Search engines use complex and proprietary algorithms to rank Web pages according to a variety of factors. The search engine companies keep their algorithms very secret for competitive reasons and to prevent people from making pages that spam them.

By studying a successfully ranked site, it is possible to come very close to knowing how a particular search engine ranks pages and thus be able to make pages that rank extremely well. But, it is not possible to know with 100% accuracy the exact formula used by a search engine. Plus, there are other factors that cause a particular page to be ranked high for the chosen keyword.

You need to pay attention to your competitors' sites that are ranking high in the search engine to evaluate how they are getting the high ranking

Next, you'll want to create Web pages from the beginning with an eye to how search engines will generally index sites.

Finally, you can use existing resources to make pages that will score in the top 30 results. These pages are created specifically to rank high in search engine results and are commonly known as doorway pages, gateway, entry, splash, or bridge pages).

What factors go into the calculation?

Briefly and simply put, ranking criteria varies from search engine to search engine. Most calculate page rankings based on these elements:

• Prominence of the keyword searched in the viewable text
• Frequency of the keyword searched in the viewable text
• Site popularity; how many other sites link to a particular page
• "Weight" of the keywords: the % of keywords to the total # of words
• Proximity of keywords to each other
• Keyword placement
• Prominence, frequency, and weight of keywords in the <TITLE> tag(s)
• Prominence, frequency, and weight of keywords in the <META NAME="DESCRIPTION">
• Prominence, frequency, and weight of keywords in the <META NAME="KEYWORD">
• Keywords in the first full sentence of the page with more weight to a <H1> tag
• Keywords in the <A HREF="http://yourcompany.com/page.htm"></A> link tags
• Keywords in ALT tags
• Keywords in <!-- > comment tags
• Keywords contained in the <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="HIDDEN" VALUE="include list of keywords here"> the hidden form tag
• Keywords contained in the URL or site address, e.g., http://www.keyword.com/keyword.htm
• Grammatical correctness and natural-sounding word patterns
• Absence of formatting, repetition, and word arrangement that could be considered as spam.

Each engine has lower and upper limits or thresholds for each variable and criteria. This protects it against spammers, and that is why simply repeating keywords will not work.

Other factors than influence ranking:

• Search engines have different agreements with portals and other programs that affect your ranking. And, some Web sites use techniques that are not acceptable to search engines but still get a higher ranking for their sites
• GoTo and a few others place sites high who are paying for the top slots
• Some search engines rank sites that are inDirectory higher
• Serving a special page to the engine and a separate page to the viewers, which is another way of spaming a search engine

Doorways

Organic structuring of your pages for optimized indexing is not enough to deal with the ways search engines differ in their weighting of the different variables listed above. Creating doorway pages is necessary at this time for optimizing your changes of a high ranking for a multiple of keywords on a multiple of search engines.

A doorway page is simply a page that has been created for the sole purpose of ranking higher in the search engines for a particular keyword or set of keywords. These pages act as "doorways" to the real content of your site, without having to redesign or modify content in your current pages. A doorway is designed for the search engines, to appeal to the particular idiosyncrasies of each search engine's algorithms for indexing. The doorway page then links to your main site and takes your visitors there.

A good Web site is designed to attract visitors to the site and influence them in ways the business hopes will either inform or cause the user to respond. However, what is good for communicating with people is not always good for communicating with a search engine. If, for example, you have a Web site that has a lot of graphics and hardly any text, or one that runs on a database and creates dynamically generated pages, or one that is in a highly competitive area, or even one that deals with a wide variety of general topics, chances are that your pages will rank very poorly on search engine rankings.

This creates a serious dilemma: how to make Web pages that are both pleasing, useful, and logical to humans, and at the same time presents your keywords to search engines in such a way that they will recognize you have what the user is looking for and index your site appropriately.

Doorway pages help you solve these troubling dilemmas.You can keep your current Web site as it is and create dozens of doorway pages, each optimized to rank well for a different keyword in a different engine. Typically, when targeting 10 keywords across 5 search engines, you will end up with 50 pages pointing to your home page or other sections on your site. Do not worry as this is not unusual, and search engines will not penalize you as long as your doorway pages are professional and honest, and so is your submission.

You will want your Web site to be found under several keywords that your prospects are likely to search by. For this reason, you will want to create separate pages that emphasize each of those keywords/phrases and rank well for each search engine. On the average, to cover all possibilities, you need to make doorways for about 50 keywords or phrases related to your product or service for each of the top search engines.