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High Search Engine Ranking - Tips
* By Terry Plank, Director of Marketing for Academy of Web Specialists
For high search engine ranking you may need Information Pages.
To determine search engine ranking, search engines ("SE's") use complex and proprietary algorithms, specific criteria to determine rankings. However, they keep their algorithms secret for competitive reasons and to prevent people spamming them.
What are some criteria SE's use for determining your high search engine ranking?
- 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
- Prominence & frequency, keywords in the <TITLE> tag(s)
- Prominence & frequency keywords in the <META NAME="DESCRIPTION">
- Prominence & frequency of keywords in the <META NAME="KEYWORD">
- Keywords in the first full sentence of the page with more weight given to a <H1> tag
- Keywords in the <A HREF="http://yourcompany.com/page.htm"> link tags
- Keywords in ALT tags (Make sure they accurately describe the graphic or it's spamming!)
- Keywords contained in the URL or site address, e.g., http://www.keyword.com/keyword.html
- Grammatical correctness and natural-sounding word patterns
- Use of formatting, repetition, and word arrangement that could be considered as spam
Each engine has lower and upper limits for each variable and criteria. This protects it against spammers, and it's why simply repeating keywords will not work!
Other factors that influence high search engine ranking:
- SE's have different agreements with directories 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
- Overture and a few others place sites according to your bid
- Some SE's rank sites higher that are inDirectory Project, LookSmart and Yahoo
- Serving a special page to the engine and a separate page to the viewers (cloaking) is considered spamming a search engine
More high search engine ranking tips . . .
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