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Ten Steps to Creating Top-Ranking Pages : Ten Steps To
Top Ranking Pages In Google & other search engines.
So many people requested this section that we feel obligated to include it. However, even though this section will give you a quick overview of the process of creating better ranking pages, it's no substitute for reading the entire report and gaining all of its insights.
Still, here are the generic steps to undertake in optimizing pages for search engine submission. Not all of these steps should be used in optimizing pages for all search engines.
This is because each search engine ranks Web pages by different criteria. Refer to the "engine by engine analysis" in the second half of this guide and the other discussion topics for further details.
Here are the steps in order of importance: |
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Step 1: Create Doorway Pages. Create short, focused summary pages about a particular topic that emphasizes a keyword, phrase or select group of keywords. Give each file a unique name and avoid numbering your pages like index1. htm, index2. htm, index3.htm, etc.
A sample naming convention might be:
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ singing-telegram. htm (page optimized for "singing telegram")
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ magician. htm (page optimized for "magician") http:// www. yourcompany. com/ clowns. htm (page optimized for "clowns")
You will probably want to create some variations of these
pages to target the preferences of specific search engines.
However, avoid submitting more than two to three pages to
the same engine that are very similar and discuss the same
topic. Instead, submit a couple of your best designs based
on the tips in this report and your own observations, and
then follow up. If you didn't score as well as you would have
liked on each keyword, try some other designs and submit them
again reusing the same page name.
Step 2: Begin Optimizing the Pages With the <TITLE>
tag. The <TITLE> tag is arguably the
most important piece of HTML code you will write to gain a
top ranking. Make sure this tag immediately follows the <HEAD>
tag and is not placed after other META tags.
As we discuss later, some HTML editors place <TITLE>
tags arbitrarily within the head tag. It is important that
the <TITLE> is placed immediately after the <HEAD>
tag in your HTML code:
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</
TITLE>
You should repeat this and all following steps for each different
doorway page so each page targets a different engine and keyword.
Some page designs will often work well on multiple engines,
but rarely on all of them.
Extra trick: Some search engines rank pages higher when the
pages include multiple <TITLE> tags as follows:
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</
TITLE> <TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</
TITLE>
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</ TITLE>
Step 3: Add META tags. There are two META tags with which
you should concern yourself:
The META description and the META keyword tag. The stated
goal of these tags is to provide the search engine's spiders
with a description of your site and the keywords that you
think are relevant to the content of your site. Without these
tags, search engines will randomly select 25 words from the
body copy of your Web site and use it to describe the content
of your site. Often, search engines select irrelevant words,
and then nobody visits your site. Here is how you use these
META tags:
<META NAME=" DESCRIPTION" CONTENT=" This is my site description
that I would like the search engine to use.">
<META NAME=" KEYWORDS" CONTENT=" keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,
keyword4">
Step 4: Add keywords to a comment tag. A comment tag describes
something within your HTML code that is not viewed by people
visiting your Web site. Typically it describes the function
of a section of code or the name of the site's designer. For
your marketing purposes it can include important keywords:
<!--Here is a sentence that includes a lot of my keywords.
I place this keyword-rich sentence in the header of the HTML
document because it is always important to include keywords
high on the page -->
Step 5: Add keywords in a header tag. Keywords in the <H1> through <H6> tags are assigned more relevancy
points by many of the search engines. For this reason, at
the very top of my page, often as the first text appearing
on the page, it is wise to include a sentence or list of keywords
between the header tags. Remember that the larger the number,
the smaller the size of the font:
<H2> Keywords are important here, and this is a keyword-rich
sentence that you may notice started with a "keyword" and
includes another keyword and another keyword.</ H2>
Step 6: Add a <NO FRAMES> tag for sites with frames.
If your page uses frames, you should use the <NO FRAMES>
tag to include links to your other pages and a sentence or
two describing your Web site. This is because many search
engines can't index Web sites which use frames:
<NO FRAMES> Keyword-rich text describing my site is
important here and again my first word was a keyword</
NO FRAMES>
Step 7: Make the first 25 words on the page keyword rich.
Since some search engines use the first 25 words of copy on
your page as the site's description in their index and to
determine which keywords to rank your site under, carefully
construct the beginning of your paragraphs.
Below we use the <FONT SIZE> tag just so you recognize
that we are talking about viewable copy:
<FONT SIZE="+ 1"> Keyword1, Keyword2, and Keyword3,
are important keywords to this Web site so make sure that
Keyword1 and Keyword2 and even Keyword 3 appear several times
in the first 25 words on your Web page.</ FONT>
Step 8: Make hyperlinks to your other pages flush with
keywords. Several search engines assign extra relevance to
keywords found in hyperlinks. Since it is likely that your
home page will include links to other sections of your site,
take time to include keywords in these:
<A HREF=" http:// www. yourcompany. com/ clients. htm">
Keyword1 and keyword2 will provide information about our clients</
A>
Step 9: Add keywords to your ALT tags. ALT tags describe
graphics that haven't completely loaded or that won't be seen
if the visitor to your site is browsing the Web with their
graphics turned off. Some search engines will consider keywords
found in ALT tags for your site's relevancy toward a ranking
under that keyword, or they will use the text contained in
the ALT tag to describe your site in their index. Either way,
it's important to fill up these tags with keyword-rich text
as follows:
<IMG SRC=" picture. gif" ALT=" Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,
and anything else you would like to say about your keywords.">
If you don't have graphics on your page, you can still benefit
from this technique. You can employ the "single pixel gif"
technique by creating a gif file that is simply one pixel
- hardly visible.
Open your favorite graphic editor and create an image that
consists of just a single dot (one pixel) the same color as
your background (you can even define it as a transparent gif
if you want to be extra stealthy). Insert that tiny graphic
into your page, preferably near the top for the best effect:
<IMG SRC=" tinyimage. gif" HEIGHT= 1 WIDTH= 1 BORDER=
0 ALT=" keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword1">
This allows you to include important keywords near the top
of your page even if you don't have any graphics on your main
page.
Step 10: Calculate and then optimize your page's keyword
frequency (total occurrences) and
keyword weight (percentage of the total words that make
up the page). Since the search engines will consider these
when determining your site's relevance toward particular keyword
searches, you should control these variables. Simply copy
the viewable text into your word processor or text editor
and perform a "word count."
Write this number down in a safe place and then select the
"replace" feature from the "edit" menu (in most word processors).
Replace the particular keyword you are looking to count, with
itself. The word processor will then search and replace your
keyword with itself and then tell you how many replacements
were performed. Take this number, and divide it by the total
number of words.
If you have 100 total words and three of them were one particular
keyword, you have a keyword weight of 3 percent. Work to keep
your keyword weight between 3 and 8 percent, though some engines
respond better to higher keyword weight. Remember to review
the pages that ranked in the top 10 for your keyword searches
and determine the keyword weight they employed.
These are the basic steps for optimizing your Wesite for
search engines. This is, of course, a very oversimplified
example. When you actually optimize your pages, you will be
optimizing your pages based on each search engine's ranking
criteria. This means you will not use all of these steps for
each engine, and some search engines will require extra, advanced
steps not described here.
Once you have optimized your pages, you will submit each set
to their respective search engines. Remember, don't submit
all the pages to all the search engines. What you will have
done to gain a top ranking in HotBot could actually hurt you
in AltaVista and so on.
After all of the pages are optimized check your rankings and
make sure that each search engine added your pages. After
you submit the pages, it's up to you to check your rankings
and tweak your page designs to get your pages into those top
positions. |
