January 2, 2009 at 11:22 am · Filed under SEO
Before we explore the world of search engine optimization, it is vital that you know a little about how search engines work and their relative market shares. It will help you to prioritize your activities later!
(a) What are Search Engines and who powers them?
There are essentially four different parts to a typical large search engine; the crawler, the directory, sponsored results and the search engine itself.
Crawlers (e.g. Google) automatically visit web pages to compile their listings, making use of a so-called robot or spider (eg. Googlebot), which follows links from one website to another, ultimately compiling an index of all the pages and sites on the internet. These crawlers provide an index, which can then searched by the search engine. You may find that several or all of the pages on your site are indexed in thisway. Some search engines have their own crawler and others buy-in crawler results from others.
Human-powered directories, such as the Open Directory, rely on submissions from the public, which are reviewed by editors for inlusion in the directory. If you get included in a directory, generally only one page from your site (usually your home - or index - page) will be listed.
Crawled results are combined with sponsored results, supplied by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, and the results from human-maintained directories to complete the search engine index. Check out the Search Engine Reationship Chart at Bruce Clay inc. for the latest picture on who powers whom. You will note a couple of things right away. Firstly, the dominance of the Google and Yahoo! crawlers and secondly the importance of DMOZ directory results as a back-door for many search engines.
(b) How do Search Engines find and rank sites?
Search engines do not really search the web directly, but rather an index database of the full text of web pages, which itself is drawn from the billions of web pages on the internet’s servers. Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders.
If a web page is never linked to by any other page, spiders cannot find it, unless the (usually new) site is submitted manually by a human at the search engine’s “add URL” page. All search engine companies offer ways to do this.
After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for “indexing.” This program uses an “algorithm” to assess the text, links, and other content in the page for “key words” that might be searched on at the engine. This allows the search engine to order results served by their “relevancy” to the search terms used. As each search engine has a different algorithm, it will index sites in a different way and thus serve up different relevant results.
Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy. Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Generally, the use of frames, flash graphics and dynamic URLs all get in the way of effective spidering and should thus be avoided.
In addition to indexing pages, most algorithms seek to establish the “authority” of a site. A site which is linked to by many other sites (using keyword-rich anchor text) is assumed to be of greater merit than one with no links at all. This activity is called “ranking” and helps search engines to sort otherwise similar results into ever-more relevant and authoratative results.
(c) Which Search Engines are the most popular?
Based on US analysis in January 2005, the top search engines (by share of total searches at home and work) are as follows:
Google Search - 47%
Yahoo! Search - 21%
MSN Search - 13%
All Others - 19%
These shocking figures do not convey the true dominance of the top players, as you have seen from the interdependence of search provision in section (a) above. You could be searching at AOL (part of the “other” 19%) and viewing Google results, for example.
There is also strong anecdotal evidence that Yahoo! and MSN tend to send more searchers through to their sponsored (or paid) results than do Google (due to the prominence of these results on their results pages). As such, for a typical small webmaster who does not use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, they might get up to 80% of all their traffic from Google’s various sites across the world.
Now you understand the market a little better, you will perhaps understand the obsession many webmasters have with Google! A top-10 position at Google for your key search terms can make your online business fly. If you drop out of that top-10, your business can literally collapse overnight!
Don’t forget these key stats as you embark on your optimization journey…
Navigate the guide
Previous:
SEO Expert Guide - Index of Contents
Next:
SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)
David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the SEO Expert Guide; how to get to the top of the search engine rankings and stay there.
Find out more about David’s SEO services or purchase the full copy of the book from the SEO Expert site.
Tags: engine, expert, key, optimization, page, rank, search, SEO, services, tips, traffic, tricks, wordsengine, expert, key, optimization, page, rank, search, SEO, services, tips, traffic, tricks, wordsShare This
December 31, 2008 at 2:12 am · Filed under SEO
I want to give you a few more things to think about as you excel and grow in the craft of search engine marketing. If you are anything like me, you were hooked the first time you really made a difference to someone else’s success. I soon realized that being able to help business owners to get results from these optimization methods and strategies could also be amazingly profitable. I found out that customers are your greatest resources and many of them are quite generous when you make an impact on their business. So the topic here is for those who want to profit from their skills (if you are not already doing very well and having an awesome time already).
It may seem like a strange thing to talk about but before I begin, I’ll say this. There are many folks out there offering various SEO services and they are still not getting the profits that they would like to make. They are not REALLY profiting the way they might if they took a little different approach. The solutions that business owners need to really make a difference in the bottom line, require more than just bringing volumes of traffic to a site. You need targeted traffic mixed with a web strategy to compel response.
Then another group that seems to be doing well at first but the truth is they are making lots of promises and sales but they are not able to hang on to clients very long because they are not delivering long term results.
Many of my SEO clients have been with me 5 years plus. (I am still taking on new ones too.)
Let’s talk about the benefits of SEO to you as a search engine marketer, then we’ll give you 5 ways to profit:
Here are just a few legitimate benefits of offering SEO services to your clients.
–Increase your sales There’s no telling how many sales you can make when you not only can talk the talk but you can walk the walk and REALLY deliver results. Prospects can sense there is something different about you and your services. You are known as the one who fixes up Web sites that don’t work.
–Increase your repeat business I learned that just because someone buys a web site, it does not mean that they are happy with it. But if you can turn that Web site around and make it work, then that same client may even BUY a second or a third Web site, not to mention, buy various promotional services. All they need to see is, that what you do really does work!
–Increase your referral business What can I say, but word gets around quick! Business owners talk to other business owners and every time you help someone out and make them successful on the net, it’s like they tell everyone else they know. Referral business is wonderful!
–Increase your credibility With the right training and talent, your client comes to think of you as simply brilliant. This is not because you are REALLY brilliant, but you just look after your client’s business as if it were your own. If your client insists that they have the best web marketer and SEO on the planet, why burst their bubble? You make them prosper and they make you prosper.
–Increase your confidence There is a difference your client notices in you…right down to your body language and that inner knowing that if I’ve gotten other folks awesome results last week, I can do it again no problem this week.
–Increase your authority I can not say enough about solid communication and managing client’s expectations honestly.
–Build Client loyalty Let the competitor just try and steal your clients with false promises or tricky claims. You’ve done a great job of educating your client and making them web wise. Now these things are quite profitable sounding but honestly, they are really just fringe benefits. Lets move on to talk about real profit options.
5 Ways to Profit from SEO: Here’s how it starts:
1. Stop focusing on sales and start focusing on your clients success!
There are so many “webmasters“, web designers, graphic artists in this business. Does it not just scare you a little bit? Don’t we have to enter into competition with other web developers and does it not become a rat race?
Start focusing on your client’s success.
Do all that you can do to make them successful. Pour all of your talents into making their projects work. So many folks I talk to can never stop thinking about where they will make their next sale instead of delivering results to the clients they ALREADY have and in so doing, you establish lifetime residuals.
Make your client successful and they will literally become part of YOUR sales team.
2. If you’re not up to speed, you better catch up fast. A difference in your performance is a difference in your profits!
If you are not up to speed on solid SEO marketing techniques and methods, start learning now. Take a course or study at a live workshop, but however you do it, get your SEO skills up to speed so you can really help people. If you can show them a strategy that really puts dollars in their pocket, they’ll put dollars in YOUR pocket!
3. How’s your batting average? How about profit sharing?
If your skills are medium to above average, why not share in the profits yourself. I am referring to offering someone a vertical contract. This would be a deal where you own part of the company in return for making it successful with your SEO skills. Don’t brush this off. There are some exceptional deals to be had if you start thinking laterally.
4. Don’t forget your community and charitable work.
When’s the last time you helped promoting a charitable work at NO cost. Build a site and promote it for the Literacy counsel or the Easter Seals Society or your Local Rotary Group or your Chamber of Commerce. Don’t forget that this work will often open unusual and even surprising doors. Help make others successful and you will not fail. Many important leaders within your local community will be serving on these committees right next to you! A great way to network and meet new people and help the cause.
5. Watch the latest SEO trends and position yourself to take advantage.
The study and practice of SEO has been very good to me. Five years ago, I never dreamed that my study of Optimization would lead to the Internet lifestyle. I look after my clients well and sometimes go a little beyond what some might do in the call of duty. I have clients that pay me well for my services and demonstrate that they care about my business. As a result of the work I have done, I have enjoyed wonderful repeat business and client loyalty. Referral business is the best type of business going because it does not really involve a lot of preparation or hard work. You know that when you arrive, that they really want YOU to do the job because of your track record. It’s wonderful business.
I could write a lot more but I hope you get the picture. If you have not been enjoying good profits, a rewarding lifestyle and being appreciated by your clients your need a plan of action.
SUGGESTIONS:
1. You MUST be able to “deliver” and really make a difference. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral thinking skills up to speed.
2. Run a balanced business. Are you charging for what your services are worth?
There are some folks who charge steeply and don’t know how to get the results. For gosh sakes, if you’re good at what you do, make sure you are charging well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if your considerable skills are helping other business owners to prosper. (some people are afraid to charge for their work)
Note: The ones that charge steeply but DON’T deliver may make a few dollars initially, but they won’t enjoy the customer loyalty, the referral business, repeat business that you do and they won’t have a “customer for life” like you will.
3. Don’t forget to recognize and be thankful for the progress you’ve already made. Be sure to benchmark your victories but even more important, celebrate your CLIENT’S VICTORIES too! After all, you helped bring them about.
4. Give something back to your community (with gladness). Look for opportunities to help others who genuinely need help and avoid those who are only after your talents to exploit them. (Trust me, when your SEO talents and success stories increase, you’ll have strangers coming out of the woodwork to take you to dinner and pick your brain). Proceed with wisdom.
5. You must be willing to change and take action! Performing the way you perform now has delivered a certain result. So if your happy with that result, carry on exactly the same way and you should get very similar results. If you are not happy with your results now, then you must change the way you do things.
Same action = same result
Different action = new results
Are you looking for new results?
Is it a time for a change of action?
Here’s wishing you the ultimate success.
About The Author
John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive “hands on” http://www.searchengineworkshops.com in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team at http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html.
john@searchengineworkshops.com
Tags: internet, internet rank, Search Engine, search engine optimization, SEO, traffic rank, web rankinternet, internet rank, Search Engine, search engine optimization, SEO, traffic rank, web rankShare This
December 30, 2008 at 6:03 am · Filed under SEO
In this article I highlight some of the points made during the call so you know what Google thinks.
You know its bad when you take time from your holidays to come into work to attend a conference call. But that’s what I did a few weeks ago. You see I had to because I was going to have the opportunity to ask some Google employees specific questions on things that I’d been pretty sure about, but wanted to hear it right from the horses mouth.
The call lasted less than an hour, but in that time I found that there were many things I figured were indeed true. So lets start with the most obvious:
Is PageRank still important?
The short answer is yes - PageRank has always been important to Google. Naturally they couldn’t go into details but it is as I suspected. Google still uses the algorithm to help determine rankings. Where it falls in the algo mix, though, is up for speculation. My feeling however is that they’ve simply moved where the PageRank value is applied in the grand scheme of things. If you want to know what I think, be sure to read this article.
Are dynamic URLs bad?
Google says that a dynamic URL with 2 parameters “should” get indexed. When we pressed a bit on the issue we also found that URLs themselves don’t contribute too much to the overall ranking algorithms. In other words, a page named Page1.asp will likely perform as well as Keyword.asp.
The whole variable thing shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is true that Google will indeed index dynamic URLs and I’ve seen sites with as many as 4 variables get indexed. The difference however is that in almost all cases I’ve seen the static URLs outrank the dynamic URLs especially in highly competitive or even moderately competitive keyword spaces.
Is URL rewriting OK in Google’s eyes?
Again, the answer is yes, provided the URLs aren’t too long. While the length of the URL isn’t necessarily an issue, if they get extremely long they can cause problems.
In my experience, long rewritten URLs perform just fine. The important thing is the content on the page.
That was a common theme throughout the call - content is king. Sure optimized meta tags, effective interlinking and externalizing JavaScript all help, but in the end if the content isn’t there the site won’t do well.
Do you need to use the Google Sitemap tool?
If your site is already getting crawled effectively by Google you do not need to use the Google sitemap submission tool.
The sitemap submission tool was created by Google to provide a way for sites which normally do not get crawled effectively to now become indexed by Google.
My feeling here is that if you MUST use the Google sitemap to get your site indexed then you have some serious architectural issues to solve.
In other words, just because your pages get indexed via the sitemap doesn’t mean they will rank. In fact I’d bet you that they won’t rank because of those technical issues I mentioned above.
Here I’d recommend getting a free tool like Xenu and spider your site yourself. If Xenu has problems then you can almost be assured of Googlebot crawling problems. The nice thing with Xenu is that it can help you find those problems, such as broken links, so that you can fix them.
Once your site becomes fully crawlable by Xenu I can almost guarantee you that it will be crawlable and indexable by the major search engine spiders.
Does clean code make that much of a difference?
Again, the answer is yes. By externalizing any code you can and cleaning up things like tables you can greatly improve your site.
First, externalizing JavaScript and CSS helps reduce code bloat which makes the visible text more important. Your keyword density goes up which makes the page more authoritative.
Similarly, minimizing the use of tables also helps reduce the HTML to text ratio, making the text that much more important.
Also, as a tip, your visible text should appear as close to the top of your HTML code as possible. Sometimes this is difficult, however, as elements like top and left navigation appear first in the HTML. If this is the case, consider using CSS to reposition the text and those elements appropriately.
Do Keywords in the domain name harm or help you?
The short answer is neither. However too many keywords in a domain can set off flags for review. In other words blue-widgets.com won’t hurt you but discount-and-cheap-blue-and-red-widgets.com will likely raise flags and trigger a review.
Page naming follows similar rules - while you can use keywords as page names, it doesn’t necessarily help (as I mentioned above) further, long names can cause reviews which will delay indexing.
How many links should you have on your sitemap?
Google recommends 100 links per page.
While I’ve seen pages with more links get indexed, it appears that it takes much longer. In other words, the first 100 links will get indexed right away, however it can take a few more months for Google to identify and follow any links greater than 100.
If your site is larger than 100 pages (as many are today) consider splitting up your sitemap into multiple pages which interlink with each other, or create a directory structure within your sitemap. This way you can have multiple sitemaps that are logically organized and will allow for complete indexing of your site.
Can Googlebot follow links in Flash or JavaScript
While Googlebot can identify links in JavaScript, it cannot follow those links. Nor can it follow links in Flash.
Therefore I recommend having your links elsewhere on the page. It is OK to have links in flash or JavaScript but you need to account for the crawlers not finding them. Therefore the use of a sitemap can help get those links found and crawled.
As alternatives I know there are menus which use JavaScript and CSS to output a very similar looking navigation system to what you commonly see with JavaScript navigation yet uses static hyperlinks which crawlers can follow. Therefore do a little research and you should be able to find a spiderable alternative to whatever type of navigation your site currently has.
Overall, while I didn’t learn anything earth shattering, it was good to get validation “from the horses mouth” so to speak.
I guess it just goes to show you that there is enough information out there on the forums and blogs. The question becomes determine which of that information is valid and which isn’t. But that, I’m afraid, usually comes with time and experience.
About the author:
Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing Consultant. Any reproduction of this article needs to have an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
Tags: google, search engine optimization, SEOgoogle, search engine optimization, SEOShare This
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
