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Internet World Stats> Internet Coaching> SEM
Search Engine Marketing
and Website Optimization 101
By Enrique De Argaez,
webmaster
In search engine marketing (SEM),
there are many terms and activities that cause confusion. For
example, some firms that specialize in search engine optimization
(SEO) are involved in search engine advertising, then there are
search engine marketers that optimize websites. SEM and SEO are
two different things, this article will try to clarify the
different meanings and how they relate to the overall website
optimization and search marketing process.
Search engine marketing (SEM) encompasses a wide variety of
skills such as search engine optimization, directory paid
inclusion, search engine paid inclusion, vertical search, keyword
selection, search engine advertising and several other
elements.
From a practical point of view, in SEO, the object is to get
high rankings in the search engine results. In SEM the mission is
different and the object is to get as much targeted traffic as
possible. This article will address the various elements that
take part in the process, the terms used in the business, their
different meanings and how they fit into the Search Engine
Marketing picture.
Ever wonder how or why your competitor gets better search engine
rankings than you do? Does he know something you don’t?
Well, maybe he actually does know something that you didn't know
till today, that is, so without further ado, read on this SEM
101.
We will not get involved too deeply in the procedures, we will
explain the meanings, and why each term is important in the
optimization process.
Search Engine Spiders
Search engine spiders are also known as crawlers. Search
engine spiders find and fetch Web pages, and build a list of
words found on each Web page.
If a search engine is unable to spider a page, then it cannot
include the information about that page in the search engine
results pages (SERPs). Common reasons that search engines are
unable to spider a site include:
· Problematic site navigation schemes
· Problematic URL structures
· Poor crosslinking
· Web server issues
Interestingly, your Web analytics software (WebTrends,
ClickTracks, Omniture, Urchin, Hitbox, etc.) will tell you how
often your site is crawled by search engine spiders. If you
change your content frequently, search engine spiders will
revisit your site more frequently because search engine companies
want to deliver the most accurate, current, and relevant search
results.
However, a page will not rank higher just because a spider
visits your site more frequently. Spidering and ranking are quite
different processes. The terms spider/crawler, index, and rank
have three completely different meanings that we will try to
clarify.
The search engine index
After a search engine is able to spider a page and records
the words and phrases on a page, it places that data into an
index. Whenever you perform a search on Google, for example, the
data about a URL is stored in the search engine index. Some
search engine marketers call the index a "search engine
database."
A page can be included in a search engine index but not have
rank. However, a page cannot rank unless it is in the search
engine index.
Web site owners should monitor their sites' index count every
month. An index count is the number of pages that are in the
search engine indices. Each search engine has its own way of
determining the index count. This can be done manually or with
the help of specialized tools.
The following are current ways of determining the index count of
your site in the main search engines:
· AltaVista
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· Google and Teoma
site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
· FAST Search
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· MSN Search
site:yourdomain.com
· Yahoo
site:yourdomain.com or domain:yourdomain.com
Take the time to perform these types of searches. Do not rely on
link popularity checkers and other software that perform
automated queries to the search engines. Unless the software
owners have permission from Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Teoma and
other search engines to perform these queries (none of them do),
the results might not be accurate. This is evident if you compare
the results you obtain from using the various tools and observing
the great variation in the results.
In case you are pressed for time and need to use a tool, try
the PR Search . This is a new search engine checker that is free and
allows you to check how your website is positioned in Google and
Yahoo. It also works as a search engine and gives you the page
rank of each site.
If your web pages are not included in a particular search engine
index, this may be due to the site having problems with server
issues, site navigation, or URL structure. In addition, a site
can be spidered by a search engine but not necessarily be
included in the search engine index.
Search engine rankings
Okay everyone, repeat after me: No SEO knows what the search
engine algorithm is. Say it five times. Say it 10 times. Say it
100 times or say it more until it sinks in.
No search engine marketer knows what a search engine's algorithm
is. Nice sales pitch, but one that is just not true.
No one knows exactly how a search engine ranks Web pages. What
ethical search engine marketers do is follow the terms and
guidelines set forth by the search engines. Unethical search
engine marketers try to exploit the loopholes in the terms and
guidelines. It is often the unethical search engine marketers who
claim to know Google's search engine algorithm.
Search engine rankings tend to rely on
three components:
1. Keyword rich text - A page must
contain the words and/or phrases that people type into search
queries.
2. Search engines must be given easy
access to that text.
3. Other people must consider a page's
content to be valuable. If a person thinks content is valuable,
that person tends to link to the page that contains the
content.
Of course, no search engine measures these components in the
same manner. For example, all search engines remove common words
from a page, called stop words or filter words. Filter words are
common words (a, an, of, or, and, the) that the search engines
ignore during a search. Search engines filter out these words
because using these words in a search query can slow down the
retrieval of search results without improving accuracy.
Google's stop word list is not going to be the same as Yahoo's
stop word list. Additionally, no keyword density checker (from
any search engine marketer) is going to have the same stop word
list as Google. Likewise, each search engine measures link
popularity in a different way.
Does that mean that you have to create different pages for
different search engines? Of course not. A well-written,
user-friendly, and spider-friendly site can get plenty of traffic
from all of the search engines without resorting to search engine
spam.
So remember, being ranked in a search engine does not have the
same meaning as being indexed in a search engine.
Improving Search Engine Rankings
There are two fundamental elements in any website that can help
its position in SE rankings. If you know this, you can improve
how your site ranks without forking out a lot of money to the
search engines or to the so called SEO experts. The two main
elements for improving web site rankings are:
1. Content (which is king)
2. Linking (which is queen)
It is not that difficult. It really is quite simple, so read on
as we unlock the secret chest of information that your
competition is probably using to get better rankings. The rewards
could be a nice surprise in your SE rankings.
Content is King
Content is easily viewable and just as easy to measure. It
essentially includes what you see on the site: that is, the text.
If your competition has more text than you, consider increasing
yours; if he has more keywords, consider increasing yours; if he
has bigger headers, consider increasing yours. By all means, we
are not suggesting to make a carbon copy of his site, but to look
at the on-site factors that your site may be lacking, then
evaluating whether to increase them.
A note of caution: Make sure that any changes you make actually
improve the site and increase its value for your customers. In
other words, never sacrifice quality for quantity unless you
believe that the added text actually serves to better the overall
look, feel and quality of your site. I have gotten a PR5 for a
very small page with very small text, but with the right outbound
links. I have also had the bad experience of a PR7 page go to PR5
just because we added one bad link.
Some ideas to increase the quality and the quantity of your
website content:
- Write a monthly article about your
topic
and upload it to your site
- Write a page about your main key
phrase,
product or service
- If your headers don’t have your
key phrase
in them, then be sure to add it
- Make sure the titles on all your pages
relate
to the content of the page
- Write, write, write (and then write some
more).
- Check the spelling and avoid typos.
Linking is Queen
Linking requires more research. Look up a competitor's site
on Google by typing in: link: http://www.competitorsdomain.com/
into the search box (replace competitorsdomain with the URL of
your competitor). The results page that you will see is a list of
all the sites that link to your competitor. Go through that list,
and for each site, figure out how he got that link. Some links
might be paid, some might be link exchanges, some might be
directories like dmoz.org or Yahoo! and others might be
references or testimonials.
Make a spreadsheet with each site linking to your competition,
and jot down how he got the link. Then, for each site that is
appropriate, get it to link to you. Remember to stay away from
link farms and low quality links. Link farms are sites that have
nothing but links. Low quality links are sites with little to no
content. These sites will often try to exchange links with you:
don’t do it! Only link to a site if it will enhance the
experience of your users.
Getting links takes time and patience, and writing is not
usually done overnight. To top it off, once these projects are
done, you then have to wait for the search engines to discover
and re-evaluate your site. Both the link campaign and the writing
projects should be regular activities, rather than something you
do as a one-shot injection. Try to create new pages every month,
and to add to your links every month. That way your site will
gradually climb to the top.
…And that’s all for now. I hope that this 101 has
been useful and given you a quick view of the secret tricks of
the trade that may help you get that much-needed edge over your
competitor in search engine rankings, without skipping a beat or
spending an arm and a leg.
Take care,
Ricky
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About the Author:
Enrique De Argaez is the webmaster of the "Internet World Stats" website. Since
2000 he has been collecting Internet Usage Statistics, and
publishing the data for over 233 countries and regions of the
world for free use by the academia, the global business community
and the general public. For more information on Internet World
Usage, please visit: http://www.InternetWorldStats.com
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