1 IMPROVING WEB PAGE VISIBILITY TO AND RANKING BY SEARCH UTILITIES By Joey Comeaux.

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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

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– 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

• All search engines have their own algorithms for indexing and ranking web sites

• 2 main areas for optimizing1) 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 WEB PAGE RELATED FACTORSFACTORS

7 Aspects to Optimize

1. Title

2. Text of Page

3. Meta Tags

4. ALT Tags

5. Comment Tags

6. Themes

7. 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

• 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, HotBotNo : 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– 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– 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

• 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. Link Popularity

2. Click popularity and Stickiness

3. Doorway Pages

4. 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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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. 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. SPAMa. Invisible text or tiny text

b. Meta refresh tags

c. Irrelevant keywords in title or meta tags

d. Excessive repetition of keywords

e. Overuse of mirror sites

f. Submitting to a site more than once in a day

g. Identical or nearly identical pages

h. Submitting to inappropriate categories (directories)

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WHAT TO AVOID

2. Frames, Multimedia and Dynamic pagesa) Not penalized, however Search Engines find these

hard to indexb) Search engines do NOT index :

i. Text in graphic – use ALT tagsii. Pages that require registration or passwordsiii. XMLiv. Java appletsv. Acrobat (PDF) filesvi. Dynamic pagesvii. Multimedia (Flash, ShockWave, Streaming Video)

1 IMPROVING WEB PAGE VISIBILITY TO AND RANKING BY SEARCH UTILITIES By Joey Comeaux.

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