Understanding Search Engines So You Can Get a High Ranking
By Rusty Ford (c) 2007
Just 5 years ago getting a high ranking in the search engines was easy. As search engines have gotten smarter it has become impossible to get a high ranking in the search engines with gimmicks. Now the only way is to have one of the best pages about your topic and lots of people agreeing that it is one of the best by linking to it. Before explaining how to get high rankings in the search engines it is important to understand some basics about search engines.
If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about, then you must give the search engine what it is looking for.
The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is content. The only way for a search engine to find out what a page is about is to scan the page and see what it is about. Yes, there are a few other things the search engine looks at but none of those things matter if the content does not match what people are typing in a search engine. If you want to rank high in the search engines, you must make a great page specifically about the topic that page is about.
Natural Language
It also matters how you put your content on the page. One of the things search engines look at now is natural language. You cannot just put a search term a bunch of times on the page. It is true than once upon a time that worked. But stacking search terms no longer works. Search engines look at how many times a term shows up in a sentence and how many times it shows up in a paragraph. In a normal paragraph you will not have a search term that shows up 6 to ten times. That is not the way a paragraph is normally constructed. When a search engine sees this it counts against you and not for you. The same is true about sentences. So be careful how you word your content. Try not to put the same term multiple times in a sentence or several times in a paragraph.
It is also a good idea to make sure you write in complete sentences and make your content read well. This is not just a good idea for search engine consideration but also for the reader of your page. You want them to find the page informative and easy to read. Having them come back and telling their friends about the page is important. If they find it interesting enough, they may just give you that all-important link to your page.
Here are some other things to consider about content.
The content of your page is not just limited to the words written on the page. Search engines also look at how you present your content and what you say about it. For example, every page in your site should have a title. This is the first thing written on the page such as the title to an article. When you present a title you place it as a heading. Heading tags are a way to tell the search engines this is what my page is about. To be effective your heading needs to be about the same thing as the rest of the content of your page. You can also put sub headings on the page. You can title different sections of the page with heading 2 or heading 3 tags.
Search engines also give you two places to tell them what you think your content is about. This is done through your meta title and description tags. These are the only two meta tags that most search engines look at so far as determining how they are going to rank your page. I do not even add a key word tag to any of my pages. The meta title is the place where you tell the search engine what your page is about. It can be exactly the same as the title on the page itself (your H 1 tag or page heading). Your description tag gives you the opportunity to describe the content of the page to the search engine. The description needs to be short and to the point. It should be no more than two sentences but preferably only one sentence. There is no reason a good description of a page cannot be made in one simple but complete sentence.
Last but not least is the overall content of the page. Make each page about one thing. The more topics your page talks about the less credit you get for each topic. For example you want to make a page about the three most influential people in medicine today. You can make your first page generic and mention the names of the three people and their general contributions to medicine while concentrating on making sure every paragraph is about the main topic of "most influential people in medicine". Then, if you want to go into detail about the three individual people, make a separate page about each and have them linked to from the "most influential" page.
Showing posts with label Ranking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ranking. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings
10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings
By Kevin Gallagher (c) 2007
Introduction
I have read hundreds of articles telling me how to get better rankings in Google. Some of this advice was very good and some was not. Here you will find 10 truths about getting better rankings in Google that I personally have found to be true after years of research. So let's cut through the fat and get to the lean meat of the subject.
1. The Quick Fix
First the bad news, unfortunately there are no quick fixes in creating higher rankings in Google. You have to have a lot of patience in the search engine optimization game. It will take months for your efforts to come to fruition. That's why it's important to get things right from the start and plan out your strategy.
2. Keywords
Keywords are the most important part of search engine optimization. You must do your keyword research before starting your website if you can, because this will form the basis of all your search engine optimization.
There is no point going for broad keywords such as "website design" since there is too much competition for those keywords and you will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reach the top spot in Google. You are better off using long tail niche keywords. They will have a smaller search volume, but it will be easier to obtain top position. People are more likely to find what they are looking for with long tail keywords. For example, if someone needs a website, they may type "web design" into Google and visit a few websites. They may then discover they also need hosting and a domain name and do another search for "website design hosting and domain name services" and this may be your niche keyword or key phrase.
How do you find keywords that people are searching for? Well a good free tool can be found at SeoBook or, if you want something more professional, you can use wordtracker an excellent service for finding niche keywords. You should try and get at least 10 keyword phrases.
Once you have found your keywords, do a search with them on Google. First of all look at how many results there are. If it's in the millions, then maybe your keywords are not that good and would be too competitive.
If you can find keywords with results at about 50,000, then you could be onto a winner. You should also check out your competition. Click on the top result for your keyword in the SERPS (search engine results pages) and check out their pagerank. This will give you a rough idea of what you need to achieve to get top placement. Also, you should check to see how many links they have pointing to their website as this will give you a rough idea of how many links you will need to get to the top position. To do this, in the search box type link: www.thedomain.com and you will get a list of websites that link to that domain, but it's a good idea to do this in the Yahoo search engine because it provides a more extensive list of back links. Google will only show you a percentage of their links, usually pagerank 3 or higher.
Remember, these are only rough estimates because every website is different and less, more relevant links will achieve better results.
3. Title Tag
Google sees the title tag as the most important and relevant part of the webpage it retrieves. This is one of the few things you have any control over in Google's search results. The title tag is the underlined header for your result in the SERPS. It also appears at top of your browser window. Keep this descriptive and readable but at the same time include your newly found niche keywords. Google will also highlight the keywords in your title that were included in the search query.
4. Description Tag
The description tag is the description of the webpage which resides under the title tag in the results. Again use your keywords in here, maybe some of the lesser ones you discovered. This is the only other part of the results you have any control over. Google will also highlight the keywords in here that match the search query. Again remember to keep it descriptive and readable.
5. Domain Names
If you can, try and include your main keywords in your domain name. Google will highlight them when they match the search query. This can give your ranking a little boost bcause it will show that your website is relevant to the search query.
6. Content
Content is very important. If you have ever changing fresh, unique content on your website relating to your topic, Google will love you for it and other websites will link to you. In return, this will increase your rankings, but you should really be doing this anyway. A website with no changing content is a dead website. Your content should contain your keywords, but don't sp@m your content with your keywords. Use them at the start and end of your webpage and sprinkle them in-between. Also use them in your header text and even bold a few as this shows Google that these words bear more importance.
7. Pagerank
Why are people so obsessed with that little green bar on the Google tool bar? Well I'm here to tell you that you can stop obsessing about it right now.
The thing about the pagerank bar is it can be at least 3 months out of date as Google only updates it in roughly a 3-month cycle. Only Google knows your true pagerank which changes all the time. Google regularly spiders your website and scans for new content and links to show the most relevant content in its results. Therefore pagerank is pretty inaccurate.
The other thing people get confused about is that it's called pagerank not siterank. What I have determined is that your website will get assigned a pagerank figure and then it will be distributed through your indexed pages, for example if your website gets a figure of 5, then your home page may get a pagerank of 3 and your other pages get a 2 or maybe a 1 and so on. If these other pages also have links to them, this will increase their own individual pagerank.
The only advantage of that green bar that I can see is for exchanging links. You can get a rough idea of what a website's ranking is and you can decide whether or not to exchange links.
8. Linking
One-way links are better than 2 way links, but one-way links can be harder to obtain. Why should someone put your link on their website; what's in it for them? You can do this by writing articles like this one and submitting them to article websites, social media websites or on your own blog, but remember to add an author's bio which includes some links to your website.
Reciprocal links are easier to come by, but in the early stages, when you don't have a good pagerank will be more difficult to obtain. Once your pagerank increases you can be more selective of the pagerank you exchange with.
Don't forget about the guys starting out when your green bar starts to increase. If they have a website with good quality content, then you should consider linking with them. Remember we all need to start somewhere and today's page rank of 1 is tomorrow's pagerank 5. Try to link with relevant websites because Google likes this, and you will receive quality traffic from these websites for years to come.
Also, I have found a great little tool which checks potential link partners to see if they are linking to bad neighbourhoods. A link exchange with a penalized website could also result in a Google penalty for your site. The tool can be found at:
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm
Editor's Note: The page at the above URL might not be visible in all web browsers but is visible in Internet Explorer.
9. The Open Directory (DMOZ)
You should always submit your website to DMOZ since it can take an age to get listed there and Google uses these results in its organic results sometimes. I recently wrote an article discussing this topic and some people commented on this and said that they haven't submitted to DMOZ and their rankings are fine. This may be true, but one thing you should remember is that lots of directory websites use DMOZ results, which in turn will get you more one-way links.
10. Blogs
Blogs are loved by Google because they have lots of text and are constantly getting updated; so start your own blog on your website. Include articles, stories and anything that's related to your website. If you give people something of interest, they will come back for more and link to you.
That's all for now, take care and good luck! And remember, you only get out of something what you put in to it.
By Kevin Gallagher (c) 2007
Introduction
I have read hundreds of articles telling me how to get better rankings in Google. Some of this advice was very good and some was not. Here you will find 10 truths about getting better rankings in Google that I personally have found to be true after years of research. So let's cut through the fat and get to the lean meat of the subject.
1. The Quick Fix
First the bad news, unfortunately there are no quick fixes in creating higher rankings in Google. You have to have a lot of patience in the search engine optimization game. It will take months for your efforts to come to fruition. That's why it's important to get things right from the start and plan out your strategy.
2. Keywords
Keywords are the most important part of search engine optimization. You must do your keyword research before starting your website if you can, because this will form the basis of all your search engine optimization.
There is no point going for broad keywords such as "website design" since there is too much competition for those keywords and you will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reach the top spot in Google. You are better off using long tail niche keywords. They will have a smaller search volume, but it will be easier to obtain top position. People are more likely to find what they are looking for with long tail keywords. For example, if someone needs a website, they may type "web design" into Google and visit a few websites. They may then discover they also need hosting and a domain name and do another search for "website design hosting and domain name services" and this may be your niche keyword or key phrase.
How do you find keywords that people are searching for? Well a good free tool can be found at SeoBook or, if you want something more professional, you can use wordtracker an excellent service for finding niche keywords. You should try and get at least 10 keyword phrases.
Once you have found your keywords, do a search with them on Google. First of all look at how many results there are. If it's in the millions, then maybe your keywords are not that good and would be too competitive.
If you can find keywords with results at about 50,000, then you could be onto a winner. You should also check out your competition. Click on the top result for your keyword in the SERPS (search engine results pages) and check out their pagerank. This will give you a rough idea of what you need to achieve to get top placement. Also, you should check to see how many links they have pointing to their website as this will give you a rough idea of how many links you will need to get to the top position. To do this, in the search box type link: www.thedomain.com and you will get a list of websites that link to that domain, but it's a good idea to do this in the Yahoo search engine because it provides a more extensive list of back links. Google will only show you a percentage of their links, usually pagerank 3 or higher.
Remember, these are only rough estimates because every website is different and less, more relevant links will achieve better results.
3. Title Tag
Google sees the title tag as the most important and relevant part of the webpage it retrieves. This is one of the few things you have any control over in Google's search results. The title tag is the underlined header for your result in the SERPS. It also appears at top of your browser window. Keep this descriptive and readable but at the same time include your newly found niche keywords. Google will also highlight the keywords in your title that were included in the search query.
4. Description Tag
The description tag is the description of the webpage which resides under the title tag in the results. Again use your keywords in here, maybe some of the lesser ones you discovered. This is the only other part of the results you have any control over. Google will also highlight the keywords in here that match the search query. Again remember to keep it descriptive and readable.
5. Domain Names
If you can, try and include your main keywords in your domain name. Google will highlight them when they match the search query. This can give your ranking a little boost bcause it will show that your website is relevant to the search query.
6. Content
Content is very important. If you have ever changing fresh, unique content on your website relating to your topic, Google will love you for it and other websites will link to you. In return, this will increase your rankings, but you should really be doing this anyway. A website with no changing content is a dead website. Your content should contain your keywords, but don't sp@m your content with your keywords. Use them at the start and end of your webpage and sprinkle them in-between. Also use them in your header text and even bold a few as this shows Google that these words bear more importance.
7. Pagerank
Why are people so obsessed with that little green bar on the Google tool bar? Well I'm here to tell you that you can stop obsessing about it right now.
The thing about the pagerank bar is it can be at least 3 months out of date as Google only updates it in roughly a 3-month cycle. Only Google knows your true pagerank which changes all the time. Google regularly spiders your website and scans for new content and links to show the most relevant content in its results. Therefore pagerank is pretty inaccurate.
The other thing people get confused about is that it's called pagerank not siterank. What I have determined is that your website will get assigned a pagerank figure and then it will be distributed through your indexed pages, for example if your website gets a figure of 5, then your home page may get a pagerank of 3 and your other pages get a 2 or maybe a 1 and so on. If these other pages also have links to them, this will increase their own individual pagerank.
The only advantage of that green bar that I can see is for exchanging links. You can get a rough idea of what a website's ranking is and you can decide whether or not to exchange links.
8. Linking
One-way links are better than 2 way links, but one-way links can be harder to obtain. Why should someone put your link on their website; what's in it for them? You can do this by writing articles like this one and submitting them to article websites, social media websites or on your own blog, but remember to add an author's bio which includes some links to your website.
Reciprocal links are easier to come by, but in the early stages, when you don't have a good pagerank will be more difficult to obtain. Once your pagerank increases you can be more selective of the pagerank you exchange with.
Don't forget about the guys starting out when your green bar starts to increase. If they have a website with good quality content, then you should consider linking with them. Remember we all need to start somewhere and today's page rank of 1 is tomorrow's pagerank 5. Try to link with relevant websites because Google likes this, and you will receive quality traffic from these websites for years to come.
Also, I have found a great little tool which checks potential link partners to see if they are linking to bad neighbourhoods. A link exchange with a penalized website could also result in a Google penalty for your site. The tool can be found at:
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm
Editor's Note: The page at the above URL might not be visible in all web browsers but is visible in Internet Explorer.
9. The Open Directory (DMOZ)
You should always submit your website to DMOZ since it can take an age to get listed there and Google uses these results in its organic results sometimes. I recently wrote an article discussing this topic and some people commented on this and said that they haven't submitted to DMOZ and their rankings are fine. This may be true, but one thing you should remember is that lots of directory websites use DMOZ results, which in turn will get you more one-way links.
10. Blogs
Blogs are loved by Google because they have lots of text and are constantly getting updated; so start your own blog on your website. Include articles, stories and anything that's related to your website. If you give people something of interest, they will come back for more and link to you.
That's all for now, take care and good luck! And remember, you only get out of something what you put in to it.
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