For the past two or three years, many search engines such as Google and a few others have given less and less attention, and in some cases, no attention at all to Meta Tags. The sole reason for this is simply because in the past, in the go-go days of the Internet, ie: before 2000, many web site owners and webmasters stuffed their meta tags with useless information, basically spamming the search engines. It wasn’t long for the engines to realize they were victimized and since that time, many of them now pay little if no attention at all to most Meta Tags.
However, what if some day they come back? What if, at a future date many of the major search engines decide that the “penalty” has served its purpose and that its now time to remove it? Not putting any meta tags in a website may not be a good idea, since it only takes a few minutes to write them in the first place. (more…)
Way Back
Alexa started out as a project to archive the Internet; to keep a history of the then nascent World Wide Web as it developed. While that certainly was an interesting concept, it probably never would have paid the bills. Remnants of that project still exist: Alexa has a “Way back machine” that lets you see older versions of some pages on some sites. You can see some of my old pages at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.aplawrence.com/ for an example.
Alexa now also offers a search engine (Google powered, of course). Their added value is to offer additional site ranking and related site information that Goggle doesn’t provide. Alexa compiles that part of its data from users of its Alexa Toolbar. Unlike Google’s Page Rank, which is a simple 1 to 10 scale, Alexa ranks position: first most popular and on up, presently seeming to end somewhere close to the four million mark. (more…)
If You Build It
But popularity isn’t easy. Oh, you’ll get spam that tells you it is- “We’ll submit your site to thousands of search engines and your web counter will go BALLISTIC!!” and so on. Or you may be advised that you need to pay Yahoo a whole bunch of money to get your site “indexed”. Under some circumstances, you might consider paying Yahoo or Google for context based advertising, but most of us don’t need to. The only folks who should even consider paying for site promotion are those who need to come up to speed extremely quickly. Even if you do pay, don’t ignore the techniques discussed here- paying is only going to give you a jump start; it won’t keep you in the game. (more…)
When a company or individual needs to rank high in the major search engines, a number of important steps are necessary in planning a good content strategy. To be really efficient, a good corporate web site needs to effectively communicate the content it offers its visitors. That content should describe the topic, information sections and the purpose of the site. Visitors will want to come to a company’s web site more than once if the content it offers exactly matches the topic or subject of their initial search query.
Experience has taught us that good, relevant content always prompts users to visit time and time again, thereby generating additional, quality traffic. Traffic isn’t everything- you also need targeted traffic to be really effective in your optimization campaign. Good, detailed content that is on-topic and relevant to search is the actual heart of any good corporate web site. Studies have shown that visitors leave a site if the vital and essential information they are looking for is not available. (more…)
Improving the keyword density on your web site is one of the fastest and simplest ways to increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. To better explain this reasoning, we will refer to a “keyword” as a word that your typical web surfer will input in the search box when searching for specific information about a product or service. The true definition of keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for, ie the keyword, against the total number of words appearing on a given web page. If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length.
As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on that particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially. Not all search engines compute or evaluate keyword density in the same way and most have their own proprietary algorithm for calculating the average density of a keyword. Nevertheless, the basic principles described in this article are general enough to help any website greatly increase its rankings in the major search engines. Note that today, they all take keyword density into account. (more…)
Introduction To Google
What is the Googles Search Engine, and why are they important in the world of Search Engines and Directories? Brief History. In early 1998 at Stanford University Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote a paper called The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. Back then there were about 20 major search engines and portals, with Yahoo leading the way.
Yahoo has always had about 1/3 of all search traffic, and in 2002 Google surpassed Yahoo in percent of searches on the web.
Then Google contracted with AOL to provide the results to AOL searches….and then the biggie…in October 2002 Yahoo defaulted to showing Google Result. To explain that simply…do a search on Google, then go to Yahoo and perform that same search, and you’ll see they’re the same results. Same goes for searching on AOL and Netscape. (more…)
Having a Web site that gets found in Google isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are ten tips to get you started.
1. Start out slowly. If possible, begin with a new site that has never been submitted to the search engines or directories. Choose an appropriate domain name, and start out by optimizing just the home page.
2. Learn basic HTML. Many search engine optimization techniques involve editing the behind the scenes HTML code. Your high rankings can depend on knowing which codes are necessary, and which aren’t.
3. Choose keywords wisely. The keywords you think might be perfect for your site may not be what people are actually searching for. To find the optimal keywords for your site, use tools such as WordTracker. Choose two or three highly targeted phrases for each page of your site. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation.” (more…)
From: Carol
Hi Jill,
I emailed you before and you made me understand what was going on. I have another question if you don’t mind.
In one of your recent newsletters, you talked about keywords. If I understand correctly, your keywords should be used within your text,
on the main page, right?
Here is my situation: I am selling microfiber towels, I want to be in the top-10 for car accessories, car care products, but nothing is in text on my main page. So, I noticed the search engines have not picked it up yet. I need more keywords for more exposure for my website, but with microfiber towels, there isn’t too much to deal with. (more…)
Just a few years ago, when asked “How do you drive traffic to your website”, many companies would name banner ads as their main marketing medium for increasing online revenues. In an effort to increase brand awareness, companies spent thousands of dollars on obnoxious banner advertisements on high profile websites in an effort to cement their reputation as the number one company or product in their industry. It didn’t seem to matter that very few people actually clicked on these flashing, animated billboards. What did matter was Internet users saw these ads wherever they went on the web; there was a sense of pride and vanity from having your company’s banner appear more often than your competitors.
Fast-forward to the present day and banner ads have fallen from grace with few companies buying banner ads purely for the sake of one-upmanship on the competition. In their stead, search engine marketing has become the medium of choice for companies looking to increase website exposure. With the steady growth of search engine use, thanks in part to the technology and reliability offered by Google, companies already know that obtaining top positioning on the search engines will result in qualified traffic to their website and increased online revenues. However, there is a new phenomenon rising up to replace the battle once seen with banner advertising; Search Engine Vanity. (more…)
For the past several months now, there has been a new development used more and more by businesses and companies of all sizes: Business Blogs. First, for those of you who may be wondering what “blogs” actually are, they are an abbreviation for “web logs”. First popularized by journalists, tech geeks and by teenagers, “blogs” are now increasingly in use by the business community and Fortune 500 companies.
If you have new ideas or a new product your company would like to promote, business blogs are a good, inexpensive vehicle. And there are many other advantages to using blogs too: major search directories and search engines such as Yahoo, Google Alta-Vista and most of the others crave on fresh and new information that is frequently updated, sometimes many times a day. Business Blogs consist of many links, written with fresh content that is propagated everywhere on the web. (more…)
