Search Engine Optimisation

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

How does a webpage get ranked in the search engine?

Search engines work out ranking by using a mathematical algorithm.  Each search engine is different in the way algorithms work.  One of the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page.  Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning. Frequency of keywords is a major factor in how search engines determine relevancy.

 

How do I get to the top 10 of the search engine results?

There is no doubt that this is one of most asked questions.  There is no doubt too that as a company in a niche market you want your website to rank high in the search engine results, if not at number 1 position. 

There are many ways to draw traffic to your website and one of the best ways is to be found on the internet in places like Google, yahoo or MSN. 

To start with your web page must contain relevant content that relates to the products or services that you are offering.  Search engines are not human and rely on the text of the page to inform them what the information is being offered from that web page.   You need to ensure that your keywords, (phrases used to search for your website) are repeated throughout the text.  This should not be done too often,  as stuffing a web page with the same keywords will actually make the search engine rank it lower.  You should also use the keyword in the title tag.  Using the keyword naturally throughout the page is a good policy.

Using back links, or incoming links to your website is essential.  This is one of the most beneficial ways to increase your ranking.  Incoming links should be from relevant sources, in other words sources related to your own industry.  The back link text should be related to your keywords.  There are many ways to find places for your back links such as blogs, forums, article and directories.  Another method is to contact a webmaster of another site and request a link, or offer to provide content.  In many ways it is like getting a vote, the more links there are the more popular the website.

Another good way to help increase ranking is to add more content to your website.  The reason for this is that the website will get spidered more often by search engines.  With good internal linking structures your website will be seen to be offering new fresh content, and this will grab the attention of the search engine bots.
It takes time to increase your ranking in the search engines because it takes extra effort to ensure that your website is marketed properly.  To get to the first page in a search engine requires many different internet marketing techniques, time and effort!

 

 

Why does my site rank well in MSN/Yahoo but not in Google?

Google has a vastly different algorithm to MSN and Yahoo.  Google tends to put more value in off-page factors (incoming links) than MSN and Yahoo.  With MSN and Yahoo on-page factors (page titles and content) seem to have a greater influence on a page.

Many websites tend to rank well in MSN and Yahoo before they rank well in Google as it takes time to acquire the backlinks required to influence Google's rankings.

 

 

What is Google’s PageRank?

As explained by Wikipedia:-
Quote:

PageRank is a patented method (an algorithm) to assign a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E). PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine, which still has PageRank as a key element.

 

 

 

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