First of all, Google does not display all of the links they find to a site and thus, this count will leave you with about 5 or 6 percent of the real links to your main competitors.
Yahoo! is much better at displaying all the links to a site however even this has it's shortcomings in the analysis process. Secondly, the number of links is only a fraction of what's important in their development.
To fully grasp how your competitors are ranking highly for your targeted phrases you will want to know a number of things about the links to their site including:
* how many links do they have? * How many of these links come from the same sites? * Are these sites relevant? * What is the PageRank distribution of the links? * Are these links image or text links and if text, * what anchor text is used to link to your competitor's site?
Why Are These Factors Important?
These factors are important as they define the value of the link. To put it simply: the high value of link means that your Home Business Start site is of high value.
The number of links is perhaps the least important of these factors. A site can have 10,000 incoming links and if they are all from a single unrelated site with a low PageRank then the value of these links is negligible.
Knowing how many of the links to your competitor's site come from the same site or sites will let you know where they have bought advertising and also help isolate weakness in their link counts.
Multiple links from the same website are not given the same value as multiple links from different websites. If your competitors have thousands of incoming links that come from 5 different websites you have far less work to do that if they even had a couple hundred, all from different sites.
The relevancy of the incoming links is extremely important and gaining importance every update.
Unfortunately this is also the hardest factor to gauge as, "what constitutes relevancy?" and, "how exactly do I find out if my competitors links are relevant without visiting every one of their links?" can be problematic questions.
Gauging relevancy can generally be done with a simple thought: if I am on a site and the link makes sense to be there (for example, a web design company linking to a web hosting company) then it can be considered relevant. Basically, if there are people who will actually click the link then it is relevant. Finding out if your competitor's links are relevant without visiting every one of their link partners is a different hurdle to jump.
Rather than visiting each-and-every link it is easier view only the most important ones; that would be the ones from high PageRank pages. But how does one do that?
It is very energy-saving to use a top-software (see below) to tear apart the external factors our main competitors are using to hold top ten positions.
While in on page optimization it was possible to note that there are other tools out there that break down keyword density elements, I am not able to do the same with offsite optimization factors.
Once you have optimized the onsite factors from part one of SEO process it's time to launch into the external factors. External SEO factors generally refer to the internal links to your, and your competitor's Home Business Start sites.
Juhani Tontti, Home Business Start, has effective SEO software to beat the competition. Take a look and get #1 spot at Google. Thanks!
About the Author
For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
Showing posts with label optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label optimization. Show all posts
SEO for Beginners: Spiders are People
OK, arachnids are not people, and search engine spiders are not really people, either. But what I'm driving at is that search engine spiders "think" like people. How do I know this? Because human beings wrote them. Any software that does analysis of any kind does so with the intelligence and analytical rules programmed into it by its human developers.
How Humans Comprehend
Imagine that I handed you an article to read that I had printed out. It's about 20 pages long, but I didn't tell you anything about it. Worse, you're going to have to pass a test on the content. Get out your highlighter!
The best reading instructors teach their students to get the context before seriously studying a text like a chapter of a history book or an article. This is because educational research has shown that knowing the general scope of a selection helps human readers comprehend and retain more of the subject matter. By the way, this example is real, not contrived: I used to be a high school teacher and I took a good deal of post-graduate coursework in what is known as "content area reading".
The easiest way to get the general context is to find the title. The next step is to look at section headings. The combination of the two frames the range or scope of the document or chapter. You can also pick up some hints from picture and diagram captions.
Once you know what the document is about, you can begin to dig into the actual text. As you read, you can often discern important or significant points by repetition. That is, content that is paraphrased and rephrased is often very important: The author obviously thought it worth the effort to rephrase the explanation a couple times (or more). [This paragraph contains a clever example, if I don't say so myself: Did you see it?]
How Search Engine Spiders Comprehend
Not too surprisingly, search engine spiders take the exact same approach as humans.
Like human readers, spiders start to get a clue by looking at titles and section headings. On a web page the spiders all look for your title tag, so it certainly pays to create a title for your web page. Furthermore, it pays even more if that title contains keywords.
An Aside: What are "keywords", anyway?
Most search engines ignore the keyword metatag in the HTML of your web pages, so why do web marketers constantly talk about keywords? The reason is that even if you do not use the keyword metatag on your page, you should select several keywords that describe the content of your page, and then make sure those keywords are sprinkled throughout the page multiple times and in a natural-sounding manner.
The places to use keywords include the title (in the h1 HTML tag), heading text (e.g. in h2 tags), alt and title tags for images, and in body text.
These keywords give the search engine spiders a stronger sense of what your page is really about.
Here's an important observation: Ultimately, our goal is not to "trick" the search engine, but rather to help it see clearly what our content is about. Google and the other engines are getting very adept at figuring out artificial keyword sprinkling. Never string keywords or keyword phrases many times in succession. Google, in particular, sees this is a keyword spamming and will exact painful revenge.
There is also speculation that if your keyword-to-content ratio is unnaturally high, the search engines also discount that. I believe that to be quite likely, but "unnaturally high" is a closely guarded secret. The bottom line for me is that if the body text sounds funny because of all the keywords, you've moved into the danger zone. I'll recommend to you the same thing I did to my Advanced Composition students years ago: Read your page aloud. If it sounds odd in any way, rewrite the odd part.
The search engine spider looks for your section heading in-surprise-the HTML heading tags, especially the h1 tag. You should use these tags on your pages, and make sure they contain keywords.
One often overlooked place to insert keywords is in the alt and title tags of images. Although not quite analogous to a caption that a human reader would examine, the spiders nevertheless figure that these tags probably give a hint as to what the image is about (and in normal circumstances, they do). The image, in turn, gives another clue as to what the page is about.
Once the spider provides a pretty good idea what your page is about, the search engine's next job is to figure out whether your site has high quality content.
More Software and Human Similarities
If somebody claims to be an authority on a subject, it is usually prudent to check out the claim-especially if we're going to be hiring them or our money is otherwise involved. We humans generally do this by checking references.
The search engine spiders operate in fundamentally the same fashion. They assume that a site has high quality content on a given subject if other web sites have links pointing to it. In other words, the site is likely good if the references check out.
Google, in particular, has become very sophisticated in its link analysis. For example, if you trade links, the value of the link is diminished somewhat (nobody knows how much for sure). The reason is that if you really have content that I value and I think my site visitors need, I'll link to you without a trade. An unreciprocated link is one of the surest signs of high quality material on the referenced web site.
The search engines have also gotten very careful about paid links. If your link shows up on a link "farm" (a page or site that only exists for the purpose of creating links to fool the search engines), you may find your site banned altogether. Remember the old butter commercial where the lady says, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" and then she conjures up a storm? Well, the same is true for the search engines. Get caught trying to fool the spider and she'll bite you.
Forgive the mixed metaphors and just remember the point.
The search engines are also known to discount run-of-site links. Let's say you have a link to your home page on every single page of your monstrously large web site. Even though it might add up to thousands of links, it will have almost zero credibility in terms of boosting your page ranking.
The moral to the story is this: Don't use run-of-site links to boost your ranking. If it is crucial to your site navigation, fine. Just don't do the work creating all those links and expect them to help your page rank at all.
There is one remaining question, namely "Do internal links help? That is, does a link from page "A" of my web site to page "B" boost page B's page rank on Google or any other search engine?
According to my sources, the answer is yes, but only just a little. External links are given a lot more credibility. Unfortunately, external links are substantially more difficult to acquire.
Next time: The importance of links and how to get them. In this installment of the SEO for Beginners series, Ross describes the similarities between how humans and search engine spiders comprehend text. These similarities imply several important things about on-page optimization. Keywords: Search Engine Optimization, seo, Marketing, website, business.
About the Author
For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
How Humans Comprehend
Imagine that I handed you an article to read that I had printed out. It's about 20 pages long, but I didn't tell you anything about it. Worse, you're going to have to pass a test on the content. Get out your highlighter!
The best reading instructors teach their students to get the context before seriously studying a text like a chapter of a history book or an article. This is because educational research has shown that knowing the general scope of a selection helps human readers comprehend and retain more of the subject matter. By the way, this example is real, not contrived: I used to be a high school teacher and I took a good deal of post-graduate coursework in what is known as "content area reading".
The easiest way to get the general context is to find the title. The next step is to look at section headings. The combination of the two frames the range or scope of the document or chapter. You can also pick up some hints from picture and diagram captions.
Once you know what the document is about, you can begin to dig into the actual text. As you read, you can often discern important or significant points by repetition. That is, content that is paraphrased and rephrased is often very important: The author obviously thought it worth the effort to rephrase the explanation a couple times (or more). [This paragraph contains a clever example, if I don't say so myself: Did you see it?]
How Search Engine Spiders Comprehend
Not too surprisingly, search engine spiders take the exact same approach as humans.
Like human readers, spiders start to get a clue by looking at titles and section headings. On a web page the spiders all look for your title tag, so it certainly pays to create a title for your web page. Furthermore, it pays even more if that title contains keywords.
An Aside: What are "keywords", anyway?
Most search engines ignore the keyword metatag in the HTML of your web pages, so why do web marketers constantly talk about keywords? The reason is that even if you do not use the keyword metatag on your page, you should select several keywords that describe the content of your page, and then make sure those keywords are sprinkled throughout the page multiple times and in a natural-sounding manner.
The places to use keywords include the title (in the h1 HTML tag), heading text (e.g. in h2 tags), alt and title tags for images, and in body text.
These keywords give the search engine spiders a stronger sense of what your page is really about.
Here's an important observation: Ultimately, our goal is not to "trick" the search engine, but rather to help it see clearly what our content is about. Google and the other engines are getting very adept at figuring out artificial keyword sprinkling. Never string keywords or keyword phrases many times in succession. Google, in particular, sees this is a keyword spamming and will exact painful revenge.
There is also speculation that if your keyword-to-content ratio is unnaturally high, the search engines also discount that. I believe that to be quite likely, but "unnaturally high" is a closely guarded secret. The bottom line for me is that if the body text sounds funny because of all the keywords, you've moved into the danger zone. I'll recommend to you the same thing I did to my Advanced Composition students years ago: Read your page aloud. If it sounds odd in any way, rewrite the odd part.
The search engine spider looks for your section heading in-surprise-the HTML heading tags, especially the h1 tag. You should use these tags on your pages, and make sure they contain keywords.
One often overlooked place to insert keywords is in the alt and title tags of images. Although not quite analogous to a caption that a human reader would examine, the spiders nevertheless figure that these tags probably give a hint as to what the image is about (and in normal circumstances, they do). The image, in turn, gives another clue as to what the page is about.
Once the spider provides a pretty good idea what your page is about, the search engine's next job is to figure out whether your site has high quality content.
More Software and Human Similarities
If somebody claims to be an authority on a subject, it is usually prudent to check out the claim-especially if we're going to be hiring them or our money is otherwise involved. We humans generally do this by checking references.
The search engine spiders operate in fundamentally the same fashion. They assume that a site has high quality content on a given subject if other web sites have links pointing to it. In other words, the site is likely good if the references check out.
Google, in particular, has become very sophisticated in its link analysis. For example, if you trade links, the value of the link is diminished somewhat (nobody knows how much for sure). The reason is that if you really have content that I value and I think my site visitors need, I'll link to you without a trade. An unreciprocated link is one of the surest signs of high quality material on the referenced web site.
The search engines have also gotten very careful about paid links. If your link shows up on a link "farm" (a page or site that only exists for the purpose of creating links to fool the search engines), you may find your site banned altogether. Remember the old butter commercial where the lady says, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!" and then she conjures up a storm? Well, the same is true for the search engines. Get caught trying to fool the spider and she'll bite you.
Forgive the mixed metaphors and just remember the point.
The search engines are also known to discount run-of-site links. Let's say you have a link to your home page on every single page of your monstrously large web site. Even though it might add up to thousands of links, it will have almost zero credibility in terms of boosting your page ranking.
The moral to the story is this: Don't use run-of-site links to boost your ranking. If it is crucial to your site navigation, fine. Just don't do the work creating all those links and expect them to help your page rank at all.
There is one remaining question, namely "Do internal links help? That is, does a link from page "A" of my web site to page "B" boost page B's page rank on Google or any other search engine?
According to my sources, the answer is yes, but only just a little. External links are given a lot more credibility. Unfortunately, external links are substantially more difficult to acquire.
Next time: The importance of links and how to get them. In this installment of the SEO for Beginners series, Ross describes the similarities between how humans and search engine spiders comprehend text. These similarities imply several important things about on-page optimization. Keywords: Search Engine Optimization, seo, Marketing, website, business.
About the Author
For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
What Google Thinks Of Your Site?
What Google Thinks Of Your Site?
by Titus Hoskins
How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed online because Google has become the dominant search engine on the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market. In other countries around the world that percentage rises to 80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic.
If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates.
In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my online marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience.
This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content. The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come your way.
SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts
And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google as is humanly possible, but Google doesn't give up its secrets easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs - if your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in Google's "Search Engine Results Pages" then Google must think your site or content deserves to be there.
However, there are other ways of finding out how Google is viewing your content. Below are several Google webmaster tools and things you can do to discover just how Google views your site or pages. They will give you a better picture of what Google thinks about your site.
......................................................................
Checking Your Content/Keywords In Google
......................................................................
One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing.
...................................................................
Checking Your Backlinks In Google
...................................................................
If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:
link:yourURL
and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.
Since Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, many webmaster also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links your site has on the web.
Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL
Now whether Google is using or considering all these backlinks is the big question? Finding the exact number of backlinks you have in Google has always been a problem because Google is not giving you the exact number or at least this is the general opinion of most SEO experts.
Another way I monitor my links in Google is to place quotation marks around my site name or my name "bizwaremagic" or "titus hoskins" and do a search in Google. This gives me the pages containing references to me or my site. This is usually 50,000 to 100,000 pages, I have also noticed my online income usually correlates as this number goes up or down.
...................................................................
Checking Your Indexed Pages In Google
...................................................................
Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.
You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.
Just type into Google Search:
site:yourURL
A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google's Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as "second class" pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn't mean a supplementary index doesn't exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query.
...................................................................
Checking Your Google Cache
...................................................................
You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.
Just type into Google Search:
cache:yourURL
...................................................................
Checking Your PageRank Within Google
...................................................................
Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the heart of Google's ranking system created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; each link is considered a "vote" for your page and the higher the number of "votes" you have, the higher the PR your page receives. However, again Google is using "smoke and mirrors" to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank still counts, other say it doesn't.
You can check your Google PageRank here:
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker
From my own experiences, I have received more traffic when my site was at PR4 than I received when it was at PR6. What's important is getting high rankings for your targeted keywords... if you get top spots, it doesn't matter if your main index page (site) is PR4 or PR6, you're still get the same amount of traffic. In other words, don't become too fixated on PageRank because Google in many cases is not letting you see the true PR of a webpage.
I would like to add one point to the whole PageRank issue and that has to do with perception. If you're running an online business then having a PR8 site does matter for it will bring in more business and customers (especially if you're in the SEO industry) mainly because of the "perceived value" of your site or business.
What Google thinks does matter!
In other words, what Google thinks of your site can play a major role in your success. Mainly because, like it or hate it, Google has become the supreme authority on the web and what they say, counts. Therefore, you should always be paying special attention to just what Google is saying about your site and acting upon that knowledge accordingly.
About the Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Marketing Tools Everyone is profiting for Google, find out how you can too! Click here: Google Cash File Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
by Titus Hoskins
How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed online because Google has become the dominant search engine on the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market. In other countries around the world that percentage rises to 80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic.
If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates.
In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my online marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience.
This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content. The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come your way.
SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts
And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google as is humanly possible, but Google doesn't give up its secrets easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs - if your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in Google's "Search Engine Results Pages" then Google must think your site or content deserves to be there.
However, there are other ways of finding out how Google is viewing your content. Below are several Google webmaster tools and things you can do to discover just how Google views your site or pages. They will give you a better picture of what Google thinks about your site.
......................................................................
Checking Your Content/Keywords In Google
......................................................................
One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing.
...................................................................
Checking Your Backlinks In Google
...................................................................
If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:
link:yourURL
and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.
Since Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, many webmaster also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links your site has on the web.
Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL
Now whether Google is using or considering all these backlinks is the big question? Finding the exact number of backlinks you have in Google has always been a problem because Google is not giving you the exact number or at least this is the general opinion of most SEO experts.
Another way I monitor my links in Google is to place quotation marks around my site name or my name "bizwaremagic" or "titus hoskins" and do a search in Google. This gives me the pages containing references to me or my site. This is usually 50,000 to 100,000 pages, I have also noticed my online income usually correlates as this number goes up or down.
...................................................................
Checking Your Indexed Pages In Google
...................................................................
Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.
You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.
Just type into Google Search:
site:yourURL
A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google's Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as "second class" pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn't mean a supplementary index doesn't exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query.
...................................................................
Checking Your Google Cache
...................................................................
You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.
Just type into Google Search:
cache:yourURL
...................................................................
Checking Your PageRank Within Google
...................................................................
Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the heart of Google's ranking system created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; each link is considered a "vote" for your page and the higher the number of "votes" you have, the higher the PR your page receives. However, again Google is using "smoke and mirrors" to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank still counts, other say it doesn't.
You can check your Google PageRank here:
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker
From my own experiences, I have received more traffic when my site was at PR4 than I received when it was at PR6. What's important is getting high rankings for your targeted keywords... if you get top spots, it doesn't matter if your main index page (site) is PR4 or PR6, you're still get the same amount of traffic. In other words, don't become too fixated on PageRank because Google in many cases is not letting you see the true PR of a webpage.
I would like to add one point to the whole PageRank issue and that has to do with perception. If you're running an online business then having a PR8 site does matter for it will bring in more business and customers (especially if you're in the SEO industry) mainly because of the "perceived value" of your site or business.
What Google thinks does matter!
In other words, what Google thinks of your site can play a major role in your success. Mainly because, like it or hate it, Google has become the supreme authority on the web and what they say, counts. Therefore, you should always be paying special attention to just what Google is saying about your site and acting upon that knowledge accordingly.
About the Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Marketing Tools Everyone is profiting for Google, find out how you can too! Click here: Google Cash File Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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