Search Engine Optimization
Google is by far the most popular search engine available
today for both ordinary surfers and webmasters.
Surfers like it because of the highly relevant results it
gives, and the speed at which it delivers them. This is due
to its complex text matching algorithm and of course the
Page rank system that this engine uses. More on the Page
rank
system later.
Google is popular with webmasters and Internet Marketing
companies due to the highly workable ranking system it uses.
Unlike other engines where information about how the results
are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes
information on its site about the results it produces. So
webmasters have things they can do to produce higher
rankings. What also makes Google popular with webmasters is
the speed at which they will spider / list your site.
If you are not listed in Google and submit you are usually
indexed within two weeks. If, however, your site is already
listed in the index Google should reindex once every month,
but more frequently if you have a high Page rank.
This indexing / re-indexing time is much quicker than most
other search engines, this allows webmasters to edit their
pages properties such as title, first few lines of text,
headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of
incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly
if the changes were successful or not.
It's because of this popularity that you need to know the
workings of the google search engine. Without knowledge of
it you will be ranked lower than all other sites that are
only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm.
So let's indulge ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm.
Well, there are two main parts to the algorithm google uses,
the first is its text matching system, whereby Google tries
to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered. The
second and equally important part of the algorithm is of
course the Google patented Page rank system.
I'll first go through how to make your page relevant, i.e. -
the text matching part of the algo.
Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when
searching for keywords. So make sure your most important
keywords or key phrases appear in the title tag. It seems to
work best if you have other words in your title tag, too,
after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40
characters.
As many of you know, Google does not use meta tags such as
keywords or description tags. This is because the text in
these tags cannot be seen by visitors to a website. And
Google feels these tags will be abused, by webmasters
placing lots of unrelated words in them in order the get
more visitors.
The lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates
your description from the first few lines of text on your
page, this means you have to have your keywords and phrases
right at the top, if it finds them your page becomes more
relevant. If it doesn't the rest of your page has to work
harder to become relevant. For example Scroll back to the
top of this page and you will see:
AKA Marketing .com - Free Internet Marketing Articles ,
Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com
The above sentence includes key phrases related to this
page.
Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for
determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and
phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page.
Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work
best.
Other advice about making your page relevant includes
putting keywords into the <h?> heading tags </h?>. Also try
and bold as many keywords as you can. As of late Google
seems to be indexing text in alt image tags, so includes
your key phrases in there too.
One final tip on page relevancy is the point on having your
keywords and phrases in links which point to your site. It
is a good idea to have the linking text contain your
keywords as Google even says itself that it analyzes pages
that links come from too, in it's description of it's page
rank technology.
How much keyword laden links matter is anyone's guess. But I
have noticed a lot of sites which give the HTML code to
visitors who want to exchange links do include keywords in
the actual linking area. You should do something like this
to on your links page. Say something like "if you want to
link to this site, please use the following code".
In the above section of the article you have learned what
areas Google uses and looks at when looking for a relevant
site. But what method does Google use to determine which
site is better, the answer is the Page rank system.
Page rank is as the name suggests a ranking system of pages.
It works on the basis that if a website ABC.COM has been
linked from a website XYZ.COM, abc.com must have some good
content and therefore Google will count the link from
XYZ.COM as a vote for ABC.COM. You can check your link
popularity on Google by downloading the Google toolbar from
http://toolbar.google.com
The Page rank scale goes from 1 to 10 on the Google toolbar
and from 1 to 7 beside listings on the Google toolbar. A
less important site is of course a site with a PR of 1 and a
very very important site is a site with a PR of 7 or 10, in
the directory or toolbar respectively.
The more links or votes a site has the more important it
must be and therefore the higher it will rank for search
words which it is relevant to, right?, WRONG!.
Google does not simply count the number of incoming links a
page has, if that was the case every webmaster from Iceland
to Vietnam would try and exchange links to every tom, Dick
and harry website that would let them. In Googles own words
"Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or
links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts
the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves
"important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages
"important."
Hopefully your beginning to get the idea. If not - The idea
is to have your page linked to by as many high quality and
high page ranked sites as possible. Right?, RIGHT and WRONG.
WRONG BECAUSE - You see Google page rank system also takes
into account the number of links the page that has linked to
you has. The reasoning for this is that a page X has a
certain amount of voting PR, if your site Y is the only link
from that page X, then Google feels confident that page X
thinks your page Y is the best link it has, and will give
you more PR. If however page X has 50 links, page X could
think your only the 50th best page. So the more links it has
the less of a PR boost your site gets.
RIGHT BECAUSE - Linking to a site with a 6+ PR will provide
a significant boost to your PR in most cases, but in cases
where the site also links with 100 other sites the boost
will be almost zero. Likewise if a site has a PR of just 2
but you and only one other site are linked from it, then the
PR boost would be more than the site with 100 links and a PR
of 6.
It's beginning to come complex isn't it, just wait till you
see this formula. Its looks scary for non math's people.
First let me explain what the damping factor is. The damping
factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass
on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor
is widely known to be .85 . This is a little less then the
linking pages own PR.
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))
In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank™ boost your page
will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1).
PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and
C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is
important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of
that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out
evenly between all sites it links to.
Imagine akamarketing.com was linked by XYZ.COM's link page
which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the
formula should look like:
PR(AKA) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .34
PR(AKA) = .49
To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after
being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other
links.
Lets say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8 - double
the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a
total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:
PR(AKA) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .425
PR(AKA) = .575
The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR
of the linking page important but what is also important is
how many other sites are also linked / voted for from that
page.
OK, I think we've had enough mathy stuff for now. Just
remember that the name of the game is to get as many links
from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of
these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more
your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.
The best thing you can do for your PR seems at the moment
seems to be getting listed in Dmoz.org - The Open Directory
Project.
Page rank is widely known to be biased towards big name
directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Look smart.
This is true, especially in the case of Dmoz.org. These ODP
links are treated like gold by Page rank. It doesn't even
matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I
have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon
as Google updates it's directory with the latest one from
dmoz.org. This is because Google uses it's own version of
ODP for the Google web directory.
Don't believe ODP links are very important to Page rank?
Don't believe a listing in the ODP will boost your ranking?
Well they are and they will. Perform a search for almost
anything on Google and you'll discover that 75-80% of the
top 10 results are also indexed in the Google directory. The
fact of the matter seems to me to be if your not listed in
ODP, you shouldn't expect much traffic from Google.
It's not difficult, it does sometimes take time, but it's
not difficult. Just make sure you site has good content and
follow the guidelines for adding a URL. Try to get you index
page listed at least. I say at least because although ODP
claims only to list your index page, there are plenty of
sites with 5 - 10 pages listed. So if your site has very
distinctive sections, then submit each section - slowly.
Once Google updates it's directory, these listings could do
wonders for your site maximum PR.
As for Yahoo and Looksmart, Page rank will usually allocate
a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed.
For tips on getting listed in Yahoo, read Yahoo Submitting
Tips.
If you are a non-commercial site or have a site that's
almost completely non-commercial you can get into the look
smart directory through www.Zeal.com. really love this
site, just like Google obtains results from ODP, Look smart
obtains it's non-commercial listings from the Zeal web
directory, without Zeal would have to fork out hard
earned cash and all my site does is provide information.
To continue - I submitted AKA Marketing.com on a Tuesday and
was listed in Zeal by Thursday morning. On Monday I checked
my logs and found lots of referrals from Look smart, I was
in Look smart already. I looked at my logs later only to
find MSN had updated it's DB from the looksmart DB and was
sending my loads of visitors cause of the good listing I
got. My site was listed in Zeal, Looks mart and MSN within
six days. So get over to Zeal.com and submit your site.
Before you can submit a site however you must pass a member
quiz, which is fairly simple and straightforward.
If you happen to be a webmaster that has a listing in all
three of Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looks mart then I'm guessing
your site has good to very good PR and rankings.
RECAP
Have your main keywords and phrases in your TITLE tag and
well spread throughout your page. Get as many links from as
many high PR low number of outbound links pages you can. GET
LISTED IN DMOZ.ORG, Yahoo and Look smart.
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