Search Engine Ranking Strategies

What is a Search Engine?
Search Engine is a site that indexes World Wide Web pages based on content, importance, offering and public needs. Each engine works differently. They may base the results of their searches on Meta Tags, page content, page title, or a combination of these. The search engines get their content from spider (see below) programs. Some popular search engines are AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos. SearchHound is the newest and coolest of all: It allows you to search up to 10 search engines at once- including its own superb index). Contrast this with a "Directory".

What is a Directory?
Directory is a location or database where of a site that categorizes the World Wide Web based on input submitted by the publisher of the website example: http://www.yahoo.com. A good example of this is Yahoo. In this case, the actual web content is never accessed. When someone searches for a keyword, this is referenced against a database of sites that contain a title and description for a particular site. Once again, this site is categorized by topic and someone submits the title and description.

What is a Search Engine Spider?
A program used by a search engine to index the World Wide Web content. Spiders are all set differently, but they all capture specific information about a page. Some capture the title and the first 1,000 characters of content. Some capture the title and "description" Meta Tag. Some look only for the "keyword" Meta tag. Some use a combination of all of these methods.

What are Hits?
Any time a document is accessed from a web site. If someone tells you they get 1,000 hits a day at their site, this may not be a big deal. For instance, if they have 15 images on their page each time their page is accessed it generates 16 hits (once for each image and once for the html document). Ask them how they got this information and you'll get a better idea about what they mean by the statement. This information is generally useless for our purposes. It usually doesn't matter how many times a particular graphic is used.

User Session
Any time a single user logs on to a site. He can look at all the pages of the site, but it still equals only one user session.

Page View
Any time a viewer looks at a particular page. This is more meaningful than a hit.

Access Logs (Server Logs)
Most web servers maintain access logs. This log will contain information about which pages have been viewed how many times, what page referred the web surfer to your page, what time they came in, any errors encountered if any. Ask your ISP to set this up on your site. Most good web hosting services will offer some form of statistical analysis.

Keyword Selection
The first and most important step in manipulating the search engines is keyword selection. Keywords must be both relevant and frequently used. What do I mean by relevance? If you own a website about "marketing" and your website comes up first in an AltaVista search for "alternative medicine", you will get some visits from this. You'll get them, but they won't do you any good.

The term "alternative medicine" is indeed frequently used. But its relevancy to marketing is questionable. Chances are, you are trying to sell a product or attract certain interest groups with your site. The visits you get based on the "alternative medicine" searches will be irrelevant. If you are selling marketing products or services, I sincerely doubt any of these visitors will be interested in your products.

Now, if you simply want visitors for the sake of visit (for instance, if you are selling ad views on your site), then it doesn't matter where these hits come from. See "What Keywords Work."

If you are looking for relevant visits (if you're selling a product or trying to attract a particular interest group), then you need to be more careful in your selection. Relevant visits equal more chances for sales and more chances for return visits.

In this section we'll show you how to select relevant keywords. In the following sections we'll show you how to apply them. This may not make sense now, but it will pay off later. Let's take the case of a site featuring water faucets. The initial list of keywords the owner devised consisted of repeating the term "water faucet" 100 times. Does it make sense right? Well he's making several mistakes here and not taking full advantage of keyword power. Here are some rules he's ignoring and how he can be applying them:

Use Plurals
If you pluralize your words, those who search for the singular and plural will both find your site. In this case he should have written "water faucets".

Diversify
One word alone will get a few people, but not everyone thinks like you do. Try to get into the mind of someone who would find your site/product useful. In this case, he could have used words like "plumbing", "home improvement", "sinks", "kitchens", "bathrooms", "plumbers", etc.

Do Not Repeat Excessively
Some search engines are beginning to filter out sites that repeat words too much. I repeat about 2-5 times and leave it at that. Most sites will recognize this. Keep an eye out for word on policy changes.

Use Varying Forms
Not everyone is going to write "water faucet" as you see here. Right or wrong, there are many people out there that will search for "water-faucet" or "water faucet." It probably seems silly to you, but it will make perfect sense to someone else. In this case it probably won't be so important, but what if you are offering an IQ test? You would be wise to use both "I.Q. tests" and "IQ tests".

Use Power Combinations
This refers to economy of space. Some sites will only look at the first 250 characters or so of a keyword list (in meta tags). To use the space more effectively you can combine two combinations. For example, if the site here also offers bottled spring water, they need to include that in their list. Instead of writing "bottled spring water" and "water faucets" they can combine the two and simply say "bottled spring water faucets". This way people searching for both keyword combinations will pull up the page with less space used. This frees up some more space for more keywords.

Use Phrases
In a recent study conducted by one of the major search engines, it was revealed that over 65% of all searches made use phrases rather than single words. Target No More Than Four Keywords or Phrases Per Page. If you try to target more, your page will lose relevancy for all words concerned. Each search engines looks at only a certain portion of your page. Don't waste that space! The more pages your site has, the more keywords you will be able to target.

Now, take a moment to write down the keywords related to your site. Once you have generated a list. Ask yourself: "What would someone who would benefit from my site be looking for"? Then add the results. Show your list to your friends and colleagues. See if they have anything to add. An interesting test may involve asking people the above question without showing them your list. Ask as many people as you can. Compare the lists. The phrases or words that show up the most are likely to coincide with the most "frequently used" words on the search engines. Are you excited? You should be. You are on the road to phenomenal traffic! If you are not, too bad, I did not study to comedy other wise I could have just joked about something. Anyways, here is a joke for you! Your house is so dirty; I wipe my feet before I come out. LOL.

Meta Tags
Here is the first use for the keyword list you generated. Meta Tags are the most basic for manipulating the search engines. Some search engines will use these Meta Tags to index web content and give this more weight than the actual content of the page. For instance, if the first line of text in your page says "internet marketing articles" and the "description" Meta Tag says "internet marketing, direct marketing, secrets of the pros, home based business opporutnity", some search engines will think it's a resources page or information page not a selling page. Very important these days, the more you give free, the more the spiders will be happy. The more you sell, the less the spiders will be happy. It is not what you are selling it is what you are offering for the public for free. Let me tell you one little secret of mine. Internet is not the place where people come and buy stuff. Internet is the place where people come and find free stuff.

In this basic tutorial there are two main Meta Tags recognized by the search engines: "description" and "keywords". These tags need to be placed in the "head" section of your html document. That is they need to reside between <head> and </head>. If you don't understand HTML, don't be scared off by this. Just cut and paste these lines of code between <head> and </head> and you'll be OK.

The tags should look like this
<meta name="description" content="Description of your document goes here.">
<meta name="keywords" content="your key words here like this">

It's that simple. Remember, some engines will look for agreement between the "description", "keyword", "title" and body text. So, try to use the same keywords in each field. That is, if your keyword list contains: "plumbers plumbing pipes tools", you need to make sure that you not only include those keywords in the "keywords" meta tag, but also the description, title and body text.

Remember though, every search engine is different. Some search engines will use only the first line of body text. That is, the text that comes right after the <body> tag in an html document. Others still will use a combination of this and weight your page on consistency. That is, if the same content is in your title, first body text lines, "description" and "keywords" then your page will be given more weight in a search.

Remember, this rule only applies to certain search engines. Every one is different. Learn how each search engine works by studying the results of searches. Refine your tactics and resubmit. (Also see Tracking Your Progress)

Hidden Input
Be advised this section can be used by more advanced people but anyone can try it to learn. You've probably figured out by now, that it will be hard to include all of your keywords in the first portion of your web page without looking silly, especially if you use graphics at the top of your page.

There are many sites out there that simply list keywords at the top of their page. You will be hard pressed to do this in an aesthetic manner. There are many ways around this, but the most invisible to the web surfer is the "hidden input" tag. The tags need to go in the body of the web page, (that is, between <body> and </body>) and look like this:

<input type="hidden" value="your keyword list goes here">

Some search engines will recognize this whereas others will not. The nice thing about this is that it's totally invisible to the web surfer, and the search engines that recognize it will weight this information the same as regular text in your document. This should be the first thing after the <body> tag, before anything else. Some search engines only look at the first 2,000 or so characters in a document, so you need to get this in there before any graphic tags.

Warning
Some search engines will penalize your site for doing this! I wouldn't use this tactic on all of your pages. Try it on one or two and check the results. If it doesn't help, don't do it. Remember, search engines are changing the rules all the time!

Invisible Keyword Stuffing
Knowing that some search engines do not recognize (or even penalize for) the data in the <input type="hidden"> field, we are left with the problem: how do I target these engines and not alter the look of my page? Invisible keyword stuffing offers a possible solution. This tactic, too, is considered poor netiquette and can be penalized for by some search engines. This tactic entails typing plain text into the body of your message that is the same colour as your background. These keywords take up space, but they are not visible to the web surfer. They are visible to the search engines, though.

For example, the background of a particular page is white. This is specified with the following tag:

<body bgcolor="FFFFFF">

You need to ensure the texts of your stuffed keywords are the same colour. You can do this by changing the colour with the font tag:

<font color="#FFFFFF" size ="1">Your text here</font>

The cryptic looking "FFFFFF" in each fields is a hexadecimal value for color. Don't get scared off, it's really simple. In this case the "FFFFFF" refers to the color white. To learn the codes for other colors, just do a search for "hexadecimal color" on any good search engine and you should be able to pull up a number of good references showing the codes
for several different colors. Here are some basic colors:

Black=000000
White=ffffff
Red=ff0000
Blue=0000ff
Yellow=ffff00

Remember that, unlike the hidden text field, the text still takes up space on your page. You will notice in the example above we used the phrase: size="1". This specifies that the text is the smallest possible relative size. This way you can fit more stuffed text into a space without affecting the page layout as much. It has been rumoured, though that some engines will penalize you for using size 1 fonts. I think it is just an attention or way or misleading the public. Play around with this and you will understand. Remember, text at the top of the page is generally more effective.

Warning
Some search engines may penalize for this. Always test before you commit to one tactic or another (see Tracking Your Progress). A possible alternative that some folks are using entails changing the shade of the text just slightly. The text is still barely visible to the viewer, but the search engine sees it as a different shade.

The Title
Another great asset is your page title. I don't mean a title like you see directly above. I mean the "title" tag in html. It usually shows up at the very top of your web browser next to the browser logo. This tag is in the page head (between <head> and </head>), and looks like this:

<title>Your Page Title Here</title>

Once again, you want to use as many keywords here as possible. Just be sure not to make it look tacky. If it looks unprofessional, people won't think that much of your page. When most search engines display your page data as the result of a search, the <title> tag is the first thing they display. This makes it double important to ensure the tag looks professional. If the tag says something like "tools, tools, tools, plumbing, plumbing, plumbing", the type of person you are looking for probably won't even click on the link even if it does show up first in the search engine. Repeating keywords could get you penalized also so be careful when using keywords repeatedly.

It's up to you to creatively include your keywords in a professional looking title. The title can be long (not too long, though), but it had better not be just a keyword list. Have a friend look it over to see what they think. Remember: don't target more than four keyword phrases per page and don't repeat excessively.

Title Repetition
For example, rather than simply having the following title tag:

<head>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up.</title>
</head>

You can make the tag look like this: The following is for advanced Webmasters only.

<head>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up. </title>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up. </title>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up. </title>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up. </title>
<title>Online IQ Tests. Test your intelligence with these I.Q. Tests online. See if your brain measures up.</title>
</head>

For some search engines, the second example will be weighted five times more than the first. Someone searching for "IQ test" will be more likely to find the document using the second tag example in a search.

Warning
Title repetition is (like hidden input and keyword stuffing) considered bad netiquette. Some search engines may penalize for it. However, some people have found this technique to be quite effective. Use prudence and caution.

Know the Different Search Engines
We could spend some time here and spout off some of the standard wisdom about what search engines uses what rules to index documents. But in my experience, this information is generally unreliable. Most search engines are very secretive about the indexing rules they use. Some will publish one rule and use another. Some change their rules all the time.

The only reliable way to figure out how each search engine works at any particular time is to compare search results. Please view Tracking Your Progress.

What do they have in common? Do the first documents all have extensive keyword Meta tags? Do they have long descriptive titles with lots of keywords? Using this method, you can figure out what a search engine is looking for at this particular time. Modify your pages to accommodate this and then submit. Once your pages are spidered, it will probably be a while before they are automatically reindexed. So, it's OK to change your page once you are sure it has been spidered by that particular engine. Why change it? To submit to the other search engines of course, changing your page is not the only solution here. More to come on that in a second!

What Keywords Work?
Hmmm. Good question. What keywords will bring in the most people? Well, with technology so advanced these days, you can find various keyword searching tools and use them to find what keywords are used on a daily basis. As I mentioned before, this depends on what your goals are. Chances are you are not just looking for visits, but relevant visits. By this we mean, you want to attract visitors who will be interested in what you are offering. Lists have been circulated showing the "most searched for keywords". The generally consist of words like: Now the most keywords that are searched are related to adults, sex, porn and things like that.

The theory goes like this: If I fill up my page with words like that, I'll get more visitors. Since these are the most searched for keywords, my page will be the most viewed. Well, this is erroneous thinking for two reasons:

· The number of people trying to use this strategy is so high that it is highly unlikely that your page will come up first or even 100th.

· If someone is looking for pornography, do you think they will spend more than a second on your plumbing page? It's probably a teenage boy that doesn't have enough money to buy your products anyway.

This is not to say that no one has used this strategy effectively in the past. They are the exception, though. Rather than water down your list with words that are unrelated to your content, use words that are relevant. So what keywords work? The ones that people will be using to search products and services, for example: Regarding this http://www.cisspguide.com the keywords would be: direct marketing, search engine optizmiation, home based business opportunity, internet marketing, secrets of the pros, affiliate marketing, email marketing and so on. So the keywords important to http://www.cisspguide.com would be the one just mentioned. Again that is not enough keywords so you can search for more that are related to it. That's worth saying again: The ones that someone who may be interested in your product may use in a search. It used to be up to you to find these words, but that has all changed.

The research firm that provides all the information is called Strategic Information Network. What they are doing is surveying the keywords searched for by people of various demographic groups and selling the info in a subscription format. So, you ask yourself, "What keywords are people searching for financial topics using in the search engines?" And SIN has the answer. You buy a three-month subscription and they feed you the top 100 words and phrases of your desired topic each week.

Another one is the good old Overture. You can find out at www.overture.com. Not only will this drastically improve your search engine strategy, but also it will keep you abreast of trends. It's like having your finger on the pulse of the world. Are your wheels spinning yet? Do the exercise at the end of "Keyword Selection" again, using what you've learned here.

Multiple Pages
I mentioned before that there was another solution to the problem of satisfying the various search engine criteria. You can't satisfy all the people all the time. So what do you do?

If you have the web space to do it, create a separate web page that satisfies the requirements of each of the major search engines. An idea here is to take your "main" or "index" page and create several copies of it. With each copy change the invisible components to satisfy particular search engines. Here it is step by step:

Go to the search engine you are targeting. Do a search for a few of your keywords. Compare the top five documents and see what they have in common. Apply this to one of your extra pages and submit it. Repeat this process for all the major search engines. There are very good programs out there to do the keywords search for you. By doing this you could save hundreds and hundreds of dollars on keywords research. You might want to get a program called Web CEO from http://www.webceo.com. There is also another program called WordTracker you can find more at: http://www.wordtracker.com. Another very good program is called WebPosition Gold and version 3 has just been released. You can find more about it at: http://www.webposition.com.

Remember that some of the pages may have changed since. The spiders indexed them. In this case, the information here will be erroneous. That's why it's important to compare the first five or so documents at least. If you look at just the first, the information may be erroneous. Compare what they all have in common. Apply this to your page and you will have a higher ranking with this search engine.

Another way to multiply yourself even further is to create separate pages for different keyword groups. For instance, if there are several different groups of people that may be interested in your product (MLMers, entrepreneurs, html for beginners, etc.), you may want to create a separate group of pages to address each of these interest groups.

To clarify, if you are trying to attract 3 distinct groups of people and you want to target 6 different search engines, you will create 18 distinct pages. This will improve your relevant visits considerably. (See Tracking Your Progress)

How to Submit
In the old days of the Internet (in Internet terms, this is say, two years ago), people would submit their sites one by one to the various search engines, directories, and link sites.

Later, some smart entrepreneurs developed services for registering sites for webmasters. Let's face it, how many of us have the time to submit our sites one by one. "Someone will do it for me? Great!" The problem here is that the services are too expensive for what they offer. Who has $200 to $1000 dollars to blow on promotion that you're not even sure will work? Then along came the submission programs. These promised to make the whole process much simpler and economical for the Webmaster. The problem was that most of the programs were ineffective or did not submit to many different search engines. But again what human can do programs cannot do it.

Well times have changed much and the search engines are getting smarter and smarter by the day. My suggestion would be that you manually submit your web site. It is if your first or so, you will learn from it. If you really want to submit to many search engines, I think you should refrain from using any programs unless you are really 999% sure. There are other well-known companies who can do that for you. You can consult with us for a special limited time offer, to find out more: support@cisspguide.com and see what we can offer for you. You rather do it by someone who has been in business for more than 6 years and they know what they are doing.

Now, don't get me wrong, any submit program is going to have flaws. Your chances of getting listed in such sites as Yahoo, Google, DMOZ, are pretty slim if you use these programs, but they are great for about all the rest. Why I say that? Because search engine databases are always updated and when the update comes, your software program will be still submitting to the old database making you visible to penalization by any of the search engines.

If you're really serious about promotion, owning one of these is essential although we prefer Traffic Equalizer, Web CEO and WebPosition Gold. They are reasonably priced and very reliable. They have a free 30 days money back guarantee. My personal choice would be no programs or software unless it is the end of the world. But if you want to go for programs, then I suggest you take a look at those three.

Tracking Your Progress
We mentioned before that the best way to find out how each search engine works is to look at the results of searches conducted on each engine. Compare the results and apply your findings to your pages. The problem here is that it can get quite difficult to manage what changes you've made and what effects the changes have had on each of your pages.

One way to track this is to set up a spread sheet with each of your pages and keep notes on what changes you've made, what engines you've submitted them to, and what effects you've noticed with each change. Sound like a pain? Well, it is. First of all you'd have to go to each engine, conduct a search, and go through all of the results to find out where your page stands. Then you would have to make adjustments on your spreadsheet and then change your game plan. Imagine doing this for each of your pages and for all of the major search engines? You would spend all day trying to keep up.

Well, don't worry. There's a program called WebPosition 3 that will do all of this work for you. Not only will this program find the exact position of each of your pages in each of the major engines, but it will give you advice on how to improve your positioning as well. Then it will generate reports and let you compare your position with that of the last report. It even gives a warning if your position drops. What really sets this program apart is the "Mission Creation" feature. It asks you to specify what your specific goals are and helps you achieve them.

For instance, let's say you want to rank in the top ten of Excite search results when someone searches for the phrase "mutual funds". This program will take you step by step through the process making this a reality. This helps you get not only hits, but also relevant hits. You can even download a free trial of this awesome program at the WebPosition download site. http://www.webposition.com.

If you use this program in combination with the two submission programs recommended, you should have no problem getting thousands of relevant hits a day.

If you use this program in combination with the two submission programs recommended, you should have no problem getting thousands of relevant hits a day. Again these resources might be out of date, but still used by most search engines. If you really want to improve your strategies and increase your sales with a guaranteed results, then I think you should look at the following link and find out: http://www.cisspguide.com/11reasons.htm. Still not sure? Not interested in reading? Then why not consult with us for speciali limited time offer. Write to our support team.

Further Study
If you apply everything you've learned here to heart, you will surely improve the traffic at your site drastically. Remember, though that the rules are changing all the time. For the latest version of this tutorial and for great articles on marketing, sales, success, and the net, check out our website again and find out more. Please forward this link to your friends and customers who are in need of free tutorials such as this one.

About the author: Romeo Kane is an information technology, training, marketing and strategic business consultant in Toronto, Ontario Canada. He has a specialised background in network and computer security for over 10 years, working as MCSE, CCNA, MCSD and CISSP. Has written many books and articles on search engine optimization, internet marketing, business stretegic marketing, home based business opportunity, online business, search engine friendly web design, how to increase your sales and e-mail marketing. Just finished writing a new book called "Secrets Of The Pros" you can learn more about it at http://www.cisspguide.com.

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