If you've struggled to get your site listed high in Google, or if you have a new site and want to by-pass the weeks or months it can take to get indexed, you need to pay attention to what Google is all about. This is what Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page (the two founders of Google) wrote about their new search engine while at Stanford University:
"Google is designed to be a scalable search engine. The primary goal is to provide high quality search results over a rapidly growing World Wide Web. Google employs a number of techniques to improve search quality including page rank, anchor text, and proximity information.
"The citation (link) graph of the web is an important resource that has largely gone unused in existing web search engines. We have created maps containing as many as 518 million of these hyperlinks, a significant sample of the total. These maps allow rapid calculation of a web page's "PageRank", an objective measure of its citation importance that corresponds well with people's subjective idea of importance. Because of this correspondence, PageRank is an excellent way to prioritize the results of web keyword searches. For most popular subjects, a simple text matching search that is restricted to web page titles performs admirably when PageRank prioritizes the result.
"Another intuitive justification is that a page can have a high PageRank if there are many pages that point to it, or if there are some pages that point to it and have a high PageRank. Intuitively, pages that are well cited from many places around the web are worth looking at. Also, pages that have perhaps only one citation from something like the Yahoo! homepage are also generally worth looking at. If a page was not high quality, or was a broken link, it is quite likely that Yahoo's homepage would not link to it. PageRank handles both these cases and everything in between by recursively propagating weights through the link structure of the web.
"Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality." (Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine)
And this is what Google currently says about page ranking:
"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
"Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."
So if you have a new website, the fastest and easiest way for it to get in all the major search engine indexes is to have a few strong text links from relevant websites. This can get your site listed in days rather than weeks or months because as the search engines spider websites with high page rankings, they'll also follow the link to your site and spider your content. And since high-ranking websites often get spidered many times a day, your site will also be visited and indexed.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Using RSS to Increase Your PageRank.
There are millions of dollars and multiple hours spent every day trying to increase website traffic, by both ethical and unethical means. There is so much demand for traffic solutions that people will go to any lengths to get ranked higher in the search engines. But did you know that you could increase your traffic by about 20% right now, with virtually no effort?
Most times when you hear something like this I suggest that you turn tail and run as it will normally lead to your site’s ranking demise. This particular method of boosting traffic, however, is not a scam; it’s not an unethical ploy; it is a genuine method of increasing traffic via a future internet standard. The reason that you can increase your traffic so vastly is because you are getting in on the ground floor of a new technology which will revolutionize the internet and the way that traffic is distributed.
To understand what we’re about to tell you, you need to understand what an RSS feed is. Put simply, it’s a standard format for sharing your content instantly with users and other websites. People can quickly get access to ‘teasers’ for your latest newsletters, articles, blogs, content and more, and click through to see the full version. This method of distributing your information is very helpful because it basically generates dynamic newsletters without spamming and without causing your visitor any grief at all. In fact, many users find RSS to be their preferred way to hear about updates as RSS is so fast, user-friendly, and (most importantly) dynamic.
RSS feeds are often used by news sites or blogs, as the content changes often enough to make it worth while. By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can improve your site's web content without having to write it on your own – if someone offers you an RSS feed of their site, you can add it to your site easily. This provides you with a good content base which will keep visitors coming back. The more information that people associate your site with the more important they consider your site. The more important they consider your site, the more important search engines will consider your site. Providing RSS yourself will get lots of people to link to you and so potentially improve your search engine rankings. Why?
1. RSS feeds can provide good, relevant content for your website – there are plenty of RSS publishers with themed content for you to choose from. These highly-targeted feeds will often contain your keywords, and so increase the keyword relevancy of your website. This helps even more than you may think as the key words will be within link or “anchor” tags. Search engines value anchor tags almost as much (if not more than) header tags (h1-h6).
2. RSS feeds can provide new, fresh content. When new content is added to them, the old content drops off, making sure that your website’s content doesn’t go stale. Most of your visitors will not visit your site if they find that there is nothing new between the first and second time that they visit it. If you want to keep your visitors where they belong, you have to have a good selection of content that is updated on a regular basis.
3. RSS feeds can get search engines to crawl your site more frequently – daily in some cases. This helps your site to rank higher in the search engines, and gives you an advantage over your competition. Your RSS feed can do your SEO work for you.
RSS feeds can be great for getting your newsletter, articles, or blog onto other people's sites, and that’s very powerful, as long as you make sure that your RSS feed is adding more to your business than it takes. In some situations, you might find that including RSS on your page makes visitors click away from your site, as they find that site’s content more interesting than you – and people who click on RSS links might be less likely to click on ads. Use caution with RSS feeds, or you could be in for a shock.
Most times when you hear something like this I suggest that you turn tail and run as it will normally lead to your site’s ranking demise. This particular method of boosting traffic, however, is not a scam; it’s not an unethical ploy; it is a genuine method of increasing traffic via a future internet standard. The reason that you can increase your traffic so vastly is because you are getting in on the ground floor of a new technology which will revolutionize the internet and the way that traffic is distributed.
To understand what we’re about to tell you, you need to understand what an RSS feed is. Put simply, it’s a standard format for sharing your content instantly with users and other websites. People can quickly get access to ‘teasers’ for your latest newsletters, articles, blogs, content and more, and click through to see the full version. This method of distributing your information is very helpful because it basically generates dynamic newsletters without spamming and without causing your visitor any grief at all. In fact, many users find RSS to be their preferred way to hear about updates as RSS is so fast, user-friendly, and (most importantly) dynamic.
RSS feeds are often used by news sites or blogs, as the content changes often enough to make it worth while. By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can improve your site's web content without having to write it on your own – if someone offers you an RSS feed of their site, you can add it to your site easily. This provides you with a good content base which will keep visitors coming back. The more information that people associate your site with the more important they consider your site. The more important they consider your site, the more important search engines will consider your site. Providing RSS yourself will get lots of people to link to you and so potentially improve your search engine rankings. Why?
1. RSS feeds can provide good, relevant content for your website – there are plenty of RSS publishers with themed content for you to choose from. These highly-targeted feeds will often contain your keywords, and so increase the keyword relevancy of your website. This helps even more than you may think as the key words will be within link or “anchor” tags. Search engines value anchor tags almost as much (if not more than) header tags (h1-h6).
2. RSS feeds can provide new, fresh content. When new content is added to them, the old content drops off, making sure that your website’s content doesn’t go stale. Most of your visitors will not visit your site if they find that there is nothing new between the first and second time that they visit it. If you want to keep your visitors where they belong, you have to have a good selection of content that is updated on a regular basis.
3. RSS feeds can get search engines to crawl your site more frequently – daily in some cases. This helps your site to rank higher in the search engines, and gives you an advantage over your competition. Your RSS feed can do your SEO work for you.
RSS feeds can be great for getting your newsletter, articles, or blog onto other people's sites, and that’s very powerful, as long as you make sure that your RSS feed is adding more to your business than it takes. In some situations, you might find that including RSS on your page makes visitors click away from your site, as they find that site’s content more interesting than you – and people who click on RSS links might be less likely to click on ads. Use caution with RSS feeds, or you could be in for a shock.
Meta Optimizing
There is an interesting thread at OutFront that discusses the meta description tag and what limit there is on length. When it comes to optimizing your site for search engines, how important are meta tags? In the view of many experts, search engines (especially Google) have learned to minimize the importance of meta tags as being little more than internal spam.
An exception would be the description meta tag which is your best opportunity to sum up what your site is about in a few, carefully picked, descriptive words. The description will be picked up by search engines, so what you say is important. Not only that, but how fast you say it can be important. Too long a description may look like “stuffing” and will be truncated anyway.
“Most search engines will truncate the description tag displaying no more than 200 characters so there is likely no reason to go higher. Also, meta data used to be a place where many people would stuff keywords (now, it’s content stuffing). You *may* look like your keyword stuffing if you have too much information in the meta description.
To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results.”
An exception would be the description meta tag which is your best opportunity to sum up what your site is about in a few, carefully picked, descriptive words. The description will be picked up by search engines, so what you say is important. Not only that, but how fast you say it can be important. Too long a description may look like “stuffing” and will be truncated anyway.
“Most search engines will truncate the description tag displaying no more than 200 characters so there is likely no reason to go higher. Also, meta data used to be a place where many people would stuff keywords (now, it’s content stuffing). You *may* look like your keyword stuffing if you have too much information in the meta description.
To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results.”
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Reciprocal Links to Boost Link Popularity ?
Link popularity means the number of incoming links pointing to your website. This is one of the criterical factor that rank the search results. If you are have link on website with high PageRank (PR4+), you will benefit from it and your ranking will boost. Im recently looking at ways to increase my link popularity.
It gives a clear definition for different link terms. Let me summaries a bit here
- reciprocal links are link exchange between 2 sites. Site A have link to Site B and vice versa
- one way link are one way, Site A links to Site B, but Site B has no link to Site A
- trianglar links are one way link among 3 sites
It is not advisable to have too many reciprocal links. Yes it can be nature to have reciprocal links, but too much simply means you are suspected to do it on purpose (to boost link popularity)
On the other hand, outgoing links to good and relevant sites can also be benefitical to your website. So, dont bother to put more relevant links with great contents in your pages.
As a conclusion after the link popularity studies, here's my view on it:
1. more links to relevent sites with rich content, and good PageRank.
2. a little link exchange is acceptable, but dont make it over half of your links
3. limit the max number of links to 80 in your link page. Split it if too many.
4. a better appoarch to gain link popularity is by writing ezine articles
It gives a clear definition for different link terms. Let me summaries a bit here
- reciprocal links are link exchange between 2 sites. Site A have link to Site B and vice versa
- one way link are one way, Site A links to Site B, but Site B has no link to Site A
- trianglar links are one way link among 3 sites
It is not advisable to have too many reciprocal links. Yes it can be nature to have reciprocal links, but too much simply means you are suspected to do it on purpose (to boost link popularity)
On the other hand, outgoing links to good and relevant sites can also be benefitical to your website. So, dont bother to put more relevant links with great contents in your pages.
As a conclusion after the link popularity studies, here's my view on it:
1. more links to relevent sites with rich content, and good PageRank.
2. a little link exchange is acceptable, but dont make it over half of your links
3. limit the max number of links to 80 in your link page. Split it if too many.
4. a better appoarch to gain link popularity is by writing ezine articles
Thursday, May 11, 2006
What is link popularity and how exactly does it work?
The number of websites that link to your website is one of the factors that help search engines determine your relevancy for a search term. Link Building, Link popularity and gaining new links from outside websites to your website have proven to be a popular concept for people seeking to improve their search engine rankings.
What is link popularity and how exactly does it work? Search engines don't just look at the content of your website to determine if you are a match for a search. They also look at the number of outside websites that can validate, by linking, that you are a good match.
Search engines have also begun to rank the importance of the sites that link to you. This means if the New York Times links to your site, your credibility is higher than if Joe's Online Newspaper provides a link to your website. Search engines also consider the text contained in the link that is pointing to your website. If the text in the links contains keywords you are trying to compete for, the search engines consider your site to have even greater credibility.
Since link popularity has become a factor that people feel like they have some influence over in determining their search engine positioning, many solutions have been proposed for growing your online link popularity. One of the more popular ways is also one of the least effective.
Several software programs have been written that help you create lists of websites in your space that might be willing to link to you. These programs also help you gather the email addresses for these sites and even help you craft an email requesting that the site add a link to yours.
The concept sounds good but the results are often mixed. If you use one of these tools and simply follow the templates they give you, your email will read like a spam message that won't be taken seriously.
The best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features that provide real value to your audience. As people discover your website and realize its benefits, the likelihood of them linking to your website naturally increases.
There are several critical targets if you want to build up your link popularity without appearing to be a spammer. The first is good links from Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. Both of these sites are human based directories that have a lot of influence over search results. If your site is listed in the correct category and has a good description, links from these two websites are seen as validating you are the real thing.
The second place it's important to have a link from is topic specific or niche directories. These are websites that are dedicated to news and information that is an exact match for what you provide online. If you have a website that deals with tractor parts, being listed on sites that focus on tractors is very important. In the case where a niche website doesn't know about your website, it's okay to ask them to link to your website. But your message should be personalized to them and also tell them the benefit or feature their users will get from linking to you.
Another part of the web that helps build your link popularity is resource sites. Resource sites are lists of links that people put up on their own. These pages are often spread amongst friends and readers who find good information available from the resource. In order to reach this audience, a good PR campaign and press releases can ensure that these individuals know you exist and have a link to your website that they can easily include.
One of the most overlooked spots for building link popularity is links from partners and vendors for your business. Because you already have a business relationship with these companies or individuals, you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their website. These websites help validate your place online and also establish you within a community of websites online. If you are visible to the community, you are more visible to the search engines.
Link popularity also starts at home. You must make sure your link architecture is solid and easily followed by search engines. That's the first way that search engines see you. It's also the way that visitors find information within your website. The easier you make it on your audience to find good information, the more likely they are to link to it.
The final way you can work to increase your link popularity is to participate in newsletters and online forums that relate to your website. You don't want to just jump in and give a plug for your URL. You must participate in the discussion as an expert or authority who gives good advice. When you sign your name at the bottom of your posting, be sure to include a signature that includes a link to your website. If these forums and newsletters are archived and remain online, search engines continue to see them and the links they contain. If your website doesn't have a lot of content and you are wondering how you can build your link popularity you should think about building a tool or feature on your website that will be valuable to your online audience. Marketleap's Search Engine Marketing tools are a good example of a feature built to generate link popularity.
Marketleap's free tools provide unique data for search engine marketers that they can't find other places. We've also made it possible for people to place our tools on their sites easily by cutting and pasting a piece of HTML code into their web page. Because the tools are valuable to our community, many websites have linked to the tools or added the tool to their own website. Consequently, if you search for "link popularity" at Google, Marketleap will usually appear in the top 3 results on the first page. Link popularity will continue to be an essential factor in successful search engine marketing initiatives for the foreseeable future. Links are a helpful tool for search engines trying to wade through billions of documents and find ones that are relevant to their users.
What is link popularity and how exactly does it work? Search engines don't just look at the content of your website to determine if you are a match for a search. They also look at the number of outside websites that can validate, by linking, that you are a good match.
Search engines have also begun to rank the importance of the sites that link to you. This means if the New York Times links to your site, your credibility is higher than if Joe's Online Newspaper provides a link to your website. Search engines also consider the text contained in the link that is pointing to your website. If the text in the links contains keywords you are trying to compete for, the search engines consider your site to have even greater credibility.
Since link popularity has become a factor that people feel like they have some influence over in determining their search engine positioning, many solutions have been proposed for growing your online link popularity. One of the more popular ways is also one of the least effective.
Several software programs have been written that help you create lists of websites in your space that might be willing to link to you. These programs also help you gather the email addresses for these sites and even help you craft an email requesting that the site add a link to yours.
The concept sounds good but the results are often mixed. If you use one of these tools and simply follow the templates they give you, your email will read like a spam message that won't be taken seriously.
The best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features that provide real value to your audience. As people discover your website and realize its benefits, the likelihood of them linking to your website naturally increases.
There are several critical targets if you want to build up your link popularity without appearing to be a spammer. The first is good links from Yahoo and the Open Directory Project. Both of these sites are human based directories that have a lot of influence over search results. If your site is listed in the correct category and has a good description, links from these two websites are seen as validating you are the real thing.
The second place it's important to have a link from is topic specific or niche directories. These are websites that are dedicated to news and information that is an exact match for what you provide online. If you have a website that deals with tractor parts, being listed on sites that focus on tractors is very important. In the case where a niche website doesn't know about your website, it's okay to ask them to link to your website. But your message should be personalized to them and also tell them the benefit or feature their users will get from linking to you.
Another part of the web that helps build your link popularity is resource sites. Resource sites are lists of links that people put up on their own. These pages are often spread amongst friends and readers who find good information available from the resource. In order to reach this audience, a good PR campaign and press releases can ensure that these individuals know you exist and have a link to your website that they can easily include.
One of the most overlooked spots for building link popularity is links from partners and vendors for your business. Because you already have a business relationship with these companies or individuals, you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their website. These websites help validate your place online and also establish you within a community of websites online. If you are visible to the community, you are more visible to the search engines.
Link popularity also starts at home. You must make sure your link architecture is solid and easily followed by search engines. That's the first way that search engines see you. It's also the way that visitors find information within your website. The easier you make it on your audience to find good information, the more likely they are to link to it.
The final way you can work to increase your link popularity is to participate in newsletters and online forums that relate to your website. You don't want to just jump in and give a plug for your URL. You must participate in the discussion as an expert or authority who gives good advice. When you sign your name at the bottom of your posting, be sure to include a signature that includes a link to your website. If these forums and newsletters are archived and remain online, search engines continue to see them and the links they contain. If your website doesn't have a lot of content and you are wondering how you can build your link popularity you should think about building a tool or feature on your website that will be valuable to your online audience. Marketleap's Search Engine Marketing tools are a good example of a feature built to generate link popularity.
Marketleap's free tools provide unique data for search engine marketers that they can't find other places. We've also made it possible for people to place our tools on their sites easily by cutting and pasting a piece of HTML code into their web page. Because the tools are valuable to our community, many websites have linked to the tools or added the tool to their own website. Consequently, if you search for "link popularity" at Google, Marketleap will usually appear in the top 3 results on the first page. Link popularity will continue to be an essential factor in successful search engine marketing initiatives for the foreseeable future. Links are a helpful tool for search engines trying to wade through billions of documents and find ones that are relevant to their users.
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