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The Major Factors:
There are some constants in search engine optimization;
some factors that, by necessity, must be considered by all the major
engines. Fortunately for us, these factors are generally the most important.
Unfortunately, each of the engines uses them in different ways. Let's begin
by listing these factors:
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Age
Many of you will already be familiar with the aging delay that is
commonly referred to as "the sandbox". For those of you that aren't familiar
with it, the sandbox is a penalty that is applied to new sites and new links
under the assumption that they cannot play nicely with others. It is only
after time that the penalty is lightened and eventually disappears and the
site is left to play in the park with the rest of the "nice sites".
This penalty is applied most strongly by Google and to a lesser degree
Yahoo! On Google a new website cannot expect to rank for any competitive
phrases for between 6 and 8 months. Even then, the links that are being
built to this site still have to age so for most new sites competing for
high-competition phrases you're looking at a good year-or-so to see top
results though you'll likely see good results for many of your secondary
phrases well before then. The penalty is also applied by Yahoo! but to a far
lesser degree. The penalty on Yahoo is both shorter and lighter than that
applied by Google. MSN does not apply such a penalty at the time of this
writing.
Content
This is obviously a key feature across all the engines but again Yahoo!
and Google take the lead in penalizing sites that do not have a lot of
content related to a similar theme. Recently we have seen this act as mixed
blessing, at least on Google, with some major sites getting overlooked due
to a large amount of information on a wide variety of topics in exchange for
sites focused on a single topic, however with their recent tweaks they seem
to be balancing the overall content focus with other factors to create a
solid set of rankings that are relevant, will provide results that are more
likely to produce the desired information, and don't neglect sites that may
contain wide information on a wide variety of topics yet provide a good deal
of valuable content on the searches subject. Yahoo doesn't seem to be
catching up in this area with some holes in their results. That said, as
they are not "gamed" as much as Google they haven't had to put on such
strong filters and their results remain solid despite this.
It should be noted that the content does not necessarily have to contain
the same keywords to be considered related. The engines are getting far
better at determining themes of sites and knowing which words are related to
each other. For example, Google will view the word "personal" and
"personalized" as related by theme. You may not rank the same for both words
in a search however they are tied together and the use of one will help the
overall optimization for the other.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the overall percentage of your page content that is
made up of the targeted keywords. An additional factor in keyword density is
the percentage of your keyword content that uses special formatting such as
bold, italic, anchor text, etc. While keyword density is not the
end-all-be-all of SEO (there is no single factor that is) it is a factor and
one of the more difficult to optimize properly. While hitting specific
densities for both overall content and special formats is easy enough, it
becomes more difficult when you consider an area even more important than
optimization: your real-for-real human visitor!
One should try to attain near optimal keyword densities using a tool such
as Total Optimizer Pro (see below), GRKDA, or other similar software,
however one much always be aware of how the optimized content reads to your
visitors. It's important to keep your visitors in mind, your sales message
clear, and also remember that if you have to sacrifice a bit in one area
(like keyword density) it can be made up through stronger efforts in others
(such as link building).
Keyword density holds the most weight on MSN, followed by Yahoo! with
Google coming in last. This does not mean it should not be considered for
reasons that will follow below.
How A Site Fares In The Results
One factor that is not often discussed among SEO's and which is not known
to many outside the community is that how your site fares in the results is
a factor. This factor is a fairly recent addition but is sure top become a
stronger and stronger part of the overall algorithm as it matures. Google
pioneered this technology however Yahoo! appears to be following suit and
MSN is sure to do so as well considering that this is information that is
very easy for any engine to track and truly adds to the "democracy" of the
results in that it becomes the users "vote" that helps secure or topple a
high ranking site.
This factor breaks down as such; the search engine knows when you have
clicked on a result. They also know when you have returned to the results to
try another site. If a site shows up for a specific search query often yet
visitors tend to return to the results quickly after visiting the site the
engine can thus assume that the searcher did not find what they were looking
for on the site and thus the site can be deemed not relevant for that
phrase. This factor alone has far-reaching effects on a number of
traditionally non-SEO related factors and pulls them into the SEO-realm.
Content now has to be more captivating, navigation has to be clear and
easily accessed and the visitor has to be able to find the information that
they're looking for quickly and easily. If the searcher returns to the
search results quickly you will lose a point. If this happens often enough
you will lose positioning.
Site Structure
The way your site is structured determines how easily a search engine
spider can get through it, the priority is gives specific content, and how
much code the spider has to weed through to get to your content.
Essentially, having a structure that allows the spider to easily get through
your website, places the content areas as high up in the HTML code as
possible, and which minimizes the use of formatting code such as the font
tag, will increase the overall weight of the content and insure that the
content you want the spiders to focus on is what they "see" early on.
Many sites are structured such that the actual content doesn't appear
until half-way down the page as far as the HTML code is concerned. Having a
content area that starts at line 174 in the code is not a good start when it
comes to SEO. While there is no specific answer as to what line the content
area should start, using proper table structures or better yet, tableless
design practices using CSS can greatly increase the weight your content is
given. Using CSS again we can significantly reduce the need for formatting
code, further reducing the amount of coding that the search engine has to go
through to get to the content.
The higher up in your HTML the content lies the greater the weight it is
given. Optimized site structure, especially in moderate to high competition
industries, is one of the first steps one can take to secure a competitive
advantage over one's competition.
Backlinks
Ah backlinks. Once upon a time simply securing mass numbers of links to
your site using whatever means available was enough to rocket sites to the
top of the rankings. Fortunately for search engine users this is no longer
the case. With backlinks, as with websites in general, it's quality that
counts. While there are numerous factors regarding the value of a link (many
of which were discussed in the article, "SEO For Google") the basics are:
Age. The older the link the more weight it has. (Google and Yahoo!) Link
location. Links higher up on the page hold more weight. (All three) Link
location two. Links occurring within content hold more weight that a
directory-style link. (Google and Yahoo! to a lesser degree) Anchor text and
formatting. The anchor text and the use of special formats in the text
affect a link's weight. (All three) Relevancy. The relevancy of the site
linking to you. (Google and Yahoo predominantly) Number of links. The more
links there are on a single page, the less valuable the link to your site
from that page is. (All three) Non-recip links. Non-reciprocal links hold
more weight than reciprocal links. (Google and Yahoo! to a lesser degree)
Authority sites. Links from authority sites (.gov, .edu and respected news
and information related) hold more weight. (Google and Yahoo! predominantly
and MSN to a lesser degree)
Tying It Together
Knowing all this one must assess the best course of action when launching
into a new SEO campaign. For the purposes of this conclusion we will assume
that the keywords we are targeting are in the moderate to high competition
levels. In this event one must balance the various factors and timelines to
produce the highest ROI in the short term with an eye on maximum benefit in
the long term. What we mean by this is that with aging delays occurring on
Google and to a lesser degree Yahoo! one should focus first on MSN. This
means that when you are adjusting your keyword densities and tweaking the
onsite factors early in the campaign you will want to focus on hitting
optimal levels for MSN knwoing that Google, regardless of what you do, is
unlikely to rank you highly for your primary phrases for some time.
Your link building efforts will need to take into account the long-term
objective of ranking highly on Google with an understanding that MSN is not
going to penalize your newly created backlink with aging delays. A balance
of speed vs. perfection will be required. All the links you build should be
relevant (if your visitors wouldn't be interested in going to the site then
don't link to it) however if you can't always get inline links or your link
will appear lower on the page you will still want to secure it.
After time (assuming that the right tactics have been used) you will
notice your MSN rankings improve. This is a good benchmark for how your site
will fare overall. Once you are ranking well on MSN it's time to focus your
attention on Yahoo! At this stage you will want to slowly shift the onsite
optimization towards Yahoo! You may be asking, "Am I about to lose my MSN
rankings?" Good question and the answer should be, "no" if you're continuing
on the right path. Non-optimal levels in one area can be offset by increased
strength in another. While you are slowly shifting the onsite optimization
away from MSN's optimal levels you are continuing to develop more and more
links further strengthening your site in this area to make up the
difference.
After a couple months you will notice your Yahoo! rankings improving. A
general timeline would be (assuming you are working diligently at it and are
targeting fairly competitive phrases with a new site):
- 2 - 3 months: MSN rankings secured
- 4 - 6 months: Yahoo! rankings improving
- 6 - 8 months: Yahoo! rankings secured and Google improving. Many
secondary phrases are attained on Google.
- 8 - 12 months: Google rankings secured.
The timelines will be quite different if you are working with an existing
site (i.e. it has a solid history and a good PageRank already), are
targeting less competitive phrases, and a variety of other considerations.
Conclusion
The path is not an easy one (or SEO's would be out of their jobs) however
with hard work and perhaps more importantly, constant work it can be done.
Remember, there are currently 10 sites sitting on the first page. Match what
they did, do 10% better and you will be there too.
Resources
Below are a few important resources to help you on your path to higher
rankings:
Total Optimizer Pro (http://www.totaloptimizer.com/) - Total Optimizer
Pro is the tool we use for onsite and offsite competition reporting
including keyword density and backlink analysis.
Google's Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html)
- They're put out by Google but apply to all the major engines. Add this one
to your favorites and reference it often.
Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) - Great source for
news and articles on the search engines in general. They also give great
coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conferences when they're being
held.
Note: There are resources specific to each engine in the first three
articles in this series noted above.
About The Author:
Dave Davies is the CEO of the Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc
http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/ .
Beanstalk is an SEO company that is proud to offer guaranteed services on
all their packages. Dave Davies is also available to provide SEO training
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/services/training.htm) to individuals, web
developers or IT teams. Beanstalk would like to extend its sincere
appreciation to Metro Hi Speed (http://www.metrohispeed.com/) for providing
us with our new toll free Internet fax services. We can now be faxed at
800-979-3215.
May 2006
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