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If
you want your online business to be successful, it's a good idea to optimize
your site on a regular basis to make sure it's got a good position in the
Web's top search engines. However, in order to maintain your ranking, you
have to keep on top of what's happening in the rapidly changing search
engine industry. The rules that affected your ranking yesterday may be
meaningless tomorrow.
Read
on to learn more about the latest developments in the search engine industry
and what key tactics you should—and shouldn't—use to optimize your site
to make sure it gets a high ranking with all the major search engines.
The
Times Are Changing
For
the past few years, the major search engines have been preparing to square
off against each other and battle it out for the industry's top spot. Google
has been No. 1 for a while now, but Yahoo! and
MSN
have been making moves to steal the crown.
With
a close-to-55-percent market share, Google is still extremely powerful.
Yahoo! is the closest runner-up with about 20 percent of users choosing it
as their main search engine, and
MSN
is a distant but threatening third, with about 10 percent of the global
usage share.
Keep
in mind, however, that Google and Yahoo! power many of the smaller search
engines. For example, Google powers the free listings featured on
AOL
and Netscape, plus the paid listings featured on
AOL
, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Teoma and Lycos. Yahoo! powers free listings
featured on AltaVista, AllTheWeb and HotBot, plus the paid listings on
MSN
, AltaVista and AllTheWeb.
You
need to be aware of the latest trends in the search market if you want to
gear your optimization efforts toward the engines that will send you as much
traffic as possible. Of course, you also need to keep tabs on changes to the
search engines themselves!
Search
engines frequently change the algorithms they use to rank sites. They don't
want unscrupulous site owners manipulating their indexing methods in order
to get high rankings. By doing so, they damage the integrity of free search.
As soon as the search engines become aware of a trick being used by
"search engine spammers" to boost their site ranking, they figure
out a way to catch them.
The
search engines don't want to be manipulated by marketers. They want to
provide the best unbiased results possible for any given search—or they'll
lose users. That's why they need to change their algorithms so
frequently—to stay ahead of the tricks people use to get top rankings.
So
be careful! You don't want to catch yourself employing a great strategy
promoted by a marketing "expert," only to find out it's a tactic
the search engines hate! That could get you booted off their listings in no
time flat.
Let's
have a look at what exactly the search engines are currently looking for
when indexing sites—and what they'll punish you for.
The
Dos
There
are still a lot of legitimate ways you can optimize your site to generate or
maintain a high ranking without angering the search engines and causing them
to drop you from their list. Here are some of the best things you can to do
ensure your site has a high ranking:
1.
Ask relevant sites to link to your site. In the past, scoring a high
ranking with a search engine was all about positioning your keywords in
"prime real estate" positions in your text and site coding. All
that has changed, however, because these days, links are king.
Search
engines place a huge amount of importance on the number of sites that link
to yours. But it's not just the quantity of links that matter, it's also the
quality. Search engines look at how relevant the links are, that is, how
much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your
site. The more relevant, the better.
Search
engines also look at how important the linking site is. What kind of online
presence does it have? How much traffic does it get? For example, your site
will get a higher ranking if it's linked to by sites such as
BBC
.com or nationalgeographic.com instead of, say, the personal homepage of
your friend's neighbor's kid.
2.
Pay attention to keyword inclusion and placement. Keywords may no longer
be the sole determining factor of a site's ranking, but they're still pretty
important. Also remember that search engines will penalize you if you try to
sneak in keywords that have nothing to do with the content of your site.
3.
Create content-rich information pages to direct traffic to your site. Be
sure the information relates to the content on your site and has your
keywords placed in advantageous positions. This will boost the ranking of
your pages with the search engines and ensure they get lots of
traffic—which they can then redirect to your site.
4.
Submit your site to online directories. Be sure to submit your site to
important directories such as Yahoo!, the Open Directory Project and
About.com, as well as smaller directories. Your listing on these directories
will help your ranking with the major search engines.
5.
Multiply and conquer. Create a community of related sites that link to
each other. Why stop at only one information page? The more content-rich
sites that point to your site, the better.
The
Don'ts
Now
that we've covered the dos, here come the don'ts. Although these
questionable tactics have worked well in the past, the search engines
absolutely hate them. If they catch you using any of these tricks, they may
go so far as to drop you from their listings.
1.
Beware of irrelevant links. If the search engines find sites that have
nothing in common with the content on your site linked to your Web site,
they'll lower your relevancy rating.
2.
Beware of irrelevant keywords. Search engines hate finding irrelevant
keywords on your site—especially in your meta tags
3.
Don't "keyword stuff" your meta tags. In the past, people used
to repeat their keywords in their meta tags over and over again. This used
to get them a high ranking with the search engines—but not any more.
Search engines are on to this trick and will punish you for it by dropping
your ranking.
4.
Don't create "link farms." Link farms are the evil cousins of
the information pages we discussed above. In the past, some spammers used to
build multiple "doorway" sites that existed only to multiply the
number of links pointing to their sites.
The search engines have caught on to this tactic, however, and will
drop you from their listings if they find you using it.
5.
Avoid "free for all" link pages. Don't bother placing links to
your site on pages where everyone and their cousin is invited to put up a
link. Such sites have extremely low relevancy ratings and will cost you
points with the search engines.
Final
Thoughts
Recent
research by search engine optimization experts suggests that there's a
surprising lack of overlap between the results produced by the major search
engines. All too often, sites that are ranked high on Google get a much
poorer listing with Yahoo! and vice versa.
This
could mean that webmasters are focusing their optimization efforts solely on
one search engine while neglecting to improve their ranking with the other.
Or they might be using optimization tactics that work for Google on Yahoo!,
without being aware that Yahoo! uses different criteria to index a site.
Either
way, sites that aren't optimized for both Google and Yahoo! are missing out
on a lot of potential visitors.
No
one really knows what the future holds for the search engine industry, but
one thing's for sure: Businesses that don't stay on top of the changes are
going to find themselves slipping behind. Don't let that happen to your
business!
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