Tying It Together: SEO For The Big Three

This article is part four of a four part series on optimizing your website for the three major search engines. Part one, titled "SEO For MSN" covered optimizing your website to rank highly on MSN, while part two, titled "SEO For Yahoo!" covered optimizing your website to rank on Yahoo! and part three, titled "SEO For Google" covered how to rank highly on Google. In this article we will cover how to tie your optimization strategies together to attain the highest rankings possible on all three engines simultaneously. The Major Factors: There are some constants in search engine optimization; some factors that, by necessity, must be considered by all the major engines. Fortunately for us, these factors are generally the most important. Unfortunately, each of the engines uses them in different ways. Let's begin by listing these factors: * Age * Content * Keyword density * How it fares in the results * Site structure * Backlinks Age Many of you will already be familiar with the aging delay that is commonly referred to as "the sandbox". For those of you that aren't familiar with it, the sandbox is a penalty that is applied to new sites and new links under the assumption that they cannot play nicely with others. It is only after time that the penalty is lightened and eventually disappears and the site is left to play in the park with the rest of the "nice sites". This penalty is applied most strongly by Google and to a lesser degree Yahoo! On Google a new website cannot expect to rank for any competitive phrases for between 6 and 8 months. Even then, the links that are being built to this site still have to age so for most new sites competing for high-competition phrases you're looking at a good year-or-so to see top results though you'll likely see good results for many of your secondary phrases well before then. The penalty is also applied by Yahoo! but to a far lesser degree. The penalty on Yahoo is both shorter and lighter than that applied by Google. MSN does not apply such a penalty at the time of this writing. Content This is obviously a key feature across all the engines but again Yahoo! and Google take the lead in penalizing sites that do not have a lot of content related to a similar theme. Recently we have seen this act as mixed blessing, at least on Google, with some major sites getting overlooked due to a large amount of information on a wide variety of topics in exchange for sites focused on a single topic, however with their recent tweaks they seem to be balancing the overall content focus with other factors to create a solid set of rankings that are relevant, will provide results that are more likely to produce the desired information, and don't neglect sites that may contain wide information on a wide variety of topics yet provide a good deal of valuable content on the searches subject. Yahoo doesn't seem to be catching up in this area with some holes in their results. That said, as they are not "gamed" as much as Google they haven't had to put on such strong filters and their results remain solid despite this. It should be noted that the content does not necessarily have to contain the same keywords to be considered related. The engines are getting far better at determining themes of sites and knowing which words are related to each other. For example, Google will view the word "personal" and "personalized" as related by theme. You may not rank the same for both words in a search however they are tied together and the use of one will help the overall optimization for the other. Keyword Density Keyword density is the overall percentage of your page content that is made up of the targeted keywords. An additional factor in keyword density is the percentage of your keyword content that uses special formatting such as bold, italic, anchor text, etc. While keyword density is not the end-all-be-all of SEO (there is no single factor that is) it is a factor and one of the more difficult to optimize properly. While hitting specific densities for both overall content and special formats is easy enough, it becomes more difficult when you consider an area even more important than optimization: your real-for-real human visitor! One should try to attain near optimal keyword densities using a tool such as Total Optimizer Pro (see below), GRKDA, or other similar software, however one much always be aware of how the optimized content reads to your visitors. It's important to keep your visitors in mind, your sales message clear, and also remember that if you have to sacrifice a bit in one area (like keyword density) it can be made up through stronger efforts in others (such as link building). Keyword density holds the most weight on MSN, followed by Yahoo! with Google coming in last. This does not mean it should not be considered for reasons that will follow below. How A Site Fares In The Results One factor that is not often discussed among SEO's and which is not known to many outside the community is that how your site fares in the results is a factor. This factor is a fairly recent addition but is sure top become a stronger and stronger part of the overall algorithm as it matures. Google pioneered this technology however Yahoo! appears to be following suit and MSN is sure to do so as well considering that this is information that is very easy for any engine to track and truly adds to the "democracy" of the results in that it becomes the users "vote" that helps secure or topple a high ranking site. This factor breaks down as such; the search engine knows when you have clicked on a result. They also know when you have returned to the results to try another site. If a site shows up for a specific search query often yet visitors tend to return to the results quickly after visiting the site the engine can thus assume that the searcher did not find what they were looking for on the site and thus the site can be deemed not relevant for that phrase. This factor alone has far-reaching effects on a number of traditionally non-SEO related factors and pulls them into the SEO-realm. Content now has to be more captivating, navigation has to be clear and easily accessed and the visitor has to be able to find the information that they're looking for quickly and easily. If the searcher returns to the search results quickly you will lose a point. If thi s happens often enough you will lose positioning. Site Structure The way your site is structured determines how easily a search engine spider can get through it, the priority is gives specific content, and how much code the spider has to weed through to get to your content. Essentially, having a structure that allows the spider to easily get through your website, places the content areas as high up in the HTML code as possible, and which minimizes the use of formatting code such as the font tag, will increase the overall weight of the content and insure that the content you want the spiders to focus on is what they "see" early on. Many sites are structured such that the actual content doesn't appear until half-way down the page as far as the HTML code is concerned. Having a content area that starts at line 174 in the code is not a good start when it comes to SEO. While there is no specific answer as to what line the content area should start, using proper table structures or better yet, tableless design practices using CSS can greatly increase the weight your content is given. Using CSS again we can significantly reduce the need for formatting code, further reducing the amount of coding that the search engine has to go through to get to the content. The higher up in your HTML the content lies the greater the weight it is given. Optimized site structure, especially in moderate to high competition industries, is one of the first steps one can take to secure a competitive advantage over one's competition. Backlinks Ah backlinks. Once upon a time simply securing mass numbers of links to your site using whatever means available was enough to rocket sites to the top of the rankings. Fortunately for search engine users this is no longer the case. With backlinks, as with websites in general, it's quality that counts. While there are numerous factors regarding the value of a link (many of which were discussed in the article, "SEO For Google") the basics are: * Age. The older the link the more weight it has. (Google and Yahoo!) * Link location. Links higher up on the page hold more weight. (All three) * Link location two. Links occurring within content hold more weight that a directory-style link. (Google and Yahoo! to a lesser degree) * Anchor text and formatting. The anchor text and the use of special formats in the text affect a link's weight. (All three) * Relevancy. The relevancy of the site linking to you. (Google and Yahoo predominantly) * Number of links. The more links there are on a single page, the less valuable the link to your site from that page is. (All three) * Non-recip links. Non-reciprocal links hold more weight than reciprocal links. (Google and Yahoo! to a lesser degree) * Authority sites. Links from authority sites (.gov, .edu and respected news and information related) hold more weight. (Google and Yahoo! predominantly and MSN to a lesser degree) Tying It Together Knowing all this one must assess the best course of action when launching into a new SEO campaign. For the purposes of this conclusion we will assume that the keywords we are targeting are in the moderate to high competition levels. In this event one must balance the various factors and timelines to produce the highest ROI in the short term with an eye on maximum benefit in the long term. What we mean by this is that with aging delays occurring on Google and to a lesser degree Yahoo! one should focus first on MSN. This means that when you are adjusting your keyword densities and tweaking the onsite factors early in the campaign you will want to focus on hitting optimal levels for MSN knowing that Google, regardless of what you do, is unlikely to rank you highly for your primary phrases for some time. Your link building efforts will need to take into account the long-term objective of ranking highly on Google with an understanding that MSN is not going to penalize your newly created backlinks with aging delays. A balance of speed vs perfection will be required. All the links you build should be relevant (if your visitors wouldn't be interested in going to the site then don't link to it) however if you can't always get inline links or your link will appear lower on the page you will still want to secure it. After time (assuming that the right tactics have been used) you will notice your MSN rankings improve. This is a good benchmark for how your site will fare overall. Once you are ranking well on MSN it's time to focus your attention on Yahoo! At this stage you will want to slowly shift the onsite optimization towards Yahoo! You may be asking, "Am I about to lose my MSN rankings?" Good question and the answer should be, "no" if you’re continuing on the right path. Non-optimal levels in one area can be offset by increased strength in another. While you are slowly shifting the onsite optimization away from MSN's optimal levels you are continuing to develop more and more links further strengthening your site in this area to make up the difference. After a couple months you will notice your Yahoo! rankings improving. A general timeline would be (assuming you are working diligently at it and are targeting fairly competitive phrases with a new site): * 2 - 3 months: MSN rankings secured * 4 - 6 months: Yahoo! rankings improving * 6 - 8 months: Yahoo! rankings secured and Google improving. Many secondary phrases are attained on Google. * 8 - 12 months: Google rankings secured. The timelines will be quite different if you are working with an existing site (i.e. it has a solid history and a good PageRank already), are targeting less competitive phrases, and a variety of other considerations. Conclusion The path is not an easy one (or SEO's would be out of their jobs) however with hard work and perhaps more importantly, constant work it can be done. Remember, there are currently 10 sites sitting on the first page. Match what they did, do 10% better and you will be there too. Resources Below are a few important resources to help you on your path to higher rankings: Total Optimizer Pro - Total Optimizer Pro is the tool we use for onsite and offsite competition reporting including keyword density and backlink analysis. Google's Webmaster Guidelines - They're put out by Google but apply to all the major engines. Add this one to your favorites and reference it often. Search Engine Watch - Great source for news on the search engines in general. The also give great coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conferences when they're being held. Note: There are resources specific to each engine in the first three articles in this series noted above.

SEO For MSN

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 (o r 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. Next week we will be covering Yahoo! 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. Microsoft Press Room - Read the latest press releases from Microsoft. 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. SearchEngineWatch's MSN Forums - Read the latest news, feedback and discussions on the SearchEngineWatch forums. A great way to keep updated but beware, not everyone in there is a qualified opinion.

Search Engine Optimization for Yahoo!

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 websites 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 com es 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. 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. Yahoo! Press Room - Read the latest press releases from Yahoo!. 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. DigitalPoint's Yahoo! Forum - Read the latest news, feedback and discussions on the DigitalPoint forums. A great way to keep updated but beware, not everyone in there is a qualified opinion.

Search Engine Optimization for Google

This article is part three 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, while part two, titled "SEO For Yahoo!" covered optimizing your website to rank on Yahoo!. In this article we will cover optimizing your website for Google. I likely don't even need to mention that Google is currently the largest of all the search engines with ComScore Media estimating this giant to be responsible for 42.7% of all online searches in March of 2006. For this reason people tend to view Google as the engine to rank on. While this point is debatable (let's remember that there's still 57.3% of searches that aren't done on Google) it's definitely an important engine to rank on. So how is it done? 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 an d 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. Spread The Word

SEO - оптимизация для “чайников”

Как минимум, 85% людей, которые ищут товары и услуги в Интернет приходят на веб-сайты с поисковых систем. Смысл оптимизации вашего сайта и получения более высокого места в результатах поиска и состоит в привлечении как можно большего числа потенциальных покупателей. Чем выше ваша позиция – тем больше ваш траффик. Вы можете утонуть в огромном количестве информации, которая доступна сегодня в он-лайне по поисковой оптимизации. Но есть и другой путь: вы можете взять несколько элементов на вашей странице, произвести незначительные изменения и, скорее всего, ваш рейтинг быстро и значительно повысится. И первый такой элемент – строка названия вашей домашней страницы. Обратите внимание на те слова, которые появляются вверху вашей домашней страницы, когда вы на нее заходите. Для того, чтобы подняться по результатам поиска, обязательно, чтобы в названии вашей домашней страницы содержались самые важные ключевые слова. Причем, одно из них должно быть названием вашей компании. Затем кликните на все ссылки на ваши страницы и исследуйте их названия. В строке названия каждой страницы вашего сайта должны содержаться главные ключевые слова и фразы, идентичные тем, что содержатся в тексте самой страницы. Однако, следует избегать любых длинных цепочек ключевых слов. Их число не должно быть больше шести. Избегайте повторов ключевых слов в названиях страниц. Нельзя, чтобы идентичные слова следовали друг за другом. Следующий элемент вашего сайта, который нужно поместить «под микроскоп» - контент. Поисковые системы ставят выше те сайты, на которых много качественного контента, а не те, которые изобилуют графикой. Текст должен содержать самые важные ключевые слова, ведь именно по ним потенциальные покупатели и будут находить ваш сайт. Вашей целью должно стать размещение не менее 250 слов на каждой странице. Но если это противоречит дизайну вашего сайта, размещайте как минимум 100, но тщательно подобранных слов. Если вы хотите добиться высокого результата в поиске, тогда учтите, что без качественного текста это невозможно. Помните, что поисковая система должна прочитать этот текст, поэтому он должен быть представлен не в графической форме, а в формате HTML. Чтобы определить в каком формате у вас находится текст, возьмите курсор и попытайтесь выделить пару слов. Если вы смогли это сделать, то все нормально и ваш текст – в HTML-формате. Если же текст не выделяется, он находится в графической форме. В этом случае, попросите веб-мастера перевести текст в HTML-формат и ваш траффик с поисковых систем сразу возрастет. Далее следует обратить внимание на мета-тэги. Кому-то этот термин может показаться пришедшим из области научной фантастики, но на самом деле, это всего лишь простой код. Многие почему-то считают, что мета-тэги – ключ к достижению высокого рейтинга, но их влияние на рейтинг в сегодняшней ситуации в поисковых системах вовсе не так велико. Тем не менее, их стоит добавить на тот случай, если конкретная поисковая система задействует мета-тэги в своей формуле определения рейтинга сайта. Чтобы определить, есть ли у вас на странице мета-тэги, вам нужно получить доступ к этому коду. Чтобы это сделать, нужно кликнуть на кнопку «просмотр» в меню браузера и выбрать «источник». Это приведет к появлению окна, с кодами создания этой страницы. Если там не будет кода, который выглядит как meta name=”keywords” content , то попросите веб-мастера добавить мета-тэги. Возможно, радикально ситуацию с трафиком это не изменит, но некоторого увеличения ожидать можно. Наконец, мы добрались до вопроса «индекса цитируемости» (ИЦ). Этот фактор имеет важнейшее значение для определения рейтинга в поисковой системе. Почти все без исключения поисковики используют «индекс цитируемости» для установления рейтинга вашего ресурса. Этот показатель основывается на количестве и качестве сайтов, ссылки на которые имеются на вашей странице ссылок. Если вы напечатаете в одной из популярных поисковых систем «бесплатная проверка индекса цитируемости» вашего сайта, то поисковая система покажет, какие сайты ссылаются на ваш. Если их немного, или те, что ссылаются на него имеют низкий рейтинг в поисковой системе, попробуйте начать специальную кампанию по увеличению индекса цитируемости. Это включает в себя контакт с качественными сайтами и обращение к ним с просьбой обменяться ссылками. Для успешной маркетинговой компании в Интернет рейтинг по результатам поиска имеет крайне важное значение. Прежде, чем вы определитесь с компанией, которая будет заниматься оптимизацией вашего сайта, попробуйте самостоятельно осуществить вышеперечисленные шаги и попробуйте увеличить траффик самостоятельно. Если вам это не удастся – тогда лучше воспользоваться помощью профессионалов.

Маленькие секреты SEO-оптимизации страницы

Ребята из SeoWeblog недавно опубликовали интересную информацию про маленькие секреты SEO-оптимизации страницы со ссылкой на оригинальный пост Рэнда Фишкина. Вот результаты исследований некоторых вопросов SEO-оптимизации страницы: Зависит ли вес ключевых слов от близости к верхнему верхнему краю кода, и если да, то как именно? Зависит - чем выше, тем больше весит. Что лучше, тег bold или strong? Раньше strong был сильнее, теперь оба тега кажутся равноценными. Верно ли предположение, согласно которому ссылка с текстом, точно соответствующим поисковому запросу, будет работать лучше, чем ссылка снесовпадающим текстом. Верно — ссылки с точным соответствием работают лучше. (Опыты проводились около года назад, так что эта информация нуждается в проверке). Но самым интересным оказался следующий момент, о котором Рэнд упомянул в связи с исследованиями влияния тега nofollow на распределение веса в сложных структурах ссылок: « … релевантности конечного документа не учитываются (данные верны только для Google — Комментируя одно из высказываний, я заметил, что для Google важен только первый анкор — тексты остальных ссылкок, ведущих на заданную страницу с текущей страницы, при расчете Yahoo! и MSN мы пока не тестировали). В течение дня на ветке появилось множество сообщений от других участников форума — в том числе от Ребекки! — с просьбой пояснить данное утверждение. Хотя информацию подобного рода мы обычно оставляем закрытой, <…> я решил, что зерна уже проросли, и что я просто обязан внести в вопрос некоторую ясность. Вот что я имел ввидую. Предположим, на вашей домашней странице имеется две ссылки на ваш блог. Первая ссылка находится в верхнем колонтитуле и имеет текст «Blog». Вторая ссылка расположена в основном тексте домашней страницы и выглядит как «celebrity news blog». Второй анкор не поможет странице лучше ранжироваться по запросу «celebrity news», поскольку Google не принимает в рассчет тексты множественных ссылок, ведущих на данную страницу с одного единственного url. При этом Рэнд подчеркивает, что это относится к позициям ссылок в коде страницы, а не к визуальному порядку ссылок на странице.