What Is Page Rank

First, a short résumé on what page rank is. Google has a formula based upon links to and from other web pages, both internally between page sin your own website, and externally, between your web pages and those of other websites. The more links back from other web pages to a page on your own website, the higher page you get. The more links away from pages on your website to other web pages, the lower page rank that page gets. It is therefore a balancing act.
The reason for this is that Google decided that the more web pages linking to yours, then the more relevant your page must be to the search term (keyword) concerned. Your page must be important for other pages to be linked to it. This is fine as far as that definition goes, but once webmasters understood this, they began to link with each other until, we have a situation today whereby these links are automatically created by means of software, and the content of the linked pages is irrelevant.
However, until Google tackles this problem, right now the Google formula applies irrespective of the relevance of each linking web page. More detailed information is available on the internet, including the links I provide at the end of this article if you need more information on what Page Rank really is.

Is SEO Important?

Some web pages can get listed on Google and other search engines with very little content, and only a large number of links. I have seen examples, and many forum postings on this, but whenever I investigate these sites they appear to be listed only for fairly obscure keywords that are not popularly used.
My opinion is that on-site SEO is very important, but when sites are equally optimized, then the links from other sites become relevant. There is probably a part of the search engine algorithm that includes an element of back-link density in the primary calculation, but I do not believe that onsite SEO is less important than link density.
My reasons for this belief are the results that I can get with my websites/pages with maximum onsite search engine optimization as far as I know how to do it, in relation to those web pages that I have not optimized, but added lots of links to. The optimized pages always do better that the sites with only back-links.

Page Rank Refers to Pages not Websites

Keep in mind that it is only web PAGES that Page Rank and ‘link density’ applies to, and not the whole website. Hence, if you are linked to a page on a website, the home page of which has a PR of 8, this figure ‘8’ is irrelevant to your share of the PR of the page to which you are linked. Most pages have a PR of ZERO, and that is the benefit you get. Zero!
Therefore, when linking to other websites, check out the Page Rank of the page on which your link appears. That is the ranking of you receive a share. Not the home page of the site. Some webmasters will try to con you and state that “because you are linking to high PR website, the link you provide should be on your Home Page”. That is because a Home Page is normally ranked higher because it is the page that most people optimize as much as they can. It is normally the Home Page that is first listed in Google and Yahoo, and is listed the highest.
This is proof to me that SEO is not dead, and that Page Rank and links to and from other web pages is a ploy used by many who have poor content on their website. I know that good search engine optimization wins every time and that links can make the difference between sites with similar SEO and relevance to the search term used by the search engine user.
So, has Google Page Rank killed off SEO: absolutely not, and good search engine optimization on your web pages will provide you with a higher listing that if you relied purely on links. My reason for this belief is my own experience in getting rapid high listings in the major search engines when my website is correctly designed and optimized.
Don’t listen to the theorists offering Page One listings to everybody: logic tells you that it is impossible for all customers using the same keyword to have a Page One listing, let alone Number One, as many advertise.
Don’t even try to learn the theory – it is too complex and the search engines keep changing the rules. Learn from others’ successes. Do what they do exactly and you will be OK. SEO will always win – Page Rank is a fad that will last only until Google cottons on to how it is being abused. True search engine optimization will never fail to succeed. Google Page Rank will never kill off good SEO. Write naturally and provide good information on your web pages. That will always work. Period!
Peter normally has his new websites listed on Google, Yahoo and MSN within two days, and consistently gets high search engine listings. His website Improved Search Engine Rank offers to show you how exactly how he does it, including how Page Rank and SEO can be used together to achieve the highest listings for your keyword.

Article marketing has grown exponentially over the last couple of years due to the now mainstream knowledge of the impact that it can have for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes and even for the author’s name branding. Arguably the most common purpose for the article marketing method is for search engine optimization, which is ironic because the majority of people who employ article marketing tactics for SEO purposes are actually hurting themselves by creating more competition for their own websites. Article marketing – what it is
Article marketing is just what the name implies; it’s a marketing tactic that relies on the use of articles. To explain it in a simple manner, an article is written and submitted to article directories where hopefully that article will be picked up by other website owners and published on their websites as well. The benefit for article marketing is derived from the “about the author” blurb where the article author can either build credibility for themselves as a writer or they can improve the search engine rankings for their website with the use of keyword focused anchor text on the link back to their website.
Article marketing is considered a viral marketing method because from a single article one can obtain dozens or even hundreds of references to their name and website, which is why article marketing is regarded as a highly effective marketing tactic.
Of course, success with article marketing depends on a number of factors. One’s success with article marketing will depend on how well the article is written, the locations where the article is initially published as well as the overall demand for the topic that the article is written on. An article written about search engine optimization will likely garner more attention and be picked up by more website owners than an article about the mating habits of African bumblebees because information about search engine optimization is in greater demand than the mating habits of bees.

Article marketing for SEO – the biggest mistake

The biggest mistake that is regularly made by novice article marketers is that they are actually creating more competition for their websites. Unfortunately, this mistake is not limited only those who are new to article marketing; this mistake is being made every day by well meaning, but severely misguided search engine optimization firms, which can negatively affect their clients’ websites.
Effective SEO article marketing relies on creation of an article that is topically related to the submitter’s website, but not in direct competition for the keywords being targeted on that website. As an example, if you have a website that is about web hosting and your website’s target keyword phrase is ‘Best web hosting services’, you absolutely do not want to write an article for use with article marketing that focuses on the phrase ‘Best web hosting services’. You can write about any number of web hosting topics such as reseller hosting, shared hosting, dedicated web hosting, but you do not want to submit an article that will compete with your website for the keyword phrase you are targeting.
The reasoning for this is simple; prominent article directories likely have a higher value to search engines than your website. If you submit an article to a website that has a higher value to search engines than your website does, the article submitted to article directories will likely outrank your website for your intended keywords or phrases; i.e. you’ve created competition for your website. This is not even taking into consideration other website owners that may pick up your article for placement on their website; you may inadvertently create hundreds of competitors for your keywords or keyword phrases from a single article submission.

Don’t create your own competition

The best advice for those who are using article marketing for SEO purposes is to not create competition for your website. By writing a topically related article that is not competing for the keywords you are optimizing your website for, you will avoid creating new competition for your website and likely enjoy a bigger benefit from your article marketing endeavors.
James Drakner offers a freelance ghost writing service; professional ghost writing at affordable rates. http://freelanceghostwriter.com

There are three main ‘tiers’ to search engine optimization: the internal, the external, and the all-too-important website content itself. While the internal and external factors have everything to do with server issues and link popularity plus, the content portion of a website is a large piece of the SEO pie. To add to the mix, all too often this important content needs to be placed into the hands of end users within the company, and therefore they must opt for a system to keep their website up to date. This article addresses this content management system dilemma from an SEO point of view.

I was originally contacted by a community college that needed a solution that would allow their different departments to update their website via web-based methods. More importantly, it must be SIMPLE TO USE as most of these updaters or “users” had very little knowledge of computers. Many had little or no experience with Microsoft Word, so simplicity was a MUST.

The second dilemma was a little harder. Knowing that I was an SEO specialist, they needed me to either design or find a Content Management System that would allow their site to be SEO compliant. It was important that their current and potential students be able to find their site using search engines, both quickly and easily.

Prior to the start of this project, they had someone in-house do a little bit of research. The Savvy software was recommended as a solution to the end user problem, but they needed me to review the software for search engine compliancy. I took one afternoon and spent some time on the phone with the company, asking detailed questions about the software and how it’s built.

I found that this company had done their SEO homework prior to building this software. They did a remarkable job handling the often overlooked, yet extremely important SEO compliancy issues. They addressed many issues that most CMS’s do not.

1. Savvy is software you can install on your own web server or host.
Owning the software allows you to choose your own web host – one that is not listed on a spam list. If your site is hosted on a computer that also hosts known spammers, your website is often also penalized for spam since it resolves near the same IP address of the spammer. With the ability to install the software on the host of your choice, you have the option to choose a “clean” server. In addition, if you are required to use the host of the software, your domain name is being pointed, or redirected to your site. However, if the redirect is not programmed a particular way, it can be considered a type of spam for which Google penalizes. Make sure you have control over your software and your web host server.

2. Page names are SEO compatible.
Search engines frown upon urls such as www.reneescomputerhelp.com/page.asp?ID=23451fjdlks34565. Savvy creates pages with names like this: www.reneescomputerhelp.com/seo/index.cfm which is completely search engine friendly and avoids complicated parameters that search engines tend to avoid or deny spidering altogether.

3. Templates can be built with SEO in mind, so that every page created using these templates is search engine friendly.
By strategic use of CSS or tables (if one must), the layout of the template code can become search engine optimized – meaning any page created with this “SEO Template” is also search engine compliant. For example:
One of Google’s 106+ algorithmic variables is the analyzation of the first 200 words of the body. Many times web developers unwittingly design the site so that other things, like navigation for instance, precedes the body copy, and therefore it is considered by Google to be the first 200 words of the content. If this occurs over several pages within the website, it begins to look to Google like every page is the same since the first 200 words of every page are the same.

Savvy gives the webmaster power to design “SEO Templates.” The next step is to teach the end user to adequately write the content to be search engine optimized. During Savvy end user training, I usually include a 30 minute session on the requirements needed for their content to be ‘likable’ by the Google mathematical algorithm. There are several simple steps that an end user can usually follow without complication of any sort. It’s also made easier in that the WYSIWYG editor in Savvy compliments the need for these steps by utilizing well-thought-out editing tools.

4. Savvy’s editing tools make it easy to teach end users not only to update their pages, but how to make them search engine compliant, and in some cases, even search engine optimized.
Headings, bold type, alternative text for images and more, all play an important role in search engine compliancy. With Savvy’s editing tools in the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, a 30 minute session on search engine optimization can teach the end user how to appropriately apply these features within their text to make their pages at least search engine compliant and at other times optimized. Remember, compliant means that search engines will ‘eat’ it, but ‘optimized’ mean it’s the search engine’s ‘favorite food.’

5. Savvy gives you power over your meta data.
The most important meta tag in a web page is its Title tag. When creating a new page, Savvy gives you the opportunity to write not only the Title tag, but the Description and Keywords as well. The User Manager in Savvy controls the rights given to end users as to whether they are allowed to edit the meta data or not. It would be best that only those trained in SEO write the meta data. Remember one thing though: Content on your page is KING and always will be, but the next most important is the page’s Title Tag. Most other CMS’s assign page titles for you and leave you with no control over this important SEO issue.

6. Savvy’s navigational features render text links.
“Anchor text” is an important factor in search engine optimization. Anchor text, the text used in a link to a particular page, is not only relevant from external links, but also from within your site. Structuring your site so that your key phrases are used in anchor texts to point to your most important landing pages is one of the keys of good SEO navigation. Savvy’s navigation, using CSS (cascading style sheets) to control the look and feel, renders text links that are easily spidered by search engines and gives the end user power to control the anchor text and therefore, the overall structure of the site for search engine optimization.

After careful review of Savvy, I determined that it was an excellent solution to resolve the need for a content management system as well as the need for SEO compliancy / optimization. I’ve used Savvy now for several web clients and all clients can be found on Google easily by typing a portion of their company name. You may even find the specific pages for a department if you type the company name and its department. Too often a website can’t be found for even its company name, but Savvy has set up their CMS to win in the area of SEO; even if you’re looking to optimize your site for keywords and phrases other than your company name. Savvy allows for well-developed sites that Google can spider and give their searchers the relevant results they need from you. Savvy makes both the client and Google happy.

Renee Wasula
http://www.reneescomputerhelp.com
renee@reneescomputerhelp.com

Remember that consumers and businesses are increasingly using Google, Yahoo and MSN to search for products, services and brands. You need a high level of visibility, especially for brand-related searches. This guide has been created to help you ethically boost your search rankings.

Key topics to improve your results from SEO
- Techniques for advanced keyphrase analysis
- Developing an integrated search engine marketing strategy across paid and natural search
- Improve your page inclusion and reporting using Google Sitemaps
- Detailed coverage of on-page optimization factors including document meta data, copywriting and code structure explaining the factors which really matter.
- How to increase your click-through rate in the search engine results page
- 10 complementary SEO strategies for refining site architecture
- How to plan and execute a link-building campaign
- 10 key factors to improve landing page effectiveness

Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results to users. However, there is and will always be a limit to how search engines can operate. Whereas the right moves can net you thousands of visitors and attention, the wrong moves can hide or bury your site deep in the search results where visibility is minimal. In addition to making content available to search engines, SEO can also help boost rankings, so that content that has been found will be placed where searchers will more readily see it. The online environment is becoming increasingly competitive and those companies who perform SEO will have a decided advantage in visitors and customers.

How much of this article do I need to read?

If you are serious about improving search traffic and are unfamiliar with SEO, I recommend reading this guide front-to-back. There's a printable MS Word version for those who'd prefer, and dozens of linked-to resources on other sites and pages that are worthy of your attention. Although this guide is long, I've attempted to remain faithful to Mr. Strunk's famous quote:
"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."
Every section and topic in this report is critical to understanding the best known and most effective practices of search engine optimization.

How Search Engines Operate

Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.
1. Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.
2. Indexing Documents
Once a page has been crawled, it's contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.
3. Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magazine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Findall" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car" "driver" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.
4. Ranking Results
Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.
Although a search engine's operations are not particularly lengthy, systems like Google, Yahoo!, AskJeeves and MSN are among the most complex, processing-intensive computers in the world, managing millions of calculations each second and funneling demands for information to an enormous group of users.

Speed Bumps & Walls

Certain types of navigation may hinder or entirely prevent search engines from reaching your website's content. As search engine spiders crawl the web, they rely on the architecture of hyperlinks to find new documents and revisit those that may have changed. In the analogy of speed bumps and walls, complex links and deep site structures with little unique content may serve as "bumps." Data that cannot be accessed by spiderable links qualify as "walls."

Possible "Speed Bumps" for SE Spiders:

•URLs with 2+ dynamic parameters; i.e. http://www.url.com/page.php?id=4&CK=34rr&User=%Tom% (spiders may be reluctant to crawl complex URLs like this because they often result in errors with non-human visitors)
• Pages with more than 100 unique links to other pages on the site (spiders may not follow each one)
• Pages buried more than 3 clicks/links from the home page of a website (unless there are many other external links pointing to the site, spiders will often ignore deep pages)
• Pages requiring a "Session ID" or Cookie to enable navigation (spiders may not be able to retain these elements as a browser user can)
• Pages that are split into "frames" can hinder crawling and cause confusion about which pages to rank in the results.

Possible "Walls" for SE Spiders:

• Pages accessible only via a select form and submit button
• Pages requiring a drop down menu (HTML attribute) to access them
• Documents accessible only via a search box
• Documents blocked purposefully (via a robots meta tag or robots.txt file - see more on these here)
• Pages requiring a login
• Pages that re-direct before showing content (search engines call this cloaking or bait-and-switch and may actually ban sites that use this tactic)

The key to ensuring that a site's contents are fully crawlable is to provide direct, HTML links to to each page you want the search engine spiders to index. Remember that if a page cannot be accessed from the home page (where most spiders are likely to start their crawl) it is likely that it will not be indexed by the search engines. A sitemap (which is discussed later in this guide) can be of tremendous help for this purpose.

Measuring Relevance and Popularity

Modern commercial search engines rely on the science of information retrieval (IR). That science has existed since the middle of the 20th century, when retrieval systems powered computers in libraries, research facilities and government labs. Early in the development of search systems, IR scientists realized that two critical components made up the majority of search functionality:

Relevance - the degree to which the content of the documents returned in a search matched the user's query intention and terms. The relevance of a document increases if the terms or phrase queried by the user occurs multiple times and shows up in the title of the work or in important headlines or subheaders.

Popularity - the relative importance, measured via citation (the act of one work referencing another, as often occurs in academic and business documents) of a given document that matches the user's query. The popularity of a given document increases with every other document that references it.

These two items were translated to web search 40 years later and manifest themselves in the form of document analysis and link analysis.

In document analysis, search engines look at whether the search terms are found in important areas of the document - the title, the meta data, the heading tags and the body of text content. They also attempt to automatically measure the quality of the document (through complex systems beyond the scope of this guide).

In link analysis, search engines measure not only who is linking to a site or page, but what they are saying about that page/site. They also have a good grasp on who is affiliated with whom (through historical link data, the site's registration records and other sources), who is worthy of being trusted (links from .edu and .gov pages are generally more valuable for this reason) and contextual data about the site the page is hosted on (who links to that site, what they say about the site, etc.).

Link and document analysis combine and overlap hundreds of factors that can be individually measured and filtered through the search engine algorithms (the set of instructions that tell the engines what importance to assign to each factor). The algorithm then determines scoring for the documents and (ideally) lists results in decreasing order of importance (rankings).

by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org