WebPaws.com » Search Engine

PageRank: How to Rank Well with Google

webpaws — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:56:12 +0000

When trying to find information on the internet, you typically go to a search engine. When using the most popular search engine, Google, a user enters a query, Google’s machines search their index for matching pages and return the results that are the most relevant to the user. Google determines relevancy by over 200 factors, one of critical factors is the PageRank (PR) for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In more detail, PR can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web, i.e., that sums up all backlinks and their associated ranking weight. We assume page A has pages T1…Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations)[1]. The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages’ PageRanks will be one. Also, a PageRank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation. There are many other details which are beyond the scope of this article.

In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other [black-hat] practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content. It is not the quantity of backlinks, but the quality of backlinks that help you rank better in Search Engines. Having backlinks from unrelated or “bad” sites can actually penalize your ranking. Also a 1,000 poor quality backlinks may have less weight than 1 high quality backlink. Quality is very important in creating your backlinks.

How to determine a quality backlink?

A quality backlink will have these characteristics:

The theme of the backlinking website is similar to your website or web page
The backlink’s anchor text has the keyword or keyphrase that you are optimizing for
The backlinking webpage has a Google PageRank (important for Google SEO) of 1 or higher (the higher the better)
The backlinking webpage has few outgoing links, the fewer the better (see above equation as to why)

In order for your site to rank well in search results pages, it’s important to make sure that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. WebPaws.com uses Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and white-hat techniques using some of the best practices that can help your website avoid common pitfalls and improve your site’s ranking.

[1] The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998, Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

PageRank: How to Rank Well with Google is a post from: WebPaws.com

SEO Lesson 5 – Social Media

webpaws — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:55:28 +0000

Social Media

SEO Lesson 5

By WebPaws.com

Over the past several years, the rate of change in social media and search has changed the way SEO is applied to business websites to provide a high level of reach to their targeted audience. Standard website content now not only needs to be unique and useful but also more sociable. Integrating your content into the social networks will create more opportunities for expanding your content into the ever changing search indexes.

People gravitate towards simplicity and ease-of-use; hence computer web searches have surpassed written text research by over 200%. People are spending much more time on the Web creating and contributing to searchable content as well as searching for content. This new content comes in the form of blogs, comments, reviews, ratings, recommendations, etc. – all which enhances existing content with additional social context. This increased interaction with existing and new content has made social media visibility very important to search for various organizations, companies, brands, etc.

The white-hat methodology for optimizing desired search engine results or natural search visibility now needs to include social media visibility. You can’t buy SEO like in SEM (pay-per-click [PPC] ads like Google AdWords), but you can hire an SEO specialist to help your website earn its new improved rankings through hard work in XHTML/CSS, link-backs, visibility, proper content and placement, etc. SEO is not only based on site-side optimization, but also on link equity, or authority (authority is Google’s dominate criteria in its search engine algorithm). Social equity is also earned attention which also requires a lot of hard work and time in generating opportunities. While companies can advertise within social networks, the real social equity is getting talked about and engaging in valuable dialogue with consumers. This requires a different strategy than traditional SEO approaches to advertising and media to create this opportunity.

Social Equity

Social equity is an earned commodity, which like in traditional SEO, takes time to propagate through the search community, getting high rankings in the search indexes requires the proper management of many attributes of a webpage or other web content. Combining the equity of social media visibility with that of natural search visibility will yield a much higher return in brand targeted SERPs (Search Engine Result pages). As the search engines modify their search algorithms to incorporate social media it is very important to include social media into your internet marketing plan. Obvious tasks to make your business more social are to do the following:

create branded social media accounts in several mediums

twitter
facebook
YouTube
and others… depending on the content and media you will be able to propagate into these networks

add content into these networks, company info, website links and standard company content about your products, services, people, uniqueness to the
market, etceteras
manage these accounts, adding/approving friends, monitoring comments, interacting with your fans or followers on a daily or frequent basis
integrate these accounts into your main-stream website including the addition of allowing pieces of your content, pages, applications, etc. to be posted or talked about on other social networks.

To actually see positive results on a large scale can take at least 6 weeks depending on the frequency of social activities, the ability to tie these into your main site to provide back-links to those using your content in a social environment and targeting the proper audience to become social in that will accept your brand/message/service into their networks. Rewarding your social friends will help propagate your messages and increase the possible social interactions. WebPaws.com can help your business create a social equity plan to improve your website pull in natural search – social media visibility.

SEO Lesson 5 – Social Media is a post from: WebPaws.com

Which Search Engine do you use the more frequently? – Poll

webpaws — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:21:15 +0000

Which Search Engine do you use the more frequently?

Click the link below to open the poll and submit your response!

Check on the poll’s results over the next few weeks.

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/34832/rtuyg

Which Search Engine do you use the more frequently? – Poll is a post from: WebPaws.com

SEO – Keywords, Lesson 3

webpaws — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:57:15 +0000

A key factor in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the understanding of keywords, where they should be placed on a web page and how they may be weighted with relative value in a given web page for a SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

From a design standpoint, let us first work backwards with a keyword. Ultimately, when a person types a keyword or keyword phrase into a search engine query, they expect their query to lead them to a list of highly qualified website links. These links, once clicked and browsed into, will lead them to the answer, image, or result they are anticipating based the the keyword phrase they initially typed into the search engine query.

A search engine query may have the following three purposes: navigational, informational, or transactional and the purpose is also tied to the query (the question or selection of keywords to search on). The search engine algorithm will take the keywords and decide, based on the relationship of each word to each other in placement, verb tense, names, and overall meaning to decide what the most likely results should be. Each major search engine has it’s own algorithm and SERP based on the keywords or search phrase which is called a query.

The content of a webpage is reviewed by a search engine robot (bots/spiders) that searches the internet (web) for relevant content to index and store the results for various keyword groupings, again based on the specific search engine algorithm.

The bots that visit your website will try to follow as many relevant and working internal links, keep track of content relevance and score various key words based on the placement, use and relevance in content within the XHTML tags and properties, the semantic structure, the page’s title, meta data, and other elements of the web page.

There are several keyword tools to help analyze the popularity or effectiveness of the use of a keyword. These tools were designed to help SEM marketers evaluate keywords for use in search engine marketing campaigns. They also indicate the monetary value of a keyword phrase that may be used in an SEM or PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing campaign.

One example of a Keyword Tool is the Google AdWords tool found in the below link:

Keywords Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas based on an inputed keyword or phrase and whether you are looking for descriptive words or phrases or for website content. The tools results are tailored to the primary language and the geographical area selected for what terms people are actually searching for.

Keywords can easily be identified by the web page’s content, counting the reoccurence of various words and giving them some weight such as SEOBook’s Keyword Density Analyzer Tool, http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/, SEO Chat’s Keyword density tool, http://www.seochat.com/, and WebConf skeyword desnsity tool, http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php.

Keyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords in the copy (text content) of your webpage. It is important for your main keywords to not only have the proper keyword density, but also placement and use in the XHTML tags and properties to rank well in Search Engines.

Example Page

SEO and Keyword best practices

`SEO and Keyword practices`

Keywords are the primary source for search engines...
Keywords are Key to a successful marketing campaign employing SEO...
More content about SEO and...
In conclusion, keywords should be artfully placed and...

In the example page above, notice how the primary keyword is “keyword” and how and where it is used within the web page. The primary placement is in the tag within the head, followed by the main content in the <h1> tag and property of the h1 tag, then one of the first words in the first <p> tag, followed by a blockquote and then within the last <p> tag. Most search engines give the greatest weight to this type of placement schema.</p> <p>Make sure that your keyword targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can significantly impact your entire optimization experience. Choose keywords that are highly relevant to the content, affordable to your budget, but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Multiple keywords or your phrase selection should also be designed and targeted to bring qualified traffic to your webpage.</p> <p>Search engines give greater weight to a keyword if the content also includes various synonyms for your keywords within your body text on your webpage. Google uses these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page to your main target keywords, which in turn can help improve your placement within a SERP.</p> <p>Other places to use keywords include the domain, page specific URLs, link anchor text, image alt text, inline links and site navigation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The top SEs are: Google, Ikntomi, FAST, AltaVista and Teoma</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yahoo, who aquired Ikntomi, appears to give more weight to text matching when compared to Google, which seems to give more weight to concept matching.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This blog will be finished shortly, I must go to bed…</p> <br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.gdstarrating.com/"></a><br /><p><a href="http://webpaws.com/blog/54/seo-keywords-lesson-3/">SEO – Keywords, Lesson 3</a> is a post from: <a href="http://webpaws.com/blog">WebPaws.com</a></p> <div style="clear:both;"> </div> </article> <article> <h1>SEO – Search Engine Marketing, Lesson 1</h1> <p>webpaws — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:21:33 +0000</p> <h1>SEO Lesson 1</h1> <h4>by Ryne C Allen, WebPaws.com</h4> <div style="display:block, position:relative; float:left;"> <p>Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term used by Internet marketing professionals and website owners to describe the field, art, science or practice of optimizing a website to achieve top positions in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). A SERP is a listing of web pages, videos, images and other web content returned by a <span class="mw-redirect">search engine</span> (such as Google or Yahoo) in response to a <span class="mw-redirect">keyword</span> query.</p> <p>You need a strong and well built/designed base to achieve optimal SEO results over a long period of time. The base is the foundation of your website. Building your website properly will give you the best run for your money in regards to achieving optimal results in SEO marketing.</p> <div style="display:block, position:relative; float:right; margin:0 0 0 10px;"><script type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></div> <p>In a nutshell and without going into details, the base starts with a “business plan” or a concept of purpose with as much research as possible about your purpose. From this business plan you evolve the structure of your website to display your content (purpose), apply semantic structure and formatting that promotes proper usability and functionality and using building blocks of XHTML, CSS and other programs, scripts and web software that meet or exceed W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards helps to achieve this well built base of your website. The hand-crafted copy is then placed into this structure and is the muscle and partial skin of the website. CSS formating of the copy, adding multi-media items where appropriate (where you make a larger impact then with words alone) help build the skin and dress-up the website for user appeal, helping to increase user retention (time-on-site) and reduce the visitor bounce rate.</p> <p>Further details will be explored in future SEO lessons to include writing the copy of your web pages while applying proper semantic structure and keyword placement and density into the copy, XHTML and CSS tags, titles, names, links, <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">etceteras</span>.</p> <p>Further SEO lessons will include XHTML and XML sitemaps, Google and other SE Webmaster Tools, web page beta testing, website analytics, proper use of multi-media content, proper design of navigation and web page usability.</p> <p>Conclusion of this series will migrate into lead generation through SEO practices and then through SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which is where you pay for rankings (ads), leads and other marketing activities, listings and campaigns that require money to enable their deployment and generation. Some people in this field like to consider SEM the main Internet Marketing term making SEO a subset of SEM. I like to think of Internet Marketing being the main field, SEM and SEO as two specialties or variations of Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing, which for some businesses, may need to interact with main stream Marketing to bring a successfull marketing campaign to fruition.</p> </div> <br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.gdstarrating.com/"></a><br /><p><a href="http://webpaws.com/blog/8/seo-search-engine-marketing-lesson-1/">SEO – Search Engine Marketing, Lesson 1</a> is a post from: <a href="http://webpaws.com/blog">WebPaws.com</a></p> <div style="clear:both;"> </div> </article> </main></body></html>