improving web pages visibility and ranking by search engines

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Transcript improving web pages visibility and ranking by search engines 

IMPROVING WEB PAGE
VISIBILITY TO AND
RANKING BY SEARCH
UTILITIES
By
Joey Comeaux
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SOURCE OF INFORMATION
• Become a Search Engine Commando by
Shari Thurow presented at CNET
Builder.com
• http://searchengines.com
• http://www.searchenginewatch.com
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3 TYPE OF SEARCHES
• External searches by external search
engines
• Internal searches by users already on our
site
• Searches from the NCAR/UCAR web site
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2 TYPES OF SEARCH
UTILITIES
1. Search Engines
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Have huge databases of web sites which users
search
Databases created by sending out spiders to
index web sites
You can optimize your web pages for these
ex: google, AltaVista,Hotbot
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2 TYPES OF SEARCH
UTILITIES
2.Directories
– Use human indexing-people review and index
web sites
– Generally smaller, cleaner databases/indexes
– Mostly content based, so harder to optimize
for… you can submit your site for
consideration
ex: Yahoo, MSN, LookSmart, GO
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OPTIMIZING YOUR WEB
SITE FOR SEARCH ENGINES
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All search engines have their own algorithms for
indexing and ranking web sites
2 main areas for optimizing
1) Web pages – HTML characteristics
found within your web pages
2) External processes – various tasks you can
perform to improve your rankings
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WEB PAGE RELATED
FACTORS
7 Aspects to Optimize
1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
Title
Text of Page
Meta Tags
ALT Tags
Comment Tags
Themes
Keywords in URL Names
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WEB PAGE RELATED
FACTORS
• Keywords – Set of words/phrases which
accurately describe the purpose of your site
– Probably the most important concept
– Will be used by almost every technique used to
optimize your site
– Consider who will use your site, include variations of
words, make them specific
– WAG suggests using keywords from a
‘registered’ vocabulary
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WEB PAGE RELATED
FACTORS
• SPAM – invisible or tiny text, irrelevant
keywords, excessive repetition of keywords,
identical or nearly identical pages and
overuse of mirror sites
– Most search engines will ban sites
containing spam or penalize them
– avoid using spam in all optimizing
techniques
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1. TITLE
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Most important part of page
First thing the spider sees
EVERY search engine uses the title
Always put after head tag
Most likely to appear in search engine
results
• Should be a sentence
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1. TITLE
• Should contain plenty of keywords
• Put keywords at front of title and in order of
importance
• Limit to about 75 characters
• Do not use all caps
• Do not use keywords more than twice
• Not used by Directories
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2. TEXT ON PAGE
• Most engines index the full web page
• Use plenty of keywords, preferable at top of
page (and the bottom)
• Try to have at least 100 keywords
• DIRECTORIES rank on content, so be sure
pages are not just a list of keywords
• Try to place keywords close together
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2. TEXT ON PAGE
• 3-7 keywords for every 100 regular words
• Try not to use same keywords more than 5
to 7 times
• NO SPAM
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3. META TAG
• Not penalized for proper use of meta tags, so
always use them
• Not all search engines use meta tags
Yes : GO/InfoSeek, HotBot
No : AltaVista, Excite, Google
• Some engines only use the description or keyword
tag, so always use both
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3. META TAG
•
Description Tag
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Used by some engines as summary on results
page
Put keywords at beginning and close together
Use about 150-250 characters
NO SPAM
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3. META TAG
• Keyword Tag
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No sentences needed
List your keywords in order of importance
Repeat keywords 3-7 times
Use about 1024 characters
NO SPAM
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4. ALT TAGS
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Search engines do not index images
Use ALT tags to describe your images
All engines do not index ALT tags
Not penalized for ALT tags, so always use them
Limit images if possible. If not, maybe create an
all text version (doorway pages)
• Use keywords in your descriptions
• NO SPAM
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5. COMMENT TAGS
• Normal HTML comment tags
• Some search engines index comment tags
(Inktomi)
• Put them in the <head> part at top of your page,
after meta tags
• Great way to increase keyword count
• Use each keyword about 3-7 times
• Not penalized, so always use them
• NO SPAM
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6. THEMES
• Theme – A common topic throughout a web
site
• Should contain your most important
keywords
• Only used by some search engines
• Spiders index entire site, then analyze title,
meta tags, headings, text and links for
commonality
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6. THEMES
• To develop a theme, use same keywords in
title, meta tags, text, links and sites that
your links lead to
• You can have more than 1 theme, but not
more than 3
• NO SPAM
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7. KEYWORDS IN URL
NAMES
• Easiest way to do this is by naming files
using keywords
• This is a more recent practice
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EXTERNAL PROCESSES
1.
2.
3.
4.
Link Popularity
Click popularity and Stickiness
Doorway Pages
WEB Site Submission
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LINK POPULARITY
3 Aspects Determine Link Popularity
1. Number of Links – number of links/sites
which point to your site
2. Relevance – are your pages linked to by
similar (relevant) sites
3. Link Text – text used to describe your
links (keywords always a good idea)
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LINK POPULARITY
•
•
Not all search engines use link popularity,
but more and more will
Search engine specific – to score high for
a particular search engine, all sites linking
to your site must be indexed by search
engine
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3 WAYS TO DEVELOP LINK
POPULARITY
1. Free For All Sites (FFA) – sites which
contain lists of links.
–
–
Normally use some registration tool which
will register you with more than one FFA,
thus increasing link popularity
Downside : FFA’s usually house your links
temporarily…as other links are added, your
links age off
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3 WAYS TO DEVELOP LINK
POPULARITY
2. Exchange Programs – groups of web
masters who agree to link to your site and
vice versa
–
–
many programs request links on your home
page
Pick one that categorizes, the more specific
and closest to your sites theme, the better
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3 WAYS TO DEVELOP LINK
POPULARITY
3. Non-Formal agreements – agreements
with other web masters to link to each
others pages
- Contact web masters of similar sites
- Use searches or link popularity.com to find
similar sites
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CLINK POPULARITY AND
STICKINESS
• Click popularity – the number of clicks
(hits) every site in the search engine results
page receives
• Stickiness – time between clicks on the
results page
• DirectHit – used by over 25 search engines
(Lycos, InfoSeek, HotBot, MSN)
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CLICK POPULARITY AND
STICKINESS
• You cannot affect DirectHit directly.. You can only
entice more people to click on your site and spend
time looking around
• Suggestions :
– Enticing Title – probably most important
– Top of Page – DirectHit uses the top of the page as site
description in their results, so make sure you have a
good description at the top of your page
– Good navigation
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DOORWAY PAGES
• Pages optimized for one or more search engines
and 1-3 keywords
• Important features of doorway pages
– Keyword frequency – number of times a keyword is
used
– Keyword weight/density - % of keywords to other
words
– Keyword prominence – most important keywords
should be at top of page in beginning of sentence
- Title, text, meta tags, alt tags, comment tags …
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DOORWAY PAGES
• Pick 1-3 top keywords and optimize pages for top
10 search engines
• If site contains dynamic content, frames,
multimedia or large graphics, doorway pages are a
must
• Do not overuse doorway pages
• Some search engines penalize for nearly identical
pages, so vary content and length among your
pages
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DOOWAY PAGES
• Never use doorway pages for Directories
• NO SPAM
• Use table to determine what each search
engine wants
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WEB SITE SUBMISSION
• Process of suggesting your site to search engines
and directories
• Necessary to improve your web site rankings
• Only submit AFTER optimizing your site
• Usually requires you to fill out a form for each
search engine
• Probably should submit to each major search
engine
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WEB SITE SUBMISSION
• Submission form or link usually found on
search engines home page
• Be sure correct URL will be spidered
• Record date/time submitted
• Resubmit after major changes
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WEB PAGE SUBMISSION
• There are submission services, but it is best
to submit manually
– Some search engines will not allow automated
submissions
– Directories require manual submission
• If your site is large, use submission service
for lower level pages, but submit home page
and most important pages manually
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WEB PAGE SUBMISSION
• Directories are harder/more time consuming
to submit to
– You have to write your own site description,
find the appropriate section and provide URL
address
• Your pages do not have to be optimized for
directories, so submit to them first
– You still need good content and page layout
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WHAT TO AVOID
1. SPAM
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
Invisible text or tiny text
Meta refresh tags
Irrelevant keywords in title or meta tags
Excessive repetition of keywords
Overuse of mirror sites
Submitting to a site more than once in a day
Identical or nearly identical pages
Submitting to inappropriate categories (directories)
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WHAT TO AVOID
2.
Frames, Multimedia and Dynamic pages
a)
b)
Not penalized, however Search Engines find these
hard to index
Search engines do NOT index :
i.
ii.
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vii.
Text in graphic – use ALT tags
Pages that require registration or passwords
XML
Java applets
Acrobat (PDF) files
Dynamic pages
Multimedia (Flash, ShockWave, Streaming Video)
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