Preface: As
I've mentioned many times, I'm not a fanatic when it comes to search engine ranking. I
have great link popularity across the web,
which gets me great ranking without having to work too hard at it.
However, some webmasters do want to spend some
time improving their search engine ranking. And it is time well spent as long as you
continue using other marketing strategies too.
So I've brought in one of the web's most
respected search engine positioning specialist to tell you how it's done. This special
tutorial for Make A Living Online members reveals how the major search engines rank sites
and how to use this information to get better ranking for your website.
This will help many web business owners improve
their ranking substantially. And for those of you who don't have time to deal with all
this technical stuff, you can simply use my basic
strategy then submit your site to the
places I currently recommend.
Jim Daniels
How Search Engines Rank Sites
By Sumantra Roy
There are two kinds of search engines - the spider based engines and the directory based
engines. A spider based engine (like AltaVista) employs a computer robot which goes to
different web sites and adds the content present in the web sites to its database and
ranks the web sites based on this content.
However, the directory based engines (like
Netscape), instead of employing a computer robot, take their results from the list of
sites present in a human edited directory. Based on this background, let's look at the
factors that determines the ranking of web sites in the major search engines on the
Internet.
AltaVista: In order to get a good ranking
for a particular page in AltaVista, you need to ensure that your target keyword is present
as close as possible to the beginning of the Title tag of the page and also, that you
place the keyword at least once in the beginning of the body content of the page. You
should also repeat the keyword a few times throughout the rest of the page. There is no
hard and fast rule regarding the number of times that you should repeat the keyword. The
main thing that you need to remember is that you should not repeat the keyword randomly,
and that a human visitor to your site should not perceive that you have deliberately
repeated a keyword - i.e. the repetition should not affect the natural flow of the text.
AltaVista also gives importance to the theme of a site - i.e. instead of only looking at
the content of individual pages, it looks at the content of all the pages present in that
site. Hence, you should also repeat your target keywords a few times in all the pages in
your site, including your home page.
Furthermore, AltaVista also uses a concept called link popularity (i.e. the number of
sites which link to your site, and the quality of the sites which link to your site) to
determine a site's ranking. For more information on how to improve the link popularity of
your site, have a look at my article on this topic.
Lastly, your site's ranking in AltaVista will improve if it is listed in the Looksmart
directory.
AOL: AOL is essentially a directory based
engine. Its results are displayed in two sections - a Web Sites section (which is
displayed by default) and a Web Pages section. The results present in the Web Sites
section are taken from the Open Directory. The results present in the Web Pages section
are taken from Inktomi. Since the Web Sites section is displayed by default, it is vitally
important that you get an optimum listing in the Open Directory. In order to see how you
can do that, see my article on this topic here.
Direct Hit: Direct Hit uses a concept called
click-popularity to rank web sites. This means that when a user searches for something in
Direct Hit, it tries to find out which sites satisfied the user's needs. It does this by
keeping track of two things: a) which sites the user clicked on among the sites displayed
in the results and b) how much time the user spent in those sites. The logic behind this
is that if an user clicked on a particular site and spent a lot of time in that site, that
site must have satisfied the user's needs and hence, must be relevant to that particular
keyword. In this case, the site's click popularity for that keyword improves and so does
its ranking for that keyword. But, if a user did not go to a particular site, or returned
to Direct Hit soon after going to that site, that site must not be providing relevant
information for that particular keyword. In this case, the site's click popularity for
that keyword declines and so does its ranking for that keyword.
So, how do you ensure that your site's click popularity is high? There are only two ways
of improving the click popularity of your site - the Title tag and Meta Description tag of
each of the pages in your site need to be attractive to human visitors and you need to
build an excellent web site with great content which satisfies your visitor's needs so
that they stay longer in your site.
Excite: The parameters that Excite uses to
rank sites is similar to the ones that AltaVista uses. However, the relative weightage
that Excite gives to these factors differs from AltaVista.
Google: The parameters that Google uses to
rank sites is similar to the ones that AltaVista uses, except that Google does not give
any importance to a site being listed in Looksmart, but gives a lot of importance to sites
being listed in the Open Directory. Also, the relative weightage that Google gives to the
common factors differs from AltaVista. In particular, Google gives a lot of emphasis on a
site's link popularity. For more information on how you can get listed in the Open
Directory, have a look at my article on this topic. For more information on how to
improve the link popularity of your site, here's
an article on that.
HotBot: The top few results in HotBot are
taken from Direct Hit. The results after that are taken from Inktomi. Hence, in order to
get a high ranking in HotBot, you need to get a high ranking in Direct Hit.
IWon: IWon takes its results from Inktomi.
The parameters that Inktomi uses to rank sites is similar to the ones that AltaVista uses,
except that Inktomi does not give any importance to a site being listed in Looksmart.
Also, the relative weightage that Inktomi gives to the common factors differs from
AltaVista.
Lycos: The top results in Lycos are taken
from Direct Hit. The next few results are taken from the Open Directory. After that, Lycos
takes its results from Fast. Hence, in order to get a good ranking in Lycos, you should
first try to get a good ranking in Direct Hit. You should also try to get listed in the
Open Directory. For more information on how you can get listed in the Open Directory, have
a look at my article on this topic.
MSN: The top results in MSN are taken from
Looksmart. The results after that are taken from Inktomi. Hence, in order to get a good
ranking in MSN, you need to get listed in Looksmart.
Netscape: The top results in Netscape are
from the Open Directory. The results after that are taken from Google. Hence, in order to
get a good ranking in Netscape, you need to get listed in the Open Directory.
Yahoo!: Technically, Yahoo! is not a search
engine - it is a directory. Because of the huge volume of traffic that Yahoo! gets, it is
vitally important that you get a good ranking when someone searches for the keywords which
are applicable for your site in Yahoo!. In order to see how you can get an optimum listing
in Yahoo!, see this tutorial.
---
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected and recognized search
engine positioning specialists on the Internet. For more articles on search engine
placement, subscribe to his 1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a blank email here or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com |
