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About Search Engines - Part 4

Part 4 - How to improve your ranking

How do search engines rank pages?

Search engines use a ranking algorithm to determine the order in which matching web pages are returned on the results page. Each web page is graded on the number of the search terms it contains, where the words are located in the document, and other criteria that changes frequently.

All search engines have a different method of ranking. That's why you might rank number 1 on one engine and number 25 on another. Robots look for relevance and rank results on a secret ever-changing algorithm. Some look at Title, some look at Meta tags, some look for link popularity. Search engine optimization means optimizing the Web site for the best possible positioning based on the page's keywords and description.

General tips to get a good ranking

1. Create a good site with good content.

This is critical, especially as search engines grow in sophistication. If your site contains worthwhile material, users will return to your site and will recommend it to others. Other sites will link to you: which will in turn help you by improving your link popularity.

2. Pick keywords visitors will actually use on a search engine query.

  • If you have keywords that are very competitive, consider narrowing your focus to improve results. The keyword "horse" will return thousands of responses and may not place you near the top, while "Appaloosa" is more focused and targeted to a particular query.
  • Consider using a keyword phrase instead of just one keyword. Visitors to search engines use phrases to narrow their searches. For example, instead of using a keyword like "horse" that would return too many responses, use a more specific keyword phrase like "Alabama Quarter horse."

3. Include keywords in your Title tag.

Pages with keywords appearing in the title are assumed to be more relevant to the topic than those without.

4. Use keywords in Meta Keyword and Description tags.

Using Meta tags will not hurt you in search engines that don't use them, and they can definitely help you in search engines that do index them. While they are not as important as the Title tag, Meta tags can give you the edge over your competition since most web sites don't even use them.

5. Use your keywords throughout your page.

Search engines will check to see if the keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

6. Have a good keyword density on your page.

Keyword density is derived by dividing the frequency of that word by the total words on the page. Frequency is a major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. This can turn into a balancing act as too high a density can be considered spam by some engines. Usually you are safe if your keyword density falls between 1 - 5 %.

7. Continually work on improving your link popularity.

Listings on popular Web sites can increase your traffic significantly. They do this in two ways:

  • They give potential visitors multiple paths to your Web site
  • They can increase your ranking in search engines that use link popularity as part of their formula.

Most search engines use link popularity as relevance criteria. For example, the Google search engine (not their new directory) is based almost entirely on link popularity.

What you don't know can hurt you

Some mistakes can keep search engines from indexing your site or even cause them to ban you site altogether. Here are a few to keep in mind:

1. Don't password your site

Site that require registration or password will lock out a search engine. Remember that a search spider cannot fill out a form or fill in a password, so if that is a requirement to go to the next page, the spider is stuck. An alternative to blocking the entire site might be to make part of your site open (not behind a registration) so that part could be indexed.

2. Dynamically generated pages block search spiders.

These pages usually have a question mark (?) in the URL. When a search engine spider comes to a dynamically generated page, it can capture the content on that page, but halts and will not follow any links. If this is your home page, it means the spider cannot spider the rest of your site.

3. Avoid Frames

If your web site uses frames, information inside the frames will not be indexed. If you must use frames, you should have non-frames as well as frames versions of those pages, and submit the non-frames versions to the search engines.

4. Search engines can't index text that is embedded in graphics.

Many designers like to use stylized script in graphics. Unfortunately, search engines cannot "see" the text. Adding ALT text can help, but if you embed a valuable key word in the graphic, the page looses points. Another item sometimes overlooked by designers is that text that appears in multimedia files (audio and video) cannot be indexed.

5. Currently information generated by Java applets cannot be indexed.

6. Search engine spiders cannot index Acrobat files.

If this is a big part of your web site you should consider creating plain HTML versions of those pages and submitting those pages to search engines.

7. Be careful with image maps.

Most search engine spider cannot follow links in an image map. You should include regular text links elsewhere on the page for the spider to follow.

8. Don't play games with your text.

  • Don't use hidden text (text the same color as the background)i
  • Don't insert keywords that do not pertain to your site. While common, this practice annoys users who visit your site based on the bogus keywords and is a red flag to spiders.
  • Avoid adding keywords by using very small text.
  • Don't repeat a keyword excessively.

Search engines view all of these things as spam and may penalize your site or remove it entirely from their databases.

9. Avoid Fast Meta Refresh tags.

Meta refresh tags will automatically take visitors to different pages within a web site. If the Meta refresh rate is considered too fast by the search engine (recommend no faster than 15 seconds), it will think you are spamming and will penalize you.

Summary

Success with search engines and directories is not one magical thing you do specifically. It is the culmination of your whole strategy. It is a time consuming, labor intensive activity with great rewards.

Best of luck.