Getting to the top of the search engine rankings for specific keywords is a great way to market a website. This however is a difficult process.
For this post, I would like you to research how search engine rankings are composed, what factors to include in websites to improve your rankings, and discuss strategies for your "outside project" to help with their search rankings.
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How Search Engines Operate
ReplyDeleteSearch engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.
1. Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders", that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.
2. Indexing Documents
Once a page has been crawled, its contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.
3. Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magazine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Findall" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car", "driver", and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.
4. Ranking Results
Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.
Search engine rankings are composed by
• usability
• age of the site
• keywords used in title tag and body (location/frequency method)
• popularity of site
To improve your ranks in the search engine depends on factors such as
• Placement of keywords
• picking keywords
• you need HTML text on page since search engines can't read images
• do not do “spamming” which is a type of repeating of keywords
One can search for anything using crawler-based search engines. Nearly instantly, the search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that match your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first. Search engines are composed by a set of rules known as an algorithm. Exactly how a particular search engine's algorithm works is a secret, but they all follow a set of general rules...
ReplyDeleteLocation and Frequency - One of the the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Call it the location/frequency method, for short.
Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.
Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.
Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.
Spice In The Recipe - To begin with, some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.
Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.
Off The Page Factors - Crawler-based search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Some sophisticated webmasters may even go to great lengths to "reverse engineer" the location/frequency systems used by a particular search engine. Because of this, all major search engines now also make use of "off the page" ranking criteria.
Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.
Another off the page factor is clickthrough measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.
Ways to improve your rankings include...
Increasing number of inbound links
Including meaningful text in your title tag
Keyword density in your page
I would apply these same strategies to my outside project to increase its search engine rankings.
The following factors contribute to how search engine ranking composed:
ReplyDeleteAll a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, as well as any and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date. The search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that match your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.
There are several general rules to improve webpage ranking:
Location and Frequency: Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic. Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.
Effective key words: some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming.
Other Factors: search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Another factor is clickthrough measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors.
Ways to improve webpage ranking include:
Have effective key words
No “spamming”
Key terms are included in the HTML title tag
Increase the frequency of the key terms in webpage
Constantly rewrite their web pages
Most major search engines use an algorithm to help search through millions of web pages these are closely guarded secrets tho.
ReplyDeleteThe ranking algorithm uses involves the location and frequency of keywords the location/frequency method.
They first start with the title of the page and
they give you that first if it matches. Then any paragraph or headline on the top of the page.
Each search engine has different indexes and no two are exactly alike. They also look for words that increase the pages ranking by "spamming" words. These pages are often not included in the results.
Just having "stamp collecting" won't help you it will come up with hundreds of others you need to be short and attractive in phrasing your site title.
Using meta tags can help control your site on some crawler search engines.
Todd Waltz
ReplyDeleteKeyword Use in Title Tag
Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Global Link Popularity of Site
Age of Site
Keyword used in Body Text
Google seems to use some weird algorithm method to rank them which seems difficult to obtain information on.
Different things that people can put onto their website to help create for higher search engine ratings are first they have to title their page to a specific name they perfer. Then they create index's for different sections of their website, this allows for them to personalize their website to what they know they want their customers to have.
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ReplyDeleteafter some quick Google searching some of the aspects that i found to be the most usefull in helping to enhancee the search engine rankings are as follows:
ReplyDeleteIn order to fully comprehend the rationale for the forthcoming recommendations, one must first understand that there is, in essence, a war raging between the search engines and those that would manipulate them for their own selfish gain.
Search engines exist to serve the needs of the masses. The internet is the most open of capitalistic systems in the sense that users award the best sites with their traffic. Search engines realize that end users want to find what they are looking for quickly. This means that search results must be accurate and useful.
At the same time, there exists a large subculture which views search engines as an endless supply of visitors just waiting to help them get rich quick. This subculture constantly attempts to find ways to jump to the top of the search engine rankings in order to rapidly monetize an investment.
Often times rogue sites will employ the use of highly deceptive means to attract visitors. Documented methods already include: Googlebombing, style sheet abuse, NOSCRIPT tag abuse, spamdexing, cloaking, link spam, doorway pages, link farms and Googleating. Search engines then retaliate by changing their algorithms to exclude such practices in order to render an otherwise even playing field.
This constant - and costly - battle ensures that any technique which falsely promotes a site to the top of the rankings will also topple the site as soon as the search algorithm is updated. As a rule the least-cost, highest performing and longest lasting results will be achieved by sites which are appropriately designed, content rich and technically proficient.