Everyone wants to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website. SEO professionals recommend...
seo, search engines, search engine optimization, link building, google, yahoo, msn, click here, basics,
There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website.
The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.
For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.
How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.
When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.
On-Site Search Optimization Challenges
The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.
* You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;
* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;
* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and
* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.
A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.
Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.
I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website. He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics
According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.
Think about how magazines are constructed:
The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.
On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.
Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.
Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.
By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.
In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.
Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics
Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.
I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.
Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content
To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".
Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:
* Google's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).
* Yahoo's #2 result - (Google PageRank 10). Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).
* MSN's #1 result - (Google PageRank 8). Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).
On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.
On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.
On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?
What Do These Numbers Mean?
Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.
Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.
The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings
Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.
I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.
Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.
According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!
Magic Fairy Dust
My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.
Okay, I admit it.
I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.
If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.
Kamis, 06 Oktober 2011
Link Popularity and PageRank (PR) misconceptions and facts
In this article I'll try to demystify Link Popularity and PageRank, or PR, clarify some common misconceptions and tell you how things work, in plain English, with facts and examples.
seo,pr,pagerank,page rank,rank,link popularity,link,popularity,google,search engine,search results,ranking,
In this article I'll try to demystify Link Popularity and PageRank, or PR, clarify some common misconceptions and tell you how things work, in plain English, with facts and examples.
Link Popularity is based on the premise that people link to good sites, and if a lot of people link to your site, then it must be good. In plain English, if other sites are linking to your site, your site is popular, therefore it is useful and deserves a boost in rankings, so people can find it faster and easier.
Link Popularity is not specific to Google only, but was adopted by the vast majority of Search Engines.
Link Popularity is only one of the many factors (good content, number of pages, text, anchors, internal links, static URLs, keywords, meta tags, and many, many others) that are used in calculating your place in a search result page (ultimately, this is what all of it is about - how findable you are in a search).
PageRank (PR) is specific to Google and is a trademarked proprietary algorithm. There are many variables in the formulas used by Google, but PageRank is primarily affected by the number of links pointing to the page, the number of internal links pointing to the page within the site and the number of pages in the site.
PageRank focuses strictly on the quantity of links and is directly influenced by the PageRank of the pages that are linked.
In Google, Link Popularity puts more emphasis on the quality of links (ex. links from sites related to yours by topic or by industry rank much higher than links from non-related sites).
PageRank - as the name suggests - is specific to a web page, not to a web site. Every page on your site has a PageRank and every one is different, based mostly on your linking system. Generally - but not always - the goal is to achieve maximum PageRank on your main page, the one people hit when first entering your site.
You can check the PR of a page by installing the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer (the "official" way), a PR checker extension in Firefox, or by using one of the many online utilities, such as the one at http://www.bsleek.com/tools/link_popularity.php (which also checks Link Popularity and presence in DMOZ).
In Google only, PageRank is one of the factors that influence Link Popularity.
PageRank (PR), developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University is considered to be the heart of Google's software. PageRank solves an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives and by the PR of the page which casts the vote.
There are two types of incoming links that can effectively contribute to increasing your Link Popularity:
1. Links from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases you do. In other words, if a site that can be found in search engines by using a search phrase like "corporate cd-rom presentations" links to your site, and your site actually specializes in designing interactive media, like CDs or DVDs, then that link will help your Link Popularity. But if your site is about selling onions, then the mentioned link will be useless.
2. Links from relevant categories in major directories industry-specific directories and portals. The most important major directory is DMOZ (who feeds data to many others) and is the toughest to get in. Submission is free and there are actually people reviewing your site. The waiting times are in the months order, so my advice is submit and forget. The industry-specific directories are very important. For example, if you make interactive media, and list your site in a directory dedicated to graphic design or media under the appropriate category, then search engines like Google will pick that up as an incoming link and will increase your Link Popularity. Listing your site in such a directory is very useful to your potential visitors, and this is what Google is trying to emulate with its software. Remember, with Google and many others, there are no humans reviewing your pages, but software acting under very specific and strict rules (algorithms).
Both types of links I described above can be unilateral or reciprocal ("you link to me and I link to you").
Reciprocal links are subject of controversy and misconception today. Many people think that exchanging links with sites is the easiest way to get them, new people learning about link popularity are under the mistaken belief that they must have links that are reciprocated on their site. Still many others are saying that reciprocal links are dead and that not only you won't gain any benefit from them, but your PR (Page Rank) will decrease (your page will "leak PR", as it is said in the SEO circles).
Both camps are not entirely correct. You certainly don't need to get reciprocal links, but you can if you want to. Remember, it is links pointing to your site that are the helpful ones. Links pointing from your site to other sites are wonderful to have because they help your visitors find related stuff, but if your site doesn't lend itself to linking to other sites, then by all means, don't do it. You need to do what's right for your company or hobby and your site visitors, first and foremost.
Links from sites that have nothing to do with yours will definitely not help you gain Link Popularity, but might produce a temporary boost in PR (PageRank).
If the PR (PageRank) boost is only temporary, why bother?
You should try to boost your PR (PageRank) even if temporary, because when Google sends Googlebot, its indexing robot, to spider your website, the bot is instructed not to crawl your site too deep unless it has a reasonable amount of PR (PageRank). But in order to increase your overall PR (PageRank) and, in order to have all your keywords from all your pages available for searches, you need Google to look at all of your pages, because the number of pages and the internal links affect PR (PageRank). But Google will not see your internal links and your keywords if only few pages are indexed, so you see, it's catch 22 and the best way to win this is to start working on your incoming links as early in the game as possible.
To see which pages from your website are actually indexed by the search engines, you can use the following search with the major three (Google, MSN and Yahoo!): site:www.yourdomain.com, where www.yourdomain.com is the full address of your site. There is no space between site: and the address, otherwise you are actually searching for the words site: and www.yourdomain.com.
To get a glimpse of your site's Link Popularity, use the following search with Google and MSN: link:www.yourdomain.com. Again, there is no space between link: and the address. There is a common misconception regarding this. People think that the correct format is with the space, as it might produce a lot more results. It is incorrect, as the format with the space merely looks for www.yourdomain.com and the word link:, but will not actually show you who really links to you. For Yahoo!, you'll have to use the full URL, including http://.
Please note that Google might not display all the links to your site that are stored into its database. Don't panic. It has been reported that this is reminiscence from Google's paranoia days, when the search engine's execs did not want competitors to figure out the way they track Link Popularity.
As a word of caution, please do not waste your money on submitting your sites to "hundreds of FFA sites". Free-For-All sites are not considered quality links today. This approach might have worked years ago, but search engines are constantly trying to stop any activity they consider as spamming, designed to artificially inflate numbers. This is actually a great thing, as it keeps the internet a fair and happy place.
Two more words of caution:
1. If you read SEO (Search Engine Optimization) related articles, please make sure you read stuff as recent as possible, as things change.
2. Major search engines, especially Google, keep their algorithms (rules) in deep secret. Therefore, you'll probably wonder why you are reading so many different opinions, sometimes conflicting. The answer is simple, because little is actually known to the public about the deep inner workings of a search engine.
In general, there's no need for the average site to obsess over link popularity. Contrary to popular belief, link popularity constitutes only a portion of most search engines' ranking algorithms. Arguably, Google places more emphasis than most other engines on incoming links at this point in time. How much these actually boost a site's ranking is debatable and truly depends on the site. It also depends on the words that are placed in the anchor text (the clickable portion of a text link). From my personal experience, just a few highly relevant links with strong anchor text can go a long way towards link popularity for many sites.
seo,pr,pagerank,page rank,rank,link popularity,link,popularity,google,search engine,search results,ranking,
In this article I'll try to demystify Link Popularity and PageRank, or PR, clarify some common misconceptions and tell you how things work, in plain English, with facts and examples.
Link Popularity is based on the premise that people link to good sites, and if a lot of people link to your site, then it must be good. In plain English, if other sites are linking to your site, your site is popular, therefore it is useful and deserves a boost in rankings, so people can find it faster and easier.
Link Popularity is not specific to Google only, but was adopted by the vast majority of Search Engines.
Link Popularity is only one of the many factors (good content, number of pages, text, anchors, internal links, static URLs, keywords, meta tags, and many, many others) that are used in calculating your place in a search result page (ultimately, this is what all of it is about - how findable you are in a search).
PageRank (PR) is specific to Google and is a trademarked proprietary algorithm. There are many variables in the formulas used by Google, but PageRank is primarily affected by the number of links pointing to the page, the number of internal links pointing to the page within the site and the number of pages in the site.
PageRank focuses strictly on the quantity of links and is directly influenced by the PageRank of the pages that are linked.
In Google, Link Popularity puts more emphasis on the quality of links (ex. links from sites related to yours by topic or by industry rank much higher than links from non-related sites).
PageRank - as the name suggests - is specific to a web page, not to a web site. Every page on your site has a PageRank and every one is different, based mostly on your linking system. Generally - but not always - the goal is to achieve maximum PageRank on your main page, the one people hit when first entering your site.
You can check the PR of a page by installing the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer (the "official" way), a PR checker extension in Firefox, or by using one of the many online utilities, such as the one at http://www.bsleek.com/tools/link_popularity.php (which also checks Link Popularity and presence in DMOZ).
In Google only, PageRank is one of the factors that influence Link Popularity.
PageRank (PR), developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University is considered to be the heart of Google's software. PageRank solves an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives and by the PR of the page which casts the vote.
There are two types of incoming links that can effectively contribute to increasing your Link Popularity:
1. Links from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases you do. In other words, if a site that can be found in search engines by using a search phrase like "corporate cd-rom presentations" links to your site, and your site actually specializes in designing interactive media, like CDs or DVDs, then that link will help your Link Popularity. But if your site is about selling onions, then the mentioned link will be useless.
2. Links from relevant categories in major directories industry-specific directories and portals. The most important major directory is DMOZ (who feeds data to many others) and is the toughest to get in. Submission is free and there are actually people reviewing your site. The waiting times are in the months order, so my advice is submit and forget. The industry-specific directories are very important. For example, if you make interactive media, and list your site in a directory dedicated to graphic design or media under the appropriate category, then search engines like Google will pick that up as an incoming link and will increase your Link Popularity. Listing your site in such a directory is very useful to your potential visitors, and this is what Google is trying to emulate with its software. Remember, with Google and many others, there are no humans reviewing your pages, but software acting under very specific and strict rules (algorithms).
Both types of links I described above can be unilateral or reciprocal ("you link to me and I link to you").
Reciprocal links are subject of controversy and misconception today. Many people think that exchanging links with sites is the easiest way to get them, new people learning about link popularity are under the mistaken belief that they must have links that are reciprocated on their site. Still many others are saying that reciprocal links are dead and that not only you won't gain any benefit from them, but your PR (Page Rank) will decrease (your page will "leak PR", as it is said in the SEO circles).
Both camps are not entirely correct. You certainly don't need to get reciprocal links, but you can if you want to. Remember, it is links pointing to your site that are the helpful ones. Links pointing from your site to other sites are wonderful to have because they help your visitors find related stuff, but if your site doesn't lend itself to linking to other sites, then by all means, don't do it. You need to do what's right for your company or hobby and your site visitors, first and foremost.
Links from sites that have nothing to do with yours will definitely not help you gain Link Popularity, but might produce a temporary boost in PR (PageRank).
If the PR (PageRank) boost is only temporary, why bother?
You should try to boost your PR (PageRank) even if temporary, because when Google sends Googlebot, its indexing robot, to spider your website, the bot is instructed not to crawl your site too deep unless it has a reasonable amount of PR (PageRank). But in order to increase your overall PR (PageRank) and, in order to have all your keywords from all your pages available for searches, you need Google to look at all of your pages, because the number of pages and the internal links affect PR (PageRank). But Google will not see your internal links and your keywords if only few pages are indexed, so you see, it's catch 22 and the best way to win this is to start working on your incoming links as early in the game as possible.
To see which pages from your website are actually indexed by the search engines, you can use the following search with the major three (Google, MSN and Yahoo!): site:www.yourdomain.com, where www.yourdomain.com is the full address of your site. There is no space between site: and the address, otherwise you are actually searching for the words site: and www.yourdomain.com.
To get a glimpse of your site's Link Popularity, use the following search with Google and MSN: link:www.yourdomain.com. Again, there is no space between link: and the address. There is a common misconception regarding this. People think that the correct format is with the space, as it might produce a lot more results. It is incorrect, as the format with the space merely looks for www.yourdomain.com and the word link:, but will not actually show you who really links to you. For Yahoo!, you'll have to use the full URL, including http://.
Please note that Google might not display all the links to your site that are stored into its database. Don't panic. It has been reported that this is reminiscence from Google's paranoia days, when the search engine's execs did not want competitors to figure out the way they track Link Popularity.
As a word of caution, please do not waste your money on submitting your sites to "hundreds of FFA sites". Free-For-All sites are not considered quality links today. This approach might have worked years ago, but search engines are constantly trying to stop any activity they consider as spamming, designed to artificially inflate numbers. This is actually a great thing, as it keeps the internet a fair and happy place.
Two more words of caution:
1. If you read SEO (Search Engine Optimization) related articles, please make sure you read stuff as recent as possible, as things change.
2. Major search engines, especially Google, keep their algorithms (rules) in deep secret. Therefore, you'll probably wonder why you are reading so many different opinions, sometimes conflicting. The answer is simple, because little is actually known to the public about the deep inner workings of a search engine.
In general, there's no need for the average site to obsess over link popularity. Contrary to popular belief, link popularity constitutes only a portion of most search engines' ranking algorithms. Arguably, Google places more emphasis than most other engines on incoming links at this point in time. How much these actually boost a site's ranking is debatable and truly depends on the site. It also depends on the words that are placed in the anchor text (the clickable portion of a text link). From my personal experience, just a few highly relevant links with strong anchor text can go a long way towards link popularity for many sites.
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