Optimization for the Big Three
This article is part four of a four part series on optimizing your
website for the three major search engines. Part one, titled "SEO
For MSN" covered optimizing your website to rank highly on MSN,
while part two, titled "SEO
For Yahoo!" covered optimizing your website to rank on Yahoo! and
part three, titled "SEO
For Google" covered how to rank highly on Google. In this article we
will cover how to tie your optimization strategies together to attain
the highest rankings possible on all three engines simultaneously.
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 use, these factors are generally the most important.
Unfortunately, each of the engines uses them in different ways. Let's
begin by listing these factors:
* Age
* Content
* Keyword density
* How it fares in the results
* Site structure
* Backlinks
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, that 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 the 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
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 used 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 and are 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 which 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, placed 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 are 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 were 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 on 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.
* 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.
Tying It Together
Knowing 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 the the keywords we are targeting are in the moderate to high
competition levels. In this event one must balance off the various
factors and timelines to produce the highest ROI in the short term with
an eye on maximum profitability 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
knowing 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 backlinks 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 your 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.
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