|
Tying It Together: SEO For The Big Three
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 us, 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
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, and 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 they
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 the use of one will help the overall
optimization for the other.
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 uses 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 an area 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 that 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, places 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 is 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
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 in 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. (All three) 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. (Google and Yahoo! predominantly and
MSN to a lesser degree)
Tying It Together
Knowing all 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 that the
keywords we are targeting are in the moderate to high
competition levels. In this event one must balance the
various factors and timelines to produce the highest ROI in
the short term with an eye on maximum benefit 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 knwoing 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 backlink 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 you're 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.
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 us, 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
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, and 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 they
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 the use of one will help the overall
optimization for the other.
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 uses 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 an area 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 that 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, places 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 is 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
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 in 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. (All three) 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. (Google and Yahoo! predominantly and
MSN to a lesser degree)
Tying It Together
Knowing all 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 that the
keywords we are targeting are in the moderate to high
competition levels. In this event one must balance the
various factors and timelines to produce the highest ROI in
the short term with an eye on maximum benefit 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 knwoing 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 backlink 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 you're 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.
Google SEO 101
