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Keyword and Search Engine Optimization
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Introduction
A search engine generally utilizes a robot to index your
site and determine it's relevance. To determine relevancy,
the search engine will use multiple methods including
keyword density, keyword positioning, link popularity and
more. At last count, approximately 10,000 sites referred to
themselves as search engines, though only about a dozen (or
less) sites need your attention since they drive 97% of the
Internet's search traffic.
How they work.
When a visitor logs onto a search engine looking for
information, they enter "keywords" about the
subject in hopes of obtaining a list of relevant websites.
Each search engine operates with its own rules about judging
a site's relevancy to a keyword search. They look at text on
the web page (body text) as well as words that are not
visible to the visitor that reside in the actual code of
the web pages. This code includes such things as alt tags,
title tags, meta description tags, keyword tags, and others.
Depending on the search engine, what you cannot see may
represent a far more important part of better ranking than
the outward appearance of the page.
Search engines look at how many times a keyword shows up in
the various parts of your website as well as the actual location
on the page. Make your title as focused as possible. If you
sell "help desk software, then title your page
"help desk software." If "help desk
software" was your desired keyword phrase, then the
title section would have a keyword density of 100% and a 33%
density for "help", "desk" and
"software." As we will discuss later, your title
and URL (domain name) need to match as well as your
registration.
Some search engines such as AltaVista return a different set
of results regarding titles that are capitalized versus
those that are not. For instance,a search for "world
trade" would return a different set of results than a
search for "World Trade." So you really need to
determine whether or not you think people are typing in your
product or service with or without capitals.
Meta Description
Your description is really your sales pitch. Once the web
searcher has conducted a search and started to review the
listings, he or she will then look at descriptions. Making
it as readable as possible, you should fill your description
with your keyword phrases, trying to leave out as many
non-keyword phrase words as possible. Your description
should be about 20 words long with your most important
keyword phrase first, followed by the next most important
and so forth. Once you have listed your keyword phrases, try
to make the description sensible. The reason for adding all
of those additional keyword phrases is that you are adding
additional possibilities to be found under various keyword
combinations. The more words, the more variations resulting
in more traffic.
Body
The body of the webpage, on average, should have a keyword
density of 3%. It should start off with your Meta tag
description to reinforce the body. It should also be in a H1
(header 1), if possible. Additionally, you should position
your keyword phrases strategically throughout your page. The
first line of the first paragraph should have as many of your
desired keyword phrases as possible. It should also be in a
H2 (header 2). Continue to place your keywords throughout
your web page with a higher level of keyword density closer
to the top.
Image ALT (alternative) tags
You should always use your image ALT tag to display your
keywords, with one exception. Your first image ALT tag
should contain your page's description. Google and a few
other search engines ignore the Meta description and grab
what they determine to be the description from the first
group of words they find. If you were to use just your
keywords, then Google would consider that you are spamming
them and if they accept your page, it would be ranked pretty
low.
Site Map
You should place a link to a "site map" page
within your main menu on the index page, as well as any
pointer pages. Search engines seem to weigh pages found on
the main page of the domain more heavily than those that are
two and three levels down on the site tree. They also like
to follow links to other pages. Using a site map is a way to
feed the search engine your pointer pages as well as other
pages on your site.
NOTE: Having the keywords appear over and over in
your page may get you penalized as a "spammer."
Keyword Density
This is the number of times your searched keyword or phrase
occurs within your Title, Description and URL in relation to
the number of non-keywords. For example, let us suppose your
HTML Title is "Cosmetic Surgery Information'' and your
Description is "provides skin care products and
cosmetic facial plastic surgery procedures." If the
search phrase was cosmetic surgery, your Title's keyword
density would score 66% (two out of three words match) and
your Description would score 20% (two out of ten words
match). Additionally, if you were fortunate enough to have
www.cosmetic-surgery.com as your URL, you would most
certainly gain additional relevancy points by scoring 100%
keyword density in the URL. Based on our research. it is
clear that reducing the number of non-keywords and adding to
the number of relevant keywords is highly beneficial. A
description such as "provides skin care products and
cosmetic facial plastic surgery procedures" is not as
good as "provides cosmetic surgery information about
cosmetic facial plastic surgery procedures" because the
first example contains more non-relevant words than the
second example. The first example has a keyword density
score of 20%, the second, 40%.
Keyword Location
This is the relative location of your keywords in your
Title, Description, URL, Meta tags and body. In the past,
the optimum strategy involved saturating your Title,
Description and URL with many different keywords to enhance
relevancy in several different searches. Generally speaking,
the best strategy was to use a source like Overture's search
term suggestion tool to identify the most sought after
(i.e., popular) keywords, and insert them into your Title,
Description, URL and source code.
Our research is showing that keywords located within your
URL are vitally important. Apparently, they score best when
they are separated by a hyphen -- especially when you are
looking to score well with a second and/or third keyword in
the keyword phrase. Here’s an example. In a search for the
key phrase --facial plastic surgery-- the URL http://www.facial-plastic-surgery.org
gets relevancy credit for all three words -- facial, plastic
and surgery. On the other hand, the URL http://www.facialplasticsurgery.org
gets credit only for the keyword facial. Also worth noting
is our finding that the URL http://www.facialplasticsurgery.org
gets no credit whatsoever for any of the three keywords in
the search phrase facial plastic surgery. Apparently, search
engines place more weight on the first word used in a
searched keyword phrase. For instance, when searching for
"cosmetic surgery," "Cosmetic" carries
much more weight than "surgery." Finally, keywords
grouped together comprising the keyword phrase carry more
weight than if they are separated by non-keywords. For
instance, the phrase, "the latest in cosmetic laser
surgery technology" is not as good as, "the latest
in cosmetic surgery laser technology."
Keyword Weight
Keywords also, in and of themselves, carry weight. The more
popular a keyword is the more weight it carries. For
instance, in Overture last month there were 105,680 searches
for the keyword "space" and 12,326 searches for
the keyword "shuttle", and 31,134 searches for the
keyword phrase "space shuttle". Obviously,
"space" is the weightier word but somewhat vague
for there are other uses for the word "space".
"Space shuttle" is much more targeted and still
more sought after than "shuttle" alone. So
"space" is the heaviest word but "space
shuttle" is the more targeted keyword phrase. (More on
this when selecting keyword phrases.)
Directories
A directory utilizes a human being who will visit your site,
go page to page and review your site in its entirety (for
the most part). The human reviewer of your site will, in
turn, place it in a category. The categories are usually
designed somewhat like a phone book in which sites are
listed alphanumerically (With the exception being DMOZ,
which ignores the numeric aspect).
Yahoo's new default search is no longer sorted by the old
alphanumeric standard. Instead, they are sorting data more
akin to the way a conventional search engine determines
relevancy based on multiple algorithmic factors. Much of
what works for the Search Engines now works for Yahoo except
that they still concentrate primarily on the Title,
Description, URL and category placement. It also seems that
Yahoo includes "link popularity" when determining
relevancy. Directories are becoming more like search engines
and vice versa. Design your site to work well in the
directories and then supplement it with pointer or location
pages to work well in the search engines. This will help you
gain good traffic from both the directories and search
engines.
Category Weight
The category closest to the main category carries more
weight. This advantage reduces in value the deeper you drill
into the categories. Assuming all other factors are equal, a
site listed in Business and Economy > Shopping and
Services > Health would normally score better than an
otherwise equal scoring site listed in Business and Economy
> Shopping and Services > Health > Cosmetic Surgery
with one basic twist. If the keyword phrase appears in the
category list (as cosmetic surgery does), then that category
carries more weight for it is more relevant to the searched
term. Therefore, we will be focusing on building your site
for the directories and then supplementing with additional
pages to help with the search engines. |
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