On April 4th at a Search Engine Strategies Conference, Ask Jeeves Vice President of Search, Paul Gardi, the Fast Software Engineering Manager, Rolf Michelsen and the Google Director of Technology, Craig Silverstein shared their thoughts on their companies approach to evaluating sites for relevancy and ranking.

We have always known that links from good sites brings us traffic. And now we have begun to pay additional attention to our linking strategy because, beginning with Google, search engines have expanded their commitment to provide good results for searchers.

Remember, a quality product for a search engine is their a relevant group of quality results for a particular keyword search. Think about the search engine's goals first and your own second!

So what analogies did they use in recommend how to optimize our sites related to their linking analysis algorithm's? (The words in quotes are the direct phrases of the presenters.)

Simple, be in "good company". Don't spend a lot of time in the bad part of town if you are going to run for political office! All three companies are able to judge the "reputation" of those who link to you.

Ask yourselves the following questions.

Are the sites that link to you in your same field? Pursue "theme analysis" not only for your site but also for your linking partners. It's not only a consistent theme for you so a search engine knows what we are about, it's also vital that the people who link to you are in the general "community" related to our theme.

Are the sites that link to you, linked to in turn by others in the same field or theme area? The more "popular" your friends are, the more "popular" you are. Remember being in your teens when it was so important that you be in the "right crowd"?

Do you have some "high quality" sites linking to you that are "authorities" or experts in your field, your subject area. Remember, these search engines know everything about these sites linking to you and if they are authoritative sources in your field and they link to you, then you are likely a valuable source of information and high relevancy to the keyword phrases that characterize your site.

Finally, are all your pages optimized for relevant keyword phrases and linked back and forth within your site? This will flesh out the theme of your site and when your "friends" are doing the same, you all become a strong "community of authorities" encouraging the search engine to present you to their searchers.

Representatives shared the following information about linking analysis and page ranking.

Craig Silverstein, Google, said they wanted to use a more human process to determine if a site had value related to particular keyword phrases. Looking at meta data, "We began developing a mathmatical way to determine if others think your site has value."

Google evaluates the number of incoming and outgoing links to a site, the circular associations of linking around the Web and finally at their data related to communities of Web sites, local areas with unique themes in common.

So for good ranking, "If you make it easier for us we like you." Be associated with reputable sites, make sure those sites have keywords related to you, be targeted in your keywords throughout the site, and have theme-conscious, explanatory text around your keywords and links.

Paul Gardi, Teoma/AskJeeve, said, "We begin with text analysis." Evaluating next, "general popularity"; comparing sites, for example, with one link coming in vs a site with three links coming in.

"But, spamming techniques can create problems so we also look at status." Sites with a multiple of hiqh quality links coming in to them are given higher a value. These become high-status sites, ones that have a multiple of quality sites linking to them. You want these high-status sites linking to you.

"Using Direct hit, we add click popularity to help us form Local Subject Communities." This means that they evaluate a whole community of sites to see if there are common themes that unite them and if there are "authority sites" in that mix. We are "...looking at members of the community to see who they have chosen as authorities."

For good ranking, Paul added that you need to make sure there are some strong "authority" sites in your community of links, ones within a common thematic mix, and sites with a significant number of links in to them.

Rolf Michelson, Fast/Alltheweb, said they look first at the network of linking within a site and for a consistent theme. Then, he described their process of link evaluation as looking for "content ranking" or "content classification". Fast is "...forming a bubble, a statistical structure..." within which they can evaluate the kind of company you are keeping.

So, Paul says, optimize all pages, don't mix with bad company and make sure link text says something important.

There are two products I recommend for helping with developing and furthering your Reputation, popularity and Topic recognition with the Search Engines.

First, is Zeus, an intelligent, internet robot that builds a link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site. Zeus evaluates each site, gives a score, sets up a database that allows you to sort into categories, builds a directory, uploads it to your site and helps you email you potential links.

Ok, it takes a little time to do this, it's not a magic bullet.! But if you are serious about your business this is an essential tool for your tool chest. We have a special arrangement with them to save you $36 on a purchase of Zeus. Purchase or evaluate Zeus here.

Another excellent product I have been using very effectively to optimize my pages for popularity and ranking is OptiLink Page Reputation Analyzer. OptiLink finds the links to your site and tells you wht the search engine sees is your topic and your Reputation.

You can use OptiLink to do the following:

• Optimize your site to improve the link consistency of our pages.
• Add and modify the incoming links to you more effectively.
• Narrow the focus of your pages.
• Identify Authority sites in our "topic", "theme" area so I can contact them to get links to our domains.
• Find keywords and Authority sites your competitors are using to improve your own pages and popularity.

Happy Internet Marketing!

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