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October 14,
2002 - If you're looking for a very detailed, technical analysis of
how Google ranks pages, check out the 56+ pages of "Page Rank
Uncovered." While not a light read, it can be useful for those
who have tried everything else with Google and still need more
insights to gain a competitive edge. Main point from the article:
The more good quality links pointing to your site, the better.
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October 14,
2002 - Having trouble getting listed with Google? According to an FAQ on their
site, submitting to Open
Directory (DMOZ) and/or Yahoo will get you
included in Google because of partner agreements Google has with
these companies. |
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October 14,
2002 - Advanced
tip: Improve rankings via Server Side Includes (SSI) and keep
your content fresh. |
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October 14,
2002 - Search Engine
Marketing 101: Learn What Search Engines See When They Visit
Your Web Site. |
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September 12,
2002 - Google reached a deal with AOL and IWon to provide them with
their results. Your rankings will likely be identical on these
engines, although they may vary some when AOL or IWon's copy of the
database is not as current as Google's. Read
article... |
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July 12, 2002 -
Expect your rankings to change after Google's monthly reindexing.
This normally occurs during the last week of the month, although
they can run a week ahead or behind on occasion. |
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June 15, 2002 -
An unusual number of sites were reported as being dropped from
Google in May. Learn
why. |
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June 15, 2002 -
It's not enough to achieve top positions. If you have a high ranking
and few people click on your listing, then what good is it? Learn to
increase your clicks by creating 'Killer Title Tags.' |
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May 22, 2002 -
If you have a printed catalog of products, be sure to submit
it to Google's new print
catalog directory. Google will scan your catalog so that it can
be browsed by potentially millions of Google users. All the contact
information in your catalog will remain intact so prospects can read
your catalog online and then order from you. |
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May 15, 2002 -
Make sure your pages, particularly your home page loads quickly to
prevent people from clicking away. Try to keep the page size plus
all the images to no more than 50K to 75K. You can use free services
like Spinwave's
Image Cruncher to compress your image files. |
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May 15, 2002 -
Google indexes many document types beyond HTML files such as Word
(.doc) and Adobe Acrobat (.PDF)
files. It's believed most Web marketers do not bother to optimize
these file types. Since many of these 'relatively' uncommon file
types tend to rank well in Google, we suspect that Google may be
giving non-HTML file types a rankings boost. Since most machines can
now read PDF files from a browser, you might try creating some PDF
files designed to achieve top rankings. Don't forget to include your
Web site Url
and other contact information in the document. Put important Keywords
in the document name, Title,
and headings. Logically, the words in larger font sizes in a PDF
document may be considered more important by Google. If you
experiment with this, let us
know how it works for you! |
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May 8, 2002 -
Google AdWords
has replaced Overture as the paid listing provider on AOL. Later
this summer, Google will be replacing the existing Open Directory
and Inktomi results on AOL with Google listings. |
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April 30, 2002
- Google ignores Keyword
and description meta tags. However, they will not penalize you for
using them. Google creates a description summary of your page using
the words that surround the Keyword
being searched. Make sure the first sentence of text on the page
includes your Keyword
as close to the beginning of the sentence as
possible. |
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April 6, 2002 :
Choosing the right Keywords
to target is of paramount importance to your success in search
engine marketing. Learn about an ingenious way
to use Wordtracker to find Keywords
that will not only make it easier to gain top rankings, but will
gain you more traffic than poorly chosen Keywords. |
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April 6, 2002 :
As reported by Planet
Ocean, FAST sees spam as public enemy number one. They've
identified two-thirds of the servers in the world as spam servers.
Be sure you read
our article about how to ensure your Web site does not
inadvertently share a blacklisted IP. Having a "tainted" IP address
could prevent you from achieving top rankings not only on
AlltheWeb/Lycos, but also on Google. |
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March 17th 2002
- Most of the major engines offer some form of paid submission or
inclusion option. Learn about
the various forms of paid submission and how you can use these
options to your advantage. |
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March 17th 2002
- Be aware that the more outbound links on a page that link to you,
the less that page will increase your link popularity rating on
Google. For example, a page that has only one link on it which
happens to point to your Web site will increase your ranking
significantly more than a page that has 50 links pointing to you and
a variety of other Web sites. |
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March 17th 2002
- Before submitting to Google, be sure you submit to Open Directory,
and if possible to Yahoo. This will both improve your chances of
being indexed by Google and should improve your
ranking. |
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February 8th,
2002: Google offers a free toolbar browser plug-in on their site to
make searching Google more convenient. It also reports the PageRank
of a page which can be useful to determine how valuable or relevant
Google considers your page to be in relation to other pages.
Unfortunately, Webmasters have reported that this toolbar records a
cookie on your hard drive that can be used to track your surfing
activities and could be used to associate you to the IP address you
use, even if you have a dynamic IP. At least in one instance, it's
been reported that Google used this cookie feature to track down the
author of a program that reported PageRank without needing to run
the toolbar program. Google demanded that the author remove the
program from his site. Therefore, although the toolbar can be
useful, you should be extremely cautious about using it. Google
could use it to track your activities or associate such activities
to other things you do such as submissions. If you wish to play it
safe, consider avoiding the use of the Google
toolbar. |
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February 8th, 2002: IMPORTANT: Avoid spamming a
search engine and having your pages dropped in rank or banned! Read
"Thou Shalt Not
Spam: The 12 Commandments of Search Engine
Marketing." |
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Learn how to
bring in additional traffic and gain easy top rankings on commonly
misspelled words. There's a free service that will help you do
it. |
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Google displays Open Directory Project links to Open
Directory categories for Web sites that have a listing in Open
Directory. Therefore, this is one more reason to gain a great
listing in this popular (and free) directory. Be sure to read our Open
Directory tips BEFORE submitting. |
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Including Keywords
in the H1 Heading
tag can improve your rank on many search engines. Learn how to use
the H1 tag while controlling its appearance on your
page. |
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Google now has a new image search service that helps
users locate graphics on the Web. For tips on how to get your images
to rank higher, or to prevent Google and other engines from
indexing images on your site, click
here. |
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A link to your
page from another page that includes your Keyword
in the Title
or Heading
tag will improve your link popularity with Google more so than a page without
the Keyword
in the Title
or headings. |
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Include your
company name and address on every significant page of your Web site.
This will improve your chances of being found when a person searches
for a product or service in a certain city or part of the
country. |
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Purchasing and
setting up multiple domains can be a great way to increase your
visibility on the Web and if you cross-link your domains, you can
improve your link popularity for each site. This can also enhance
your "theme" rating. However, it's best if you host the cross linked
domains at separate Web hosts so that the first 3 blocks of the
site's IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx) are different. Some engines may
ignore link
popularity if the IP addresses of the sites are too close
together numerically. Warning: Make sure each new domain has unique
content to avoid spamming! |
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Read our Top 5 Tips and
Mistakes of Search Engine Marketers for a great overview of what
you should do and not do to promote your site. |
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Google has gone on record that
they now consider "link farms" to be a form of spam and may ban
sites that participate in such programs. Link farms are those
services that generically link to your site if you agree to link to
everyone else's site that participates in the link exchange service.
This does not mean Google does
not want you to exchange links with other sites (quite the
opposite). However, services designed to do nothing but generate
large lists of random sites in an automated fashion are considered
to be spam by Google. To learn
about safer methods to improve your link popularity on Google, read our MarketPosition
article on this topic. |
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Google looks for other pages that
link to your page that use the Keyword
in the hyperlink going to your page. Although its better if these
links come from other domain names (which also have high link
popularity preferrably), Google
has stated that even links from pages on the same domain to another
page will improve that page's link popularity. Therefore, link to
your optimized page from as many other pages in your site as
possible and then make sure Google indexes them. Be sure to
use your important Keywords
in the hyperlinks to maximize your results! |
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Google stated in an in-depth MarketPosition
interview that you must have at least one link to your Web site
from another domain name. If you do not, they will most likely
ignore your submission and refuse to index your site. See our link popularity
article to achieve links to your site. |
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According to a
representative at Google, they
will give more weight to Keywords
that appear in bold print or larger print on the page.
Therefore, be sure to bold your important Keywords
and/or put them in a larger font. Creating headings containing your
important Keywords
would be one way to do this. |
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Google has stated a policy that
they do not like any type of automated program to query their
service. In rare cases, they have been known to ban IP's or sites
caught conducting automated queries. However, they went on to say
that if you run automated searches on Google, that you do so during
non-peak hours (late at night, US Pacific Standard Time). Therefore,
in respect to Google's wishes, we suggest that when using the
Reporter, that you take advantage of the Scheduler program to
schedule your Reporter missions to run during off peak hours
whenever possible. You should also consider spreading our your
missions during the month rather than running a large group of
missions or queries during a short time period. |
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All major
engines claim to prefer Web sites with high-quality content. In
addition to improving your rankings, enhancing the quality of your
Web site will also help convert more visitors to SALES. Don't fall
into the trap of creating dozens of "cookie-cutter" pages that are
devoid of valuable content or are lacking in aesthetics. See our article on
creating high-quality pages to make your Web site the very best
it can be. |
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IMPORTANT: Be sure you are targeting
the right keywords! If you optimize for Keywords
that nobody is searching for then all your efforts will be in vain.
Click
here to learn more. |
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Google does not read the Meta
Description tag. Instead, it creates a summary description of
your page by extracting the words that surround the Keyword
being searched. Although there is no way to force Google to display a specific
description for your page, your best strategy is to make sure the
first sentence that utilizes your Keyword
is the one you want Google to
display. Google tends to
extract the words surrounding the first visible occurrence of
the Keyword
more than any other repetitions on the page. |
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Tip:
When viewing the source code of competing pages on Google, be sure to click on the
Cached link in the Google
results. This will show the exact page Google used when it indexed the
page even if the Webmaster has changed their page's content since
then. |
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Google normally does an excellent
job spidering a Web site. Therefore, if you submit your home page to
Google and provide visible
links to your other pages, Google should find and index them
without submitting each page. |
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Despite Google emphasizing link
popularity, it also bases ranking by the content of the page. It
requires ALL the words in a query to be physically on the page to
consider it a match. Therefore, be sure to use your Keywords
on the page. Also make sure the Keywords
that might be used together in a search appear together on the page,
or are at least in close proximity to each other. |
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Obtaining a
domain name with your Keyword
in it may significantly affect your score on Google. Including the Keyword
in a sub-directory name or page name can also help, although not as
much. Separate multiple words by dashes, underscores, or slashes in
the case of sub-directories. Consider purchasing a secondary domain
name for this purpose if ranking well on Google is important to you. To check the
availability of a domain or to purchase a domain name, click
here. |
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Along with
using your Keyword
at the top of the page, you might consider using your Keyword
at least once near the bottom of your page in the Body
area. This can help convey an overall "theme" to the page and may
improve your score. Click
here to learn why. Only make this change if it doesn't conflict
with the current recommended prominence suggestion. |
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For additional
help in improving your rankings, click
here, or see
the Page Analysis. |
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If you have
time, try to establish a "theme" to your Web Site to improve your
rankings. Whenever possible, link to your optimized pages from other
pages and domains with your important Keywords
in the linking text. For more information on cross-linking, themes,
and the advantages/disadvantages of multiple domains, click
here. |
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If you have any
comments, suggestions, or questions about the above advice, e-mail
us at help@webposition.com. |
