* Who are the major search engines and directories?
The major companies involved in search engine technology, their shareholders and alliances change often. It's almost like watching one of those adult soap operas on weeknight television. You never know who's partnering with whom and sometimes there are complete surprises.
At the time of this writing, some of the largest and most important search engines are Google, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Lycos, Hotbot and Fast (alltheweb). The largest pure paid listing search engine is Overture.
Some of the largest search engines (MSN and AOL) are not search engines at all. They are just popular destinations that lease search engine technology (for now) from other companies. When you license the technology, you can apply a unique set of filters and provide own unique "brand" of search results. This is the fastest way to set up a search engine. Just put your own "face" or "brand" on someone else's technology.
The most important directories include the likes of Yahoo, the Open Directory Project (dmoz), and LookSmart. Many people prefer to search using directories where humans have decided what the best web sites are. The down side is that the directories have reviewed only a tiny fraction of the web sites that are out there. Most directories have a search engine technology lying somewhere underneath the directory. It's the search engine results that get displayed if nothing in the directory matches your query.
There are many sources of search engine information available but my favorite is the Planet Ocean monthly newsletter. When it comes to the soap opera of the search engines, Planet Ocean's got it covered. There is a large archive at the web site, with plenty of information, plus the Winning the Search Engine Wars ebook that gets updated every month.
http://www.cdzn.com/pob
* What search engines look for and how they are different
Each search engine is different and looks for keywords on a page in its own way. The search engine, spider, crawler, whatever they call it, is a piece of software, plain and simple, that behaves according to a set of rules, or filters.
It was programmed by very intelligent humans to look at the submitted page, catalog the words on it, give importance to word repetition, word density, word location, link popularity, link reputation, link quality, and it gets even more complicated.... Once everything is taken into consideration,
a calculated decision is made, as to what position this page will come up, in comparison to the millions of other pages out there, when someone types in a particular keyword phrase. Whew, simple huh?
The only person who holds the secret for a particular search engine is the person who wrote the program. If that wasn't enough, search engines are constantly tweaking the way they work, so what worked last month might not work the next. It means constant tweaking of pages, creating new pages, and adapting our strategies to stay in the top of the search engines.
Imagine the search engine to be a big box with dials on the front of it. The first Monday of every month, Bob (the head programmer), walks over to the box and prepares to turn the big dials. OK, he says while scratching his head, lets see, last month an 14% keyword density was important, lets bring that down to, let's say, all the way down to 5% density for top scoring pages.
Now, let's imagine you have a web page all about bananas. Last month, if your page of 100 words, had the word keyword "banana" exactly 14 times, your banana page was scoring top in the search engine. You had a 14% word density and were sitting on top of the world. This month, since Bob turned the keyword density dial down to 5%, pages of 100 words, that have the word "banana" exactly 5 times, will now appear at the top of the search engine. Your old page of 14% word density is nowhere to be found.
Then Bob does the same for: "page title", how important are keywords in the title this month, (he sets the dial somewhere between very much to not at all), "incoming links" how important are they this month (he sets the dial somewhere between very much to not at all). Bob continues to
"mix up" what the search engine considers to be important. I know this is an oversimplified way of explaining it but it does help us visualize what is going on.
The point I'm trying to illustrate is that what the search engine is "looking for" or considers to be
a "important" changes almost monthly. They constantly leave us trying to find out, what's working right now? How have the rules changed? What new holes in my keyword strategy have appeared? What types of new web pages must I create to fix them? Fortunately, unlike the old days, we are not alone in our internet marketing efforts, there are several newsletters and tools available to help us succeed.
* Secret tools I use for top search engine positioning
I'm able to keep my web sites in the top 20 results - the front pages - of the search engines by using a very specialized tool set. I've already mentioned WordTracker ( http://www.cdzn.com/wtr ). Now I'm about to reveal more of my secret weapons.
For getting my web sites into the top 20 - the front pages of the search engines, I use products from Planet Ocean Communications. Their "Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars" is my number one, "if I was stranded on a desert island, and could only could pick one tool", this would be it. I can't say enough about this publication except that "IT WORKS".
Even if you get nothing else from this book, finding out about Planet Ocean's internet marketing tools "alone" could change your life. I would recommend that you go buy their book immediately, start reading it and apply the techniques to your own web site. You will be very surprised at the success of your web pages in the search engines.
When you buy the Planet Ocean book you'll also get access to the "Enginemaster Chart" which goes into microscopic detail on what each search engine supports, what it will and will not catalog, look at, penalize for, and index on your page. Plus you also get monthly newsletter updates that contain the latest strategies and formulas for winning the search engine wars.
Get the Planet Ocean Book and Enginemaster chart here:
http://www.cdzn.com/pob
The next search engine positioning tool is OptiLink which does keyword counting and link analysis. This software helps determine what linking strategies are working right now, how many keywords are used in the links, what keyword percentages are scoring top results in search engines, and where in the html code the keywords appear.
In the early days I had to analyze the top scoring pages manually by counting everything by hand. I spent endless hours determining what made one page "better" than another or more specifically, finish in the top 10.
Enter OptiLink, software specifically designed to reverse engineer the top scoring pages and tell me exactly how they are doing it. I can't begin to tell you how much time and money I've saved by using OptiLink, only that it works wonders, and I consistently achieve top 10 pages in the search engines, because what it shows me.
Get Optilink here:
http://www.cdzn.com/opl
Once I have my pages in the top 10 - the front pages - of the search engines, I rely on another tool to keep an eye on them. Its important to track if my pages are going up or down in position. I need to determine what "style" of web page is working right now, what type of page is suddenly moving upward in position so I can replicate it with similar pages. The tool I use for this is WebPosition Gold.
Before WebPosition Gold, I had to go to a search engine, manually type in each keyword phrase
I wanted to monitor, record its position and move on to the next keyword. I then moved on to the next search engine and repeated the process. It was a long slow operation that took endless hours of my time.
WebPosition took what used to take a third of my time and entirely automated the process. Now I just ask WebPosition to do all the work for me. It queries all the major search engines with as many keywords and phrases I choose. It then outputs the positioning results to a detailed html file, and as a text file that can easily be imported into any spreadsheet, for instant analysis.
WebPosition Gold also comes bundled with several other applications for increasing search engine positioning. One of my favorite WebPosition Gold features, is the individual page performance feature. It shows how a single page is performing across multiple search engines. Very handy if you've created a killer page that's performing well in several engines. You'll want to use the page as a template, replicate it several times, and then submit the new pages to the search engines, so they can get to work attracting visitors and making sales.
Get WebPosition Gold here:
http://www.cdzn.com/wpg
These are the three main tools I use to achieve top search engine positioning. I would not like to be without any of these, and certainly wouldn't suggest trying search engine marketing without them. Find out where to get more tools like these, by skipping ahead to the Resource Section at the end of the book.
* Creating top scoring search engine pages
Now you know the secret tools for search engine positioning and the importance of keywords. You've armed yourself with your lists of keywords, titles, descriptions and are about to put them to work for yourself.
Creating top scoring pages is a combination of several factors, all involving your keyword phrases. Your top keywords and phrases must be present in:
- your domain name (if possible)
- page titles
- the "keywords" meta tag
- headline tags at the top of each web page
- in the first sentence of the first paragraph of visible text
- at the beginning and ending of paragraphs
- in hypertext links that lead to related pages
- in the file name, also known as the page's URL
- and most importantly, in links that lead to your page
We'll examine my tactics for putting keywords in each one of the catagories listed above, but if you're looking for a quick fix, a specific formula, read the Planet Ocean newsletter or use OptiLink.
(I should note here, if you are new to the search engines, there is a book specifically for you. It's the Totally Non Technical Guide, written by the same people that teach the Search Engine Workshops, answer the WordTracker support questions, and update WebPosition Gold. You won't find better advice, anywhere on the 'net.
Very simply put. This is the best beginners guide ever written. I believe it to be the fastest way to make money online. I've personally seen people follow this course and start making thousands per month, in as little as a long weekend. You can get the TNT ebook here:
http://www.cdzn.com/tnt
* How to write page titles search engines want
Page titles should be made up of your target keywords and keyword phrases. We have to decide at the outset what the page is to be about and focus content on that topic. We might put in generic terms, manufacturer names, makes, models, but it must be phrases that we know people are actually using in search engines. The page title is not a place for your company name, unless your company name is a nationally recognized brand name that people are actually searching for.
In some search engines the title is critical, if your keywords do not appear in the title, your pages will not be found. Other engines do not catalog or take the title into consideration at all. Following the golden rule of the internet, things constantly change. Some months the title matters, some months it doesn't, it all depends on where they've set the engine's "big dial" for "title importance" this month.
Bottom line is that I've never seen a page penalized for including keywords in the title, except for repeating the same word over and over. Put your most important keywords and phrases in the web page title, and you're one step closer to using search engines to your advantage. Take a look at some of these "page title" examples.
<TITLE>nokia cellular phones 6160 accessories</TITLE>
<TITLE>wireless cellular phones digital pcs cell phone accessories</TITLE>
<TITLE>Where can I find cellular phones and accessories?</TITLE>
<TITLE>wireless nokia digital phones 6160 5160 accessories</TITLE>
<TITLE>Find cellular phones digital pcs and mobile cell phone accessories.</TITLE>
Several of the examples above don't read right. I mean as far as a human goes. If we read the second example there is no punctuation, only keywords. The search engines love it! It's designed specifically for the search engines. It's this style of title that will get you a top scoring page.
Humans can still read it, it does contain the keywords they typed into the search engine. But most people having scanned the clickable blue link and found their search phrase, will drop their eyes and immediately read the plain text description that appears underneath the link. Then having won their confidence with a few lines of USP and benefit filled text, they go back and click on the link to your site.
I'll share a little secret with you. Don't always use your main keyword phrase as the first words of your title. Several search engines seem to give a slight penalty if one is too eager to use their keywords at the beginning of titles. I stumbled across this because - as a test - I created similar
pages, changing nothing except the title, just to see what would happen. I noticed that pages with the keyword second or third in a headline, or title, scored slightly higher in some search engines.
Now I'll often use some other word first, then start with keywords. In the fifth example above, notice that I started the title with the word "Find" instead of my actual keywords "cellular phones" or "digital phones". By using the word "Find", we also increase the chance that someone will find us when the search using the phrase "find cellular phones".
Remember the WordTracker reports? The top 1000 keyword report tells us words like "find, where, shop, buy, for, free, online, sale, information" are some of the most popular words typed into the search engines. It only makes sense that some of our page titles should be sentences like, "Where can I find cellular phones?" or "Find cellular phones in the USA." Most people search using very generic phrases, many however search with complete sentences or ask questions like the ones above.
It's best to spread the wealth around, and try as many title variations as possible. If you're like Cell- West and have over 330 web pages working for you in the search engines, it's easy to get creative with titles and experiment a little.
One of the biggest amateur mistakes is to give every page the same title. Usually it's a lame title at that. Give each page a different title. Start some titles with keywords, others with popular words like shop, find, get or the. That way, whenever the engines change their strategies we're sure to be covered and will always have a few pages in the top ten.
* Hidden meta tags, magic, smoke and mirrors
Meta tags are simple lines of hidden html code, they are invisible to the person surfing the web. The only way you know if meta tags are present is to look at the html "source code" of a page. In Netscape or Explorer look under the "View" menu and choose to view Page Source.
A new window will open up displaying the actual html code. This code is what web browser software interprets, to create the pages we actually see. The meta tags are hidden within the "head" tags at the top of the html document. The two meta tags we are primarily concerned about, are
the "description" meta tag and the "keywords" meta tag. If we were to examine a web page that is all about the "Nokia 6160 cellular phone", the html code containing the meta tags might look something like this:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>cellular nokia 6160 phones accessories</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Cell-West is an wireless superstore, where you can shop for digital pcs phones, cell phones and cellular accessories for all popular brands.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="nokia phones, 6160, Nokia 6160, accessory, nokia, cellular accessories, phones, cellular, PCS, telephones, cell, wireless, phone, mobile, digital, pcs, cell phone, batteries, battery, lithium, chargers, handsfree, hands free, kits, leather cases, face plates, plastic housings, antenna, holders, mounts, in car, vibrator, vibrating, parts, find, order, sale, shop, shopping, for, compare, prices, the, of, where, america, usa, canadian, canada, north american, can, I, where">
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="The html code of this web site is Copyright © 1996-
2003 Gumball Imports Ltd. All rights reserved.">
</HEAD>
The "description" meta tag is written by you. It allows you to control the description of your page. If you look at the search results from most search engines, each web page listed will have a clickable blue link, with some text underneath.
The clickable link, is usually the page title, the text underneath, is usually taken from the
"description" meta tag. Unlike directories that have humans editing and chopping up your site descriptions, with search engines, you can usually control what the people see, and load it up with your USP and benefits.
If you leave out the description tag, the search engine will usually extract text from your page to create a summary. Some engines do not extract text but simply leave your site hanging there with
no description. So if you want to control the summary that other people see rather than leaving it up to a machine, use the description meta tag on ALL your web pages.
The "keywords" meta tag is totally ignored by some search engines but very important to others. They use the keywords to confirm what your page is about, as one of the factors in finding your page, and determining its positioning in search results.
At the very least, it doesn't hurt to have the keywords meta tag in every web page. Just be sure to separate each keyword or phrase with a comma. Avoid the search engine spam filters by not
repeating any one word more than three times in total. If I use any keyword more than once, I put it in once by itself, then phrase it with another word, up to two times more.
* Headlines for humans and machines
Headlines are very important on every page. They immediately shout out to humans what the page is about. It is the headline that brings the reader in and gets them to read the article.
Headlines are used everywhere in newspapers, magazines, cook books, everywhere we find the printed word. Headline and subheads help direct the eye and categorize information. What's
funny is how few web sites use headlines at all. It's like we threw out everything we learned about typography and traditional design when the internet came along.
Now that you know the human benefit of using headlines and subheads on every page, there's a second even greater benefit. Many search engines give greater "weight" or "findability" to
keywords that appear in headlines. Why? Because they're headlines, and headlines are important, therefore the most important words must be the ones in the headlines!
It's important to note here, that when using your html editor, there are two ways of making your type larger or smaller. One is with + or - which will increase or decrease your type size. It will not give the search engine boost that I just talked about. The other uses header <H2></H2> tags. Put your headlines, which are made up of keyword phrases, inside of actual "header" tags whenever possible.
If you have a cellular phone page a good headline might be "The source for cellular phones and cell phone accessories". A lithium battery page might start with "Find lithium batteries for mobile,
cellular and digital pcs phones". Just look at all the great keywords we just slid into the headline for both humans and machines.
Make your headline into the biggest boldest html headline, right at the top of the page, ahead of anything else - banners, tables, graphics - I mean first. Now when a search engine catalogs your page, the keywords in the title and meta tags are reinforced by the same keywords in your headlines. The result is usually a big boost in search engine positioning.
* Creating paragraphs that will boost keyword positioning
I have higher placement in the search engines when my paragraphs begin and end with a related keyword phrase. Its almost as if the search engines are looking for concepts within paragraphs. The following paragraphs were taken from a top scoring page. Notice how the paragraphs start and end with the words cellular, cell, phone or phones.
Cellular phones are a specialty at Cell-West. You'll save money and get the benefit of knowing you're dealing with experts that have years of experience retailing cellular products.
If you're looking for cellular accessories for your phone, Cell-West has over 4000 items in stock and are adding more all the time. They carry accessories for popular brands such as Nokia's 6160, Motorola's Startac and Ericsson's 738, but also stock thousands of items for Lucky Goldstar, Phillips Isis, Sony CMZ100, Nextel i1000 and other cell phones.
They've got cellular phone accessories like desktop chargers, lithium batteries, travel battery chargers, hands free kits, Nokia face plates, leather cases, passive repeaters, antennas, vibrating batteries and so much more for your phone.
Come to Cell-West for all your cellular phones and accessories. You'll get fast friendly service, your choice of UPS or free airmail delivery, a 30 day money back satisfaction guarantee, and a 3 year warranty on all the cellular accessories you purchase from us.
At Cell-West, you'll find an easy to use web site, toll free number, and operators standing by to
take your order. We've made it easy, the rest is up to you. Click here to shop for cellular phones and accessories.
When I write in this style, the result is a page that scores much higher in the search engines. Sometimes 20 to 30 percent higher. When I apply this bizarre writing style to a home page, the results can be phenomenal. The above page, with no tricks, just simple text with headlines and links, was in the top 5 of two major search engines for over two months. It resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
* Using links to score big time in search engines
Since the early days, search engines have given more "weight" or "findability" to web sites that used keyword phrases in links. As the search engines matured they continued to add more
intelligence and concepts to their sorting and sifting abilities. In recent times, web sites will score higher if links lead to related topics and if other web sites on related topics link to your site. These concepts have fancy names like link relevancy and link popularity.
Smart designers are taking search engine "intelligence" into consideration when designing web sites. They are dropping the lovely graphic icons, imagemaps and Javascript in favor of text links. The minute Cell-West got rid of graphic links and replaced them with text links, all their web pages scored significantly higher in all the major search engines.
If you're wondering what I mean by graphic links, it's pictures or icons that when clicked on link to somewhere else. If you get rid of the graphic icons, replace them plain old clickable hypertext links that contain keywords, your pages will score much higher.
And if that's not enough to worry about, you'll sometimes get a boost in relevancy if keywords appear in the URL that you are linking to. It is part of the file path, in the HREF portion, the anchor tag of the html code. For example, take a look at the following html code, it is a hypertext link:
<A HREF="http://www.Cell-West/html/phones.htm">Cellular and digital phones.</A>
The front portion <A HREF="http://www.Cell-West/html/phones.htm"> is the page you are linking to. Notice that it contains the keyword "phones" as part of the path or URL. Score yourself 1 point in the search engines.
The back portion of our example "Cellular and digital phones." is what people actually see in their browser window as a clickable hypertext link. Notice that it contains keyword "phones". Score yourself another point in the search engines.
The page that the link leads to is a page focusing on, guess what? Phones! Score yourself another point in the search engines for a total of three. Imagine if you copied this formula for every single link on every single page.
<A HREF="http://www.Cell-West/html/faceplates.htm">Plastic housings, faceplates and accessories for nokia digital phones.</A>
This link scores triple for the keyword "faceplates".
<A HREF="http://www.Cell-West/html/batteries.htm">Lithium batteries for cellular and digital pcs phones.</A>
This link scores triple for the keyword "batteries".
If you are redesigning your site or starting from scratch, now is the perfect time to put keywords in the URLs or file names of your web site. Instead of throwing all your web pages or html files in one
"folder" or "directory" on your hard drive, create subfolders that contain keywords.
For example, if we create a batteries folder, inside a nokia folder, inside a web site folder, we would have a path that looks like this:
Cell-West.com/nokia/batteries/
Now if we create a web page dealing with lithium batteries we might save the file as "lithium.html" inside our bottom most folder called "batteries". We would now have an URL or "path" for the page that looks like this:
http://Cell-West.com/nokia/batteries/lithium.html Look at all those keywords in the path name, we've got "nokia", "batteries" and "lithium" all covered with one link. If you want to score triple points every time, 1 put keywords in links, 2 link to a page on a related topic and 3 include keywords in the URL. You'll outscore your competition in the search engines every time.
* Down and dirty guide to page creation - Determine what the page is going to be about.
- Always link to that page using a synonymous set of keywords.
- Choose your main keywords based on popular search queries.
- Combine the keywords into several keyword phrases or pairs, for use throughout the page.
- Use Planet Ocean newsletter or OptiLink as a guide to what keyword densities and page lengths are working right now.
- Use Composer, WebPosition Gold or your favorite html editor to create your page.
- Put a couple of keywords or keyword phrases as the html title
- Type some text on the page, make it a headline tag, put the keywords in there.
- Begin and end your paragraphs with keywords so they maintain a concept.
- Put keywords and phrases in clickable links that lead to other pages on similar topics.
- Put keyword phrases in the ALT tags for any graphic images on your page.
- Organize folders so keywords can be placed in the URLs or file paths
- Add your "description" meta tag to control the descriptions some search engines display.
- Include your keywords, misspellings, & synonymous keyword phrases in the keywords meta tag.
- Use WebPosition Gold page Critic to fine tune your page.
- Submit your page to the search engines.
- Repeat the process as many times as you like.
- That's it!
I know it seems overly simplified, but if you follow this formula, I mean really pay attention
to everything listed above, your pages will do well, often finishing in the top 10 of most search engines.
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