web site should be based.

In terms of search engine optimization, the content of a website forms an integral part in formulating an effective search engine optimization strategy. The content is the heart and soul of a website and is a breadwinner in accomplishing a top search engine positioning. Search engine robots and spiders have now become intelligent and judge a site by the content it offers. To achieve top search engine rankings in modern search engines, one must include as much useful content as possible and wherever necessary in the website. Now let us go through the various steps and procedures involved in content management.

What constitutes search engine friendly content ?

Now let us discuss the basic building blocks of search engine optimization viz. Keywords and key phrases. The first guideline is to identify the most popular keywords and include them in the text as many number of times as possible without sounding repetitive. The keywords and phrases should be relevant to the topic the page describes and should be placed at the top of the page. Most search engines rate a web page by looking at the Keyword density, which is the number of keywords per page and the Keyword frequency, which is the number of times a particular keyword is repeated in a page. Ensuring sufficient keyword density and keyword frequency levels will enhance the chances for better search engine ranking. To achieve keyword density, consider two to three important content-based keywords and key phrases per page and scatter these keywords and phrases along the length and breadth of the page with more number of keywords placed at the beginning of the page. To achieve keyword frequency, repeat the selected keywords and key phrases about five to seven times in the page. That is, each keyword should appear at least 5 to 7 times in the page. The other important factor is Keyword positioning which is the position of the keywords in the page.

Many search engines do not crawl the entire page but only the first few lines. In this context, it is a good idea to place keywords or phrases at the beginning of the page, as search engines would be able to rank high the page if the necessary keywords and phrases are found. Keyword proximity, which is defined as the distance between two keywords or phrases, should also be kept in mind while preparing the content for your page.

Insist on placing useful and meaningful hyperlinks to the internal pages or to external pages somewhere between the content in your page, as these links would tremendously boost your search engine rankings. Usage of user-friendly navigation links across the web pages and outside the website would have immense impact in attaining top search engine rankings. Add meaningful tool tip texts to these links, which best describe the destination topic. Try to incorporate keywords as part of the link text. Having hyper links in the web page adds to the link popularity of the website.

Formatting of content

Basically, any web page comprises title or headings, which compactly describe the content of that particular page. Include these headings in the header tags like H1, H2 etc. as almost every search engine checks for these header tags. Make it a point to have at least one header tag per page in the whole of your web site. Format the text in the page by including the formatting tags like Bold, Italic, Underline, and Align. These tags are heavily weighed by search engines and increase the chances of top search engine placement. It is not just sufficient to have a junk of words in the body content but to also make them visually appealing and meaningful. Stress the most important keywords and key phrases by including them in format tags. For instance, if the keyword is conveying about a title or a name of an organization, highlight the same using the bold tag. Similarly, use the italic and underline tags wherever you feel appropriate. Sometimes it is necessary to align some paragraphs or sentences to the center; for example, a title or a sub heading. To achieve this functionality use the align attribute which aligns to the left, center or right. Highlight the identified keywords and key phrases using bold, italic and underline tags as most search engines do weigh them heavily and the chances of achieving top search engine rankings will be high.

Finally, we can conclude that for optimal search engine optimization, the content forms a constructive role in achieving top search engine positioning and ranking and various important factors like formatting of text, keyword density, keyword frequency, keyword positioning, keyword proximity and link popularity would add up in achieving a top search engine ranking.

Design Aspects

2006-04-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

In the present scenario wherein hundreds of websites are swarming the Internet every moment, it is quite a challenging task for a website to build traffic attracting visitors and achieving top search engine rankings and developing its own business market thereby establishing a unique identity.

The secret of success of many a website lies in the design and content of the site. Design and content are the fundamental aspects to be dealt in for any website. A site may consist of good content but will be of no use if it is not visually appealing to the visitor and will not be able to generate enquiries or business. It is necessary for any website to top the search engine rankings. To achieve this, one need to highly optimize the various web pages in the site using search engine optimization techniques.

Design & Search engine optimization

Normally people relate the design of a site only to the visual appearance and graphics. But in terms of search engine optimization, design is a broader definition including the layout, navigation, user friendliness, positioning, graphics, color management, etc.

To generate more business enquiries the first step is to address Search engine optimization issues and ensure that the site gets top search engine rankings. The second aspect is to create a layout that is visually attractive as well as search engine friendly. The third aspect is to engineer the right functionality to aid a user to make a favorable decision. The right information that aids decision-making should be available to the user easily. We provide all the above services from the sites Searchengineoptimizationservices and Edesignstudio. Edesign studio specializes in web site design and implementation while Rank High takes care of your search engine optimization requirements.

Center align the main heading or title, which describes the content of the page. Ensure consistency by maintaining the same layout throughout the website. A user may get confused if a different layout is used in another page.. Providing a site map for your site enables the visitor or search engine spider to figure out the entire contents of the website at a single stroke. While designing the site leave sufficient place to include text. Most sites fail to get top search engine rankings, as they do not have sufficient text in their home page. A good web designer will provide ample scope for text on the home page. The second aspect a designer needs to consider is to provide sufficient placeholders for links. Your chances for top search engine rankings are increased considerably if the number of relevant links is more. Dividing the home page to accommodate multiple themes is a good idea, as it will help you increase your key word frequency in the content without sounding repetitive. Our Home Page has two themes viz. search engine optimization services and How to choose your search engine expert?

The positioning of the text and graphics plays a prominent role in search engine optimization. Place the relevant and effective content at the top of the page. Do not clutter the page with heavy graphics like animations and flash movies as search engine spiders or robots completely ignore a page with heavy graphics. If you would like to use graphics, use highly optimized images like gif and jpeg images, which reduce the download time of a web page. Use alt text for all images in your web page as most spiders consider this text while indexing. Include the most relevant keywords and key phrases in the alt text and at the same time do not clutter the image alt text with unnecessary keywords. It is a good optimization technique to split a single image into multiple small images, the reason being faster downloading of the web page and more alt text per image.

Having alt text in phantom gifs, which are 1 pixel by 1 pixel in size, does not harm you and the visitors cannot easily make it out. Place these gifs at points where user access is minimum, for example at the bottom of the page. If you are using an image as a link, place the relevant keywords in the tool tip text.

Use cascading style sheets (CSS) for formatting the text in a page if possible as it greatly reduces the file size per page and also helps the search engine spider. You can also specify the robot not to access the css through the robots.txt file. Now considering the color management of a web page, do not use dull or weird colors.

Do not use the frames tag, as many spiders do not consider the page.
Do not use password-protected pages as search engine spiders cannot fill in the data and proceed further.
Do not use the Meta refresh tag as most spiders consider it as spamming.
Do not use PDF files, as most search engines do not index those pages.
Avoid using of dynamic pages like ASP, cold fusion, perl etc, as most of the search engines do not index these pages. Google is presently indexing dynamic pages but its effect on top search engine rankings is still not known.
Finally test the website for major browsers like Internet Explorer and Netscape and in all resolutions before submitting the site.

Handling Robots

2006-04-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

What exactly is a Robot?

A Robot in Search engine optimization services terminology is a search engine software program which visits a page on a website and follows all the links of the website from that page and indexes some or all of the pages in the website.

Why do we need robots?

Everyday search engines receive hundreds of new website submissions. It is quite cumbersome and time consuming for a human to review the whole of the website and judge whether that particular website meets the search engine optimization standards and index the same. Here is where our friend robot comes into picture. Robots are highly intelligent software programs which crawl the entire website, checking the relevancy, consistency and significance of the site thereby effectively indexing the website into the search engine database reducing the amount of time consumed per site. In this way a robot can quickly index more sites per day. Though a robot is not a very critical aspect of search engine optimization services technology, it is advisable to include it.

Controlling a Robot

Normally, a robot visits the home page of the site and follows the links present in the page, scanning each link and page. Sometimes we do not prefer a robot to index a particular page(s) in our site. For instance, you might want a series of pages to be viewed in sequence and would like to index only the page one. To achieve this, we have a special kind of Meta tag known as Robots Meta tag. The robots Meta tag is similar to other Meta tags and is placed in the head of the document. This tag dictates the robot which pages to be indexed, which pages not be indexed, which links should be followed and which links should not be followed.

A typical meta robots tag would resemble as follows,

{meta name="robots" content ="index, nofollow" }

The meta tag describes us that the robot should index the page visited but to not follow the links in the page.

The other most and significant part of controlling robots is the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is used primarily to control areas or portions of the website by excluding those portions being visited by the robot. Whenever a robot visits a site, it first checks the robots.txt file.

The robots.txt file,

is a text file created in notepad or any text editor
should be placed in the top level directory or root of the website or server space
should include all lower case letters
Through the robots.txt file we can,

Exclude all robots from visiting the server
Allow complete access to all robots
Exclude robots from accessing a portion of the server
Exclude a specific robot
Exclude certain type of files from accessing by specifying the file extensions.
Finally, we can conclude that the robots.txt file basically acts as a filter thereby providing total control over the search engine robot.

While talking of robots I would like to mention the revisit tag. This tag is an important tag in the realm of search engine optimization services technology. The revisit tag tells the search engine the time duration after which it should visit your site again. If you change your site's contents frequently then your revisit time should be say a week else it can be higher. Your search engine rankings dip if the search engine visits you a second time and finds that the content has not been altered significantly. Though not all search engines honor the Revisit tag, it is advisable to include the tag. If you are keen on top search engine rankings use the revisit tag judiciously.

Meta Tags

2006-04-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

What are Meta tags?
A Meta tag is a tag (coding statement) in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that describes some aspect of the contents of a Web page and is placed near the top of the HTML in a Web page as part of the heading.

Why Meta tags?

Meta tags are used to give search engines instructions on what a web page is about and how they should treat it. These Meta tags are not displayed to humans surfing a site, but can be used to influence the way a site appears in the search results.

What are the different Meta tags that can be present in a web page?

There are several Meta tags that can be incorporated in a web page of which only two tags are of high relevance for search engine optimization. They are the Meta keywords and Meta description tags. These two tags should be present in every page of the web site.

How to define Meta content for a web page?

Let us now have a close look as to how the Meta tags need to be defined and organized.

Meta Keywords tag

The keywords Meta tag should contain words or phrases that best describe the contents of the page. These words can be separated by commas, spaces or both. This tag is not shown to the people visiting the site, nor do the search engines display it in their results, but many search engines do read the keywords tag and give a slight boost to the page's ranking for the words that are mentioned in it.

Generally, include words and phrases that are mentioned on your page and avoid using any word more than three times in the keywords tag. All of the words in the keywords tag should be relevant to the document. The order of the keywords and phrases should be in a manner such that the most important and relevant keywords should be positioned first. The importance of Meta keywords in determining top search engine rankings is fast diminishing, however some search engines do use Meta tags to determine search engine rankings. So go ahead and use Meta keywords, they wont harm you. Good companies providing search engine optimization services use Meta keywords intelligently to derive some mileage from this out dated technique.

Meta Description tag

The Meta description tag is used to display a brief one or two sentence description of the page. The content of the Meta description tag is displayed immediately after the title in the search engine results. This tag also aids in people clicking our site if proper and meaningful content is displayed. So necessary care should be taken in phrasing content for the Meta description tag.

Limit the description to a maximum of two to three lines as the search engines do not display the whole of the content but only the first few words. Place the most relevant stuff at the beginning of the sentence as it helps in better search engine ranking. The description should be short and at the same time be informative. Limit the length of the description to approximately 150 to 200 characters.

Present day relevance of Meta tags in Search engine optimization

In the past when the search engine optimization concept was new, almost all the search engines used to give top priority to the Meta tags in ranking a web site. The keywords and description tags used to be a very important part of search engine optimization strategy. Now that the emergence of more sophisticated search engine algorithms, the usage of these Meta tags has been reduced to a minimum. A good Meta tag can give you a small boost in many engines, but you can get top search engine rankings even without one.

Keywords

2006-04-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

What are Keywords / Key phrases?
Keywords are words, which a user enters into a particular search engine or directory in order to find information relating to the subject of his interest. A key phrase is a combination of keywords and adjectives

Why are Keywords important for search engine optimization ?

The keywords form the basis for any web site as they greatly impact in the search engine listing and ranking. Wondering how? Let us straight away dive into an example, which clears our doubts. We are well aware that a normal web surfer keys in a search keyword in a directory or a search engine to find the sites relating to the subject of his / her interest. Keywords are useful in determining the Meta tags of a page, the content of a page, the image names of a website and the links in a website. Keywords are the single most important aspect in important component of search engine optimization (not to be confused with meta tags). In fact companies dealing in search engine optimization services spend considerable time and effort to determine relevant keywords.

Assume that a user is interested in purchasing cheap computer peripherals; he would type in "cheap computer peripherals" in a search engine. All the sites related to the search key phrase would be listed in the search engine result. Now if the user types in "low priced computer peripherals", the same sites, which appeared in the first search result need not appear again in the search result for the new search key phrase. From this we can infer that the probability of a site getting listed in a search result to some extent is dependent on the keywords and key phrases used. Also different users may use different search key phrases or keywords while searching. A site named computerperipherals may get listed for a key phrase "Cheap computer peripherals" typed by user 'A' and the same may not be listed for the key phrase "Low priced computer peripherals" typed by user 'B' in the search result. Why? Because the search engine searches for documents or pages containing the key phrase only "Cheap" as the keyword and returns those documents or web pages that contain the keyword "Cheap". Since the site used "Cheap" as the keyword and did not use "low priced" even once in any one of the pages, it gets listed for the former search query. Finally keywords or key phrases to some extent are useful in determining the relevance and the search engine ranking of a site.

What should be there in Keywords?

The keywords / key phrases should primarily describe and determine the content and the relevance of the page in which they are placed. The keywords / key phrases may contain the appropriate technical words relative to the subject and can also include any adjectives relating to the context. To ensure top search engine rankings a careful research about the keywords keeping the end user in perspective is extremely important.

How to define a Keyword?

For effective search engine optimization of your website keywords should be formulated for each and every page. Define the keywords and key phrases that best describe the content of the page. Put yourself in the shoes of the web visitor and frame the keywords that a user will key in to find sites similar to yours. In this way, you can phrase relevant keywords in a very reliable and easy manner for each page. Believe me the way to get top search engine rankings is to concentrate on keywords.

Present day relevance of Keywords

In the good old days, almost all the search engines used to rely heavily on Meta keywords, key phrases, keyword density and proximity. Keywords played a very major role in judging the ranking of the site in the search engine result. The present scenario has changed and each search engine has developed its own algorithm in ranking a web site. For example, Google relies mainly on the page rank and link popularity. Most of the search engines are now tending towards more advanced algorithms. Even though the relevance of keywords has decreased, they undoubtedly form the basis for effective search engine optimization.