page ranking

Overview

Hopefully you are at least somewhat familiar with alt text. This is the text that you see if your image can not be displayed. The text that can be read for a person that is vision impaired. The text that search engines “see” since they can not describe your image, you have to do it for them. To be technically correct, this is the alt attribute of the “img” tag.

Guidelines for alt text:

1. Ensure that the text alternatives communicate the purpose of the graphic accurately and succinctly.
2. Provide empty alt text for graphics which do not convey content.
3. Provide alt text for both the main image and the hot spots of image maps.
4. Do not repeat the alt text of an image in the adjacent text.
5. Do not put important images in the background.

The Importance of Alternative Text

One of the biggest accessibility problems on the Web today is the lack of alternative text for graphics and images. Individuals who are blind often use screen readers or refreshable Braille devices that read the text on the page to them. When these technologies come across images without alt text, they are unable to communicate the meaning of the image.

When a screen reader comes across an image with no alt attribute, there are a couple of things that could happen:

1. It could simply skip the image as if it were not even on the page.
2. It could find some text that is associated with the image such as the file name and read that instead.
3. The exact behavior of the screen reader varies between brands and the Web page itself. In either case the end result is undesirable. The user either misses the image content completely or gets some text that is probably meaningless.

How Images Are Used

Images on Web sites are used in four ways:

1. a picture is worth a thousand words - it just helps you describe beyond words
2. an aid to visualize important concepts
3. to provide visual enhancements which offer no real content - just pretty
4. to link to other areas of the site (instead of anchor text)

The most appropriate alt text for an image depends on the way in which the image is used. In fact, the same image could be used for different reasons under different circumstances, and each instance of this image would have different alternative text. Keep the following rule in mind:

Communicating the Purpose of the Graphic

The most appropriate alt text communicates the purpose of the graphic, not its appearance, and the most important information to convey in alternative text is if the user can click on the image to go to another area of the site.

If the image or graphic contains information that is relevant to the content of the site, then the alt attribute should also provide that content, in a way that is consistent with the purpose of the image. Remember that the purpose of the image is not necessarily the same as the appearance of the image.

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Remember the pyramid schemes of old? You get a letter in the mail that has a list of 10 names (and contact details), you erase the top name on the list, move everyone up one space and place your name on the bottom. Then you mail the letter to 10 people who do the same. By the time your name reaches the top you should get millions in the mail.

Blogs work the same way on the web.

You create your main site using a name that is one of your keywords, one that best describes your site and your product. For the sake of an example, the product will be shoes.

You create 3 blogs that you will need to feed with good content on a regular basis. A regular basis is at least once a day and for a real professional the recommendation is 3 articles a day posted once every 6 hours. Open one blog at each of the most popular blogging sites; blogger, wordpress and myspace.

Each of these blogs must have good content - and each has a name that is one of your most important keywords or keyword phrases. Shoes.BlogOfChoice… WeddingShoes.BlogOfChoice… and DanceShoes.BlogOfChoice…

Use http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion for your keywords. Here are the top 25 resluts related to Shoe (hopefully your #1 keyword less generic than shoe)

Searches done in January 2007

Count and Search Term

882388 shoes

171435 shoes store

82538 womens shoes

75069 jordan shoes

74012 shoes repair

65615 new balance shoes

52185 nike shoes

40455 vans shoes

37865 merrell shoes

37665 aldo shoes

37226 puma shoes

36458 dc shoes

34268 dance shoes

33952 wedding shoes

33280 running shoes

32397 clarks shoes

31936 bakers shoes

29708 sexy shoes

Pick your sub-topic, say Wedding Shoe and look at the results.

Searches done in January 2007

Count and Search Term

33952 wedding shoes

1843 cheap wedding shoes

1212 designer wedding shoes

1038 ivory wedding shoes

793 dyeable wedding shoes

Then you take your keywords and keyword phrases that are listed above and make a blog accordingly ClearWeddingShoes.blogger… you get the idea.

Repeat with Dance Shoes

make blogs like BallroomDanceShoes.blogger (5 or more for the Dance Shoe sub-topic)

Repeat with Sexy Shoes

make blogs like CheapSexyShoes.blogger (5 or more for the Sexy Shoe sub-topic)

Repeat with Running Shoes

Make blogs with names like BestRunningShoes. The BestRunningShoes blog finds a way to point to, or reference, the RunningShoe blog and RunningShoe does the same with the Shoe blog. This is time consuming, but there are tricks to filling blog content without your creating it, one is just to write an article and then re-write it changing the keywords. On a shoe topic this could be easy. You need content in each blog daily, twice a day is better, but spread your entries out by several hours or the search engines will see this for the trick that it is.

The tope site, the Shoe site I reference, must have great content that is updated VERY often and be your selling site.

aaa.Shoe should ONLY point to Shoe. The aaa.Shoe level must have content related to that subject, but perhaps less interesting than the Shoe level.

bbb.aaa.Shoe should only point to, or reference aaa.Shoe unless you have the occasional overlap like SexyWeddingShoe or WeddingRunningShoe and so on. The bbb.aaalevel is where your content may be of lower quality.

If you get to the ccc.bbb.aaa.Shoe (CheapSexyRunningShoe of reference) level then you are really working this for all that it is worth. At this level you may be able to find a connection with another site and share the work and each of your sites pointing to 2 higher level sites.

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Things That Help Page Rank:

These factors will probably change over time, once someone figures how to “beat the system”. Some these variables are more important than others:

• Keywords in the title tag
• Keywords in the description tag
• Keywords in the keywords tag
• Changing and increasing content
• Keywords in your headlines
• Keywords in your content
• Keywords in the top 25% of the page
• Keywords in the bottom 25% of the page
• Using HTML emphasis on Keywords (Bold, Italics, Underline et cetera)
• Incoming link popularity - if sites that point to you have a high PR it is a good thing
• Keywords in the names of linked pages Cover Hypnosis Expert Kevin Hogan is better than Kevin Hogan and the actual site name has the lowest value (but better than nothing)
• Keywords in alt tags and as names of images
• Getting listings in Pay-Per-Click search engines like Google Adwords or in Overture
• Listings in directories

Things That Hurt Page Rank:

• Spamming by using the same word or phrase several times in your title, meta tags, or text. Buy you new shoes from our shoe site by visiting our shoe forum and choosing from our shoe gallery! The sentence might be readable, but it is spam.
• Keyword density over 5% which may be considered keyword spamming.
• Spamming by putting words or phrases into your meta tags or title that have nothing to do with the actual content people see on your web page.
• Too many outbound links, even if they are to sites related to your topic. If you want to have hundreds of links, make a link page.
• Using text the same color as the background. Years ago, I could not figure why I landed on a site that had nothing to do with my search.
• Using tiny text (font size “-1″ or smaller) as a way to cram keywords into a page
• Linking out to link farms or free-for-all (FFA) link pages.
• Links coming in from link farms or FFA link pages
• Linking out to sites that have nothing to do with the focus or niche of your site (For a class Kevin Hogan gave in 2006 he linked from KevinHogan.com to everyone that attended his class, causing his PR to drop one point.)
• Unknown. Since we don’t know the actual algorithm used there may be things that we don’t know that hurt your page rank. If you think something may hurt your site, don’t do it.

Follow these basic rules and you will be on your way to getting your page ranked properly.

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KeyWords and KeyWord Phrases are words that people will type into a search engine that YOU or YOUR PRODUCT is the answer to. When people type “Body Language”, Kevin Hogan wants to be the answer, but his site only appears at the bottom of a 100 entry list. There are over 2.1 million entries for “Body Language” (and 1.5 billion for ‘internet’). When someone enters SEO Copywriting, there are hundreds of people that want to be in the top 10, but there are only 10 sites listed.

In the beginning, keywords were not visible to the reader; they were only in the HTML script. Then people realized that in the algorithm the quantity of keywords counted. Because of this you would have pages with white text on a white background, the same word added as a comment in the HTML text (so only the spider could see it) or the same word written 300 times at the bottom of the page. These words were for the search engine spiders.

Today the tricks listed above not only don’t work; in fact the opposite - they would get your site banned from the search engines because the algorithm has changed. Today the search engines want your keywords to be used logically and where they fit. Each page should have a title (you would be surprised how many sites have all of their pages untitled). Since you are able to use a title, and each page has a KeyWord, use that KeyWord as the page title.

The “Body Language” page from Kevin Hogans’s site has this title string - . Not only does he use “Body Language” twice, he uses other words people may use to search for this topic; “Reading Body Language”, “Decoding Body Language” and “Body Language Analysis”.

After a user searches on a set of keywords on her search engine of choice, she is presented with a page called the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) which has sponsored links (at the top of the page and to the right) and a main section of the page with the listing that are found based on the algorithm used. This set of listing is called the organic or natural listings. Organic search engine optimization (this training) is about increasing the number of times the search engines spider your site, moving your site higher on the SERP, both of which should help increase the amount of visitors that your site gets.

This is achieved by getting more documents indexed on the search engine and by attaining a higher position in the organic results. The problem for many marketers and traditional advertising agencies lies in the technical nature of search engines and the difficulty in understanding the underlying algorithms that produce the rankings for particular keyword searches.

The most popular search engine is Google which accounts for the greatest number of search requests. This is not to say that other search engines are not important nor anything about the different algorithm’s being used. Google’s success has ensured that many search engines are moving in the same direction and since Google has filed their search patent we do not have to rely on as much guesswork.

Importantly, Google ensures that there is a level of feedback from users through the Google toolbar that enables Google to refine their search results over time. Also, a significant part of Google’s algorithm is to protect its search engine against search SPAM which is the use of techniques to improve a site’s rankings normally through the artificial creation of links, so we have outlined the main areas to watch out for. Since keywords are so important in SEO it is heavily recommended you get a keyword tool such as Keyword Expert or SEO Elite. This will save time and guess work, and will increase your SEO results.

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Here are some things to consider if you are serious about having a higher page rank. Take the time to create or acquire original content for your site. Search engines are putting a greater lever of importance on the community aspect of the internet, so make sure you take advantage of blogs and forums. Take the time to make sure the information you post is true and not plagiarized. Not a legal obligation, but it is a moral obligation.

Page Titles

Use an original page title for each page. If you can, use your most important key word phrase as the page title.

Outgoing Links

Do not exceed 100 outgoing links, always link to good quality sites and never link to farm links. Extra tip: you must check your outgoing links on a regular basis to make sure they are still working and the quality of the sites you are linking to is still good.

Keyword Density

Keep your keyword density under 5% or it is keyword spamming. Keyword spamming can increase your listing as long as you play it carefully and pull the keywords off after you are spidered once.

Flash, Images and really cool new stuff

Skip them. If not, to be used in moderation, the make your site load slowly and there are still people out there with slow connections and no one likes watching the “loading” window. People also don’t like complicated menu setups, keep it simple.

Alt Text

If you use pictures and put your keyword in the alt thext, your alt text must describe the picture. You could write something like: “keyword header”, “keyword image” or “keyword logo”. Stuffing lots of keywords in your alt texts can work like the keyword density I mention above.

Think of your audience

Avoid slang or rude words in your copy unless that is what your audience uses. Consider that is will also get you banned, but it may get you incoming traffic.

Finally, remember that search engine algorithms change frequently. So keep up to date by browsing the SEO sites and forums.

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What is a Search Engine?

A search engines is the tool of Internet users for finding whatever it is that they want or need on the web. Search engines are that special thing that allows people to search the world for what makes them happy. There are both limitations on search engines that are built by design and by web sites owners’ choice - I can choose to have my site remain invisible to the rest of the world.

A search engine sends a ’spider’ out to gather information on the websites of the world. This is the tool that is the base for our being able to search the internet.

There are two to get your site spidered:

1. The spider will automatically find your site from a link on someone else’s site
2. You submit your URL so that the spider will come out and find it (I do both)

How Does a Search Engine Index Web Pages?

There are four main things know about a search engine for optimization:

1. The spider is a program that goes out and gathers up web pages (the process is referred to as being spidered (I was spidered last week)
2. The database is where the spider will store the pages that it finds
3. The search engine website (http://www. google.com is my choice) is where you and I go to find information from the database
4. The algorithms are programs that determine which sites will come up when you and I type our search request

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts should be targeted towards high search engine ranking for your keywords, but you have to make sure your content is worth reading. There is no reason to be number one on Google if your content is poor. In addition, you have to be careful not to overuse the keywords or the spider will consider your effort like spam, and you could penalize your site or get it banned from Google search.

Here are some things to avoid or your page rank could drop - or worse - your site get de-indexed.

Plagiarism

Never steal content.

That should be stand alone but if you do take content from someone else you have moral issues, legal worries and you may vanish from the search engines.

Keyword Density

Keep your keyword density under 5% or it could be considered keyword spamming.

Title Tag

Your title tag should contain less than 60 characters and should not contain any special characters. Your title should contain keywords.

Outgoing Links

Keep outgoing links down to about 20 - 50 at the grand max. Only Link to good quality sites that have something to do with your topic and avoid “farm links”.

URL Length

Keep your URLs as short as possible and avoid hyphens.

Description & Keyword Tags

Keep your description meta tag short - under 200 characters. No promise that the Google spider reads that far and if it does, long tags are spammy.

Put fewer than 10 keywords in your keyword meta tag and make sure every keyword appears in your web page copy. Also, avoid putting the same keyword twice in your keyword meta tag (accounting news, accounting sales).

Cloaking

Never, never, use cloaking. Don’t know what it is? Don’t even look it up.

Search engine algorithms change all the time so make an effort to keep your site up to date and the most important thing is to keep creating good, fresh content for your site.

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