Step By Step Page Optimization

Starting at the top of your index/home page something like this:
(After your logo or header graphic)

1) A heading tag that includes a keyword(s) or keyword phrases. A heading
tag is bigger and bolder text than normal body text, so a search engine
places more importance on it because you emphasize it.

2) Heading sizes range from h1 - h6 with h1 being the largest text. If you
learn to use just a little Cascading Style Sheet code you can control the
size of your headings. You could set an h1 sized heading to be only
slightly larger than your normal text if you choose, and the search engine
will still see it as an important heading.

3) Next would be an introduction that describes your main theme. This
would include several of your top keywords and keyword phrases. Repeat
your top 1 or 2 keywords several times, include other keyword search




terms too, but make it read in sentences that makes sense to your
visitors.

4) A second paragraph could be added that got more specific using other
words related to online education.

5) Next you could put smaller heading.

6) Then you'd list the links to your pages, and ideally have a brief decision of
each link using keywords and keyword phrases in the text. You also want
to have several pages of quality content to link to. Repeat that procedure
for all your links that relate to your theme.

7) Next you might include a closing, keyword laden paragraph. More is not
necessarily better when it comes to keywords, at least after a certain
point. Writing "online education" fifty times across your page would
probably result in you being caught for trying to cheat. Ideally,
somewhere from 3% - 20% of your page text would be keywords. The
percentage changes often and is different at each search engine. The 3-
20 rule is a general guideline, and you can go higher if it makes sense
and isn't redundant.

8) Finally, you can list your secondary content of book reviews, humor, and
links. Skip the descriptions if they aren't necessary, or they may water
down your theme too much. If you must include descriptions for these
non-theme related links, keep them short and sweet. You also might
include all the other site sections as simply a link to another index that
lists them all. You could call it Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or whatever.

These can be sub-indexes that can be optimized toward their own theme,
which is the ideal way to go.

Now you've set the all important top of your page up with a strong theme.
So far so good, but this isn't the only way you can create a strong theme so
don't be compelled into following this exact formula. This was just an
example to show you one way to set up a strong site theme. Use your
imagination, you many come up with an even better way.

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The Home Page

Your homepage is the most important page on your web site. If you concentrate your most important keywords and key phrases in your homepage many times, the search engines will surely notice and index it accordingly. But will it still read easily and will the sentences flow freely to your real human visitors? There are some good
chances that it might not. As a primer, having just 40 or 50 words on your homepage will not deliver the message effectively. To be powerful and effective, a homepage needs at least 300 to 400 words for maximum search engine throughput and ffectiveness.

One way to do that is to increase your word count with more value-added
content. This often means rewriting your whole homepage all over again.
The main reason to this is you will probably never have enough room to
skillfully work your important keywords and key phrases into the body text
of your homepage. This may not please your boss or marketing department,
but a full re-write is often necessary and highly advisable to achieve high
rankings in the engines, while at the same time having a homepage that will
please your site visitors and convert a good proportion of them into real
buyers.

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Understanding Your Target Customer

If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website.
Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.

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Ranking Rules Of Thumb

The simple rule of thumb is that content counts, and that content near the top of a page counts for more than content at the end. In particular, the HTML title and the first couple lines of text are the most important part of your pages. If the words and phrases that match a query happen to appear in the HTML title or first couple lines of text of one of your pages, chances are very good that that page will appear high in the list of search results.


A crawler/spider search engine can base its ranking on both static factors (a
computation of the value of page independent of any particular query) and
query-dependent factors.

Values

Long pages, which are rich in meaningful text (not randomly generated letters and words).

Pages that serve as good hubs, with lots of links to pages that that have related content (topic similarity, rather than random meaningless links, such as those generated by link exchange programs or intended to generate a false impression of "popularity").

The connectivity of pages, including not just how many links there are to a page but where the links come from: the number of distinct domains and the "quality" ranking of those particular sites. This is calculated for the site and also for individual pages. A site or a page is "good" if many pages at many different sites point to it, and especially if many "good" sites point to it.

The level of the directory in which the page is found. Higher is considered more important. If a page is buried too deep, the crawler simply won't go that far and will never find it.

These static factors are recomputed about once a week, and new good pages slowly percolate upward in the rankings. Note that there are advantages to having a simple address and sticking to it, so others can build links to it, and so you know that it's in the index

Query-Dependent Factors

The HTML title.

The first lines of text.

Query words and phrases appearing early in a page rather than late.

Meta tags, which are treated as ordinary words in the text, but like words that appear early in the text (unless the meta tags are patently unrelated to the content on the page itself, in which case the page will be penalized)

Words mentioned in the "anchor" text associated with hyperlinks to your pages. (E.g., if lots of good sites link to your site with anchor text "breast cancer" and the query is "breast cancer," chances are good that you will appear high in the list of matches.)


Blanket Policy On Doorway Pages And Cloaking

Many search engines are opposed to doorway pages and
cloaking. They consider doorway and cloaked pages to be
spam and encourage people to use other avenues to
increase the relevancy of their pages. We ll talk about
doorway pages and cloaking a bit later

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Crawler/Spider Considerations

Also, consider technical factors. If a site has a slow connection, it might time-out for the crawler. Very complex pages, too, may time out before the crawler can harvest the text.

If you have a hierarchy of directories at your site, put the most important information high, not deep. Some search engines will presume that the higher you placed the information, the more important it is. And crawlers may not venture deeper than three or four or five directory levels.

Above all remember the obvious - full-text search engines such index text. You may well be tempted to use fancy and expensive design techniques that either block search engine crawlers or leave your pages with very little plain text that can be indexed. Don t fall prey to that temptation.

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GOOGLE Dance Tool

This Google Dance Tool allows you to check your rankings on all three tools www, www2 and www3 and on all 9 datacenters simultaneously.
The Google Web Directory works in combination of the Google Search Technology and the Netscape Open Directory Project which makes it possible to search the Internet organized by topic. Google displays the pages in order of the rank given to it using the Page Rank Technology. It not only searches the titles and descriptions of the websites, but searches the entire content of sites within a related category, which ultimately delivers a comprehensive search to the users. Google also has a fully functional web directory which categorizes all the searches in order

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Do You Know The GOOGLE Dance?

The Algorithm Shuffle

Because of the nature of Page Rank, the calculations need to be performed about 40 times and, because the index is so large, the calculations take several days to complete. During this period, the search results fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute. It is because of these fluctuations that the term, Google Dance , was coined. The dance usually takes place sometime during the last third of each month.

Google has two other servers that can be used for searching. The search
results on them also change during the monthly update and they are part of
the Google dance.

For the rest of the month, fluctuations sometimes occur in the search results, but they should not be confused with the actual dance. They are due to Google's fresh crawl and to what is known "Everflux".

Google has two other searchable servers apart from www.google.com. They are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time, the results on all 3 servers are the same, but during the dance, they are different.

For most of the dance, the rankings that can be seen on www2 and www3 are the new rankings that will transfer to www when the dance is over. Even though the calculations are done about 40 times, the final rankings can be seen from very early on. This is because, during the first few iterations, the calculated figures merge to being close to their final figures.

You can see this with the Page Rank Calculator by checking the Data box and performing some calculations. After the first few iterations, the search results on www2 and www3 may still change, but only slightly.

During the dance, the results from www2 and www3 will sometimes show on the www server, but only briefly. Also, new results on www2 and www3 can disappear for short periods. At the end of the dance, the results on www will match those on www2 and www3.

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