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Can you "beat" the Search Engines?
This entry was posted on 4/14/2006 11:01 AM and is filed under SEO.
One of the most widely discussed, and hotly debated, topics currently underway is the question of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The forums, blogs and so forth are packed with information of all sorts. Some good, some bad, and some just outrageous. An entire cottage industry has developed around this issue, with a number of people making a very good living as a result.
There is no question that optimizing your site to the extent possible is an important function. The operative phrase here, however, is "to the extent possible". You can burn a whole lot of time on energy trying to follow every last "tip" you get for SEO (nevermind the fact that some of these tips turn out to be contradictory). I have recently seen several ads that state, more or less, for a fee "we will get you a top 10 rating".
Now, let's just examine that for a minute. What happens if 15 companies, all selling the same type of product, pay their bucks to get that "top 10" ranking? If they sell the same product, then they are pretty much going to be using the same keywords. So, if you are going to optimize 15 sites selling the same product, and guarantee each of them a top 10 ranking, how exactly does that work? It must be the new math.
Let's look at the web hosting market as an example. There are tens of thousands of hosting companies. Here at webhosting-123.com, we are a small company. So how is it we can overtake GoDaddy, Yahoo/SBC, Earthlink and all the "big boys" in the rankings? Doesn't really compute does it? Of course, we could be told by these modern day alchemists to insert the keyword phrase "one-eyed llamas" into our text and metatags. That way, when someone searches on "one-eyed llamas", we will most certainly come up high in the rankings. I wonder how many people search for that. But hey, if they do, maybe I'll get a sale. You think? On the other hand, I suppose it's possible we could get a high ranking using standard web hosting keywords on some obscure search engine out there (there are a zillion of them). But then, there is a reason so many of the search engines are obscure. It's called lack of traffic.
I'm sure those who offer you a top 10 ranking are most likely refering to a Pay-Per-Click arrangement such as Google's AdSense. Guess what? That's not SEO. That is paying for ads. It's not the same thing as getting a high ranking in the standard search engine results pages. I can pay for AdSense myself without going through a third-party. And that AdSense "high ranking" is only good as long as you keep shelling out the money for the placement.
To get to my point (and I do have one), yes, it is important to take some steps to help your rankings. It is equally important to avoid doing things that will wind up getting your site "penalized" in the ranking system.
Content
First and foremost, it's all about content. We are talking about text content here; relevant content. Search engines love content rich sites. Flash intro screens may be all the rage, but they tend to make search engines barf. They can't pick up any discernible content from that. Same thing applies to sites that have more graphics than content. Pleasing to look at, but the search engine spiders don't actually have eyes. As it relates to SEO, you can actually wind up shooting yourself in the foot by making your site too flashy.
So when you design your site, make sure it includes lots of text-based information. You also want to make sure that the keywords you believe people will search for are used within that text (one-eye llamas not included). If at all possible, you also want to have more than just a few pages. The best recommendations I have seen say a minimum of 20 pages is where you want to be. Spiders just love to crawl around interconnected pages. They get absolutely delirious doing that.
A number of years ago, many webmasters used a little trick of embedding and repeating "hidden" keywords on their pages. This is done by having text the same color as the background. For instance, if someone ran a dog grooming site, they would place "dogs" and "grooming" on the page in all the available areas not used by visible text. The spiders are pretty smart, and they catch on to things like that. Don't use this technique. The spiders see it for what it is and will actually penalize a site for "keyword spamming" as a result.
Spiders also love "fresh" or new information. Sites that don't change much tend to bore them. But they just love it when they come back to a site and see all this new information. So try to add new content as often as possible. Two great techniques for this are discussion forums and blogs. If you can get other people to participate in your forums and blogs, they in effect, provide content for you. Fresh content. The spider will be happy.
Meta Tags
Most spiders don't really pay that much attention to meta tags, but there are some things you can do to make sure you don't get the spiders upset about that spamming thing. Your Title tag should be short and concise; no more than 60 characters or so. Same thing for the description tag: short, concise, and containing some of your keywords. Maximum length shouldn't be more than around 160 characters.
We all put our keywords in the keyword meta tag, even though we know that most modern spiders don't care. But there are things you can do that will hurt more than help. Spiders really don't like seeing the same keyword over and over; about three times for any particular word is enough. Using the dog grooming analogy again, having your keyword list contain dog, dogs, dog grooming, grooming dogs, dog salon, and so forth is NOT a good idea. This is more keyword spamming. If you can't think of a more varied list of words or phrases, then just keep it to a few relevant words. You also want to keep the total character count for keywords to no more than 120 or so.
Links
Spiders, being the nosy little critters that they are, like to peek into the bedroom to see who is visiting your site. The more "referral" links you have (links to your site from other sites) is one of the factors they consider when determining page ranking. Of course, link quality matters. Having people come to your site from cnn.com or ebay.com carries alot more weight than having them come from one-eyed-llamas.com.
Try to get as many other sites to link to you as possible (many sites offer a reciprocal link feature). You have to work at this. It may cost you a little money, but putting ads on sites such as classifiedads.com or others like that certainly won't hurt. For a small fee, classifiedads.com will "blast" your add to thousands of other ad sites. This serves two purposes. First, if your site is for business, it may get you sales or leads. Second, your site link will be distributed to other potential "referrer sites". Even if you have to pay to get your ads or banners on larger sites, it may be worth it.
Site Map
A site map is nothing more than a page that provides a "road map" to all the other pages on your site. The spiders seem to like this (there is some debate) because if provides an easy means for them to access all the other pages you have. This can be particularly effective if you have a content-rich site.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but if you use these techniques they should certainly help your page ranking. They might not get you into the top 10, but they should get you out of the basement. On the other hand, you could pay your money to those who promise to get you that top 10 ranking. Let me know how that turns out.
-Ray email: ray@webhosting-123.comsite: http://www.webhosting-123.com
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