4.
How do Search Engines Rank Pages?
There
is no one that can guarantee you top positioning
on any search engine. Each search engine uses
its own critera as to what it likes when cataloguing
the content of a particular web page. Some engines
look at your metatags, others look at keyword
density. Attached an overview of what some search
engines think of as important.
|
Search
Engine
|
Content
and location
|
HTML
Title
|
Meta
tags
|
Keyword
Density
|
Link
popularity
|
Summary
|
AltaVista
Search Engine |
Keywords that
appear at the top of the page are given higher
priority |
Very important,
should be different for every page |
AltaVista likes
the use of the Meta Description tag and Title
Tag |
Important |
Important
|
keywords in
title, description metatag, keywords appearing
at the top of the page and keywords close
together. |
Open Directory
Project (powers alltheweb, AltaVista, Gigablast,
Google, HotBot, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut)
|
Editors determine
if your site gets listed in the directory.
|
Important.
Make sure the title is short and describes
what the website is all about. |
Description
and keywords filled in are important. |
No |
Not important
for DMOZ, but is Important, for some of its
partners, who use Inktomi |
Make sure your
title and description are accurate and precise
and is the same as on the website and pick
approriate category. |
Google
Search Engine |
Keywords should
be close to each other. Content should
include keywords in text or links |
Keyword or
keyword phrase should be in title |
The Meta description
tag often appears in search results and is
an important tag. |
Not mentioned |
Very important,
especially from popular websites. |
Link popularity,
keywords near each other, keywords in title
and link text, themes, bold and large fonts.
|
| Inktomi |
Keywords should
appear at top of page and in the content. |
Very important |
Very important,
both description and keywords |
Very important
(standard requirements are 3-7%) |
Site linkage
is very Important |
Keyword density
and site linkage are most important. |
MSN
Search Engine |
Important.
Place descriptive content at top of page |
Important,
should contain keywords |
The meta description and keywords tag often
appear in search results and are important |
Important |
Important
|
Web
page content, the number and quality of websites
that link to your website, and the relevance
of your website’s content to keywords are
most important. |
|
Yahoo
Directory
|
Editors determine
if your site gets listed in the directory.
|
Imortant |
Description
and keywords filled in play a role. |
No |
No information |
Make sure your
title and description are accurate and precise
and is the same as on the website and pick
approriate category. |
|
Search
Engine
|
Content
and location
|
HTML
Title
|
Meta
tags
|
Keyword
Density
|
Link
popularity
|
Summary
|
5.
What are Popular Directories & Indexes?
There
are a few directories who are top providers of
traffic to websites, and for this reason they
are important for a search strategy. The main
ones are dmoz.org
and the yahoo
directory.
6.
How to improve Search Engine Placement?
There
are several basic steps you can take that can
greatly improve your site's chances of ranking
high in search engine. Come up with a good title,
make sure your website is optimized for your best
three keyword/keyword phrases, optimize your metatags,
make sure you work on good content and your keyword
density, and avoid html errors.
Getting
a high ranking in major search engines is something
that can often be achieved by putting in a lot
of hard work and "love for the game".
It's not just about optimising your website as
best as you can but it's a mix of hundreds of
variables. Once you have achieved a good ranking,
the problem becomes how to stay on top, as your
website is competing with thousands of others.
Basically,
as of this point it will be going through the
same steps over and over again until you get some
satisfying results.
First
of all, make sure your website is registered with
the engines you care about. Visit the search engine
and search for your url. If you're not registered
keep trying as it may take several submissions
before you get registered.
Another
thing you have to do is to track the visitors
to your website. There are many stats
and tracking programs that can help
you with this. These statistics will give you
a lot of valuable information such as what keywords
people used to find your site, which search engines
referred them? What pages they visited? This information
will help you determine whether or not you have
optimised your website for the right keywords
and phrases, or if you need to change things around.
Also
keep the content on your website fresh. Update
regularly with new information to encourage visitors
to come back to your website.
Keep
in mind that all search engines rank your website
differently and use different algorithms. The
above overview will give you some idea.
7.
What are Metatags?
A
little bit more on Metatags. First of all you
use metatags as part of your HTML code when you
build your Web site. When search engines index
your site the metatags and keywords tell the search
engine what your website is all about and what
information to display in the browser when someone
does a search.
Your
html code, including Metatags, Title Tag and Keyword
Tag, will look like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Title of your website</title>
<meta http-equip="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="description
of your website">
<meta name="keywords" content="your
most important keywords">
</head>
<body>Viewable content of your website</body>
</html>
Optimizing
your title tag:
<title></title>
The TITLE tag of your page
is a very important factor when optimising your
web page for the search engines. The TITLE tag
is displayed in the browser's title bar and it's
very important to put important keywords in your
TITLE metatag.
Your
TITLE tag should be below the <HEAD> tag
and should contain your most important keywords.
I recommend your TITLE tag to be around 60 characters
long. If you have more than 60 characters the
TITLE tag may be cut off by some search engines.
Try to place some important keywords at the beginning
of the tag, especially when you have more than
60 characters.
Optimizing
your description metatag:
<meta
name="description" content="All
about your website">
The DESCRIPTION
Metatag is also read by browsers and displayed
in the search results and is therefore another
important Tag when optimising your website. The
DESCRIPTION meta tag describes what's on your
web page to search engines and your most important
keyword phrases should appear once in this description.
Try to create a DESCRIPTION tag with no more than
150 characters.
Optimizing
your keywords metatag:
<meta
name="Keywords" Content="keyword
1, keyword 2, keyword 3">
Enter your most important
keywords and keyword phrases in this tag but make
sure these words also show up in the body of your
site. Don't repeat the same keyword/keyword phrase
more than 3 times as some engines may view repetition
as spamming and can penalise you for it. Limit
your KEYWORD tag to about 12 words or about 500
characters.
Optimizing
your img alt tag:
<img
src="agnitiologo.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="isp
ottawa canada">. You can place your
important keywords or a sentence in the ALT attribute
of the image tag. The Image ALT tag is not very
important these days to search engines but it
can't harm using them.
Note:
- Your
<title> tag should be around 60 characters
and should contain your most important keyword
phrases.
- Your
<meta http> character set. It's now recommended
to use this tag as browsers and robots use the
tag how to translate the bytes in the document
into characters on the screen. For more information
visit: http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html
- Your
<meta description> tag should be around
150 characters and again you want to place your
most important keyword phrases here. Many engines
look at this tag, although Google ignores it
and will create it's own description.
- Your
<meta keywords> tag should contain about
12 words or 500 characters. Enter your most
important keywords and keyword phrases in this
tag but make sure these words also show up in
the body of your site. Don't repeat the same
keyword/keyword phrase more than 3 times. Although
this metatag is still useful, more and more
crawlers are ignoring it.
There
are some Metatag builder tools out there if you
need some help:
Submit
Corner - Metatag Generator
AddMe
- Metatags Generator
ScrubTheWeb
METATAG builder tool
8.
How to pick the right keywords?
Choosing
the right keywords is essential. Your metatags
and the content of your site will be optimised
for those keywords. Try to think of 3 main keyword
phrases that relate to your website and do your
research. Try to be specific when you pick your
3 keyword phrases as you will get more targeted
traffic the more specific you are. When you pick
very general keywords you'll have to compete with
thousands of other websites. Once you have picked
your three keyword phrases, type them into a search
engine and see what comes up. Analyse what the
competition has done.
Use
a keyword tool to help you determine which terms
are most important and most used by people looking
for a website like yours. I have included a few
links to keyword tools which can assist you in
determining the most relevant keywords for your
website.
- WordTracker
- Overture
Keyword Tool
9.
What is content and keyword density?
The
content of your website is as important as your
title tag and optimising the content and
the keyword density is one of the best
things you can do to improve search engine ranking.
Search engines love text so if you can, try to
create pages with lots of text and don't forget
to include your important keyword phrases. In
general try to have between 100 and 250 words
on every page you submit to the engines. This
amount of words will also help the search engines
understand what the page is all about and your
site will have an advantage over other sites with
less content when it comes to ranking.
Keyword
density is the ratio of the search phrase to the
total number of words in the page. Again you want
to focus on your most important keyword phrases
and have a keyword density ratio of around 5%.
There are many keyword density tools out there
which can help you determine keyword density
on your site and can help improve keyword density
ratios.
Keep
in mind that search engines calculate keyword
density ratios differenty. Google for example
does not include the metatag when calculating
the ratio but other search engines such as inktomi
powered engines do inlcude metatags.