SEARCH ENGINES - improving your ranking - before reading this unit, read  www.witiger.com/ecommerce/searchengineissues.htm

this unit is in the text "Current Issues in Marketing in the Information Age, 2nd. Edition" on page 123 - 152

Dev Basu's March 2011 SEO lecture to CCT 322 at University of Toronto, Mississauga Campus  slideshare.net/devbasu/search-marketing-101 -universit-of-toronto-mississauga-lecture-2011 As a little bit of motivation for my current students, I insisted Dev let me take a pic of him with his new BMW, which is , in a way, some proof of his success in SEO as a UofT grad.

video of a conversation between Prof. Tim Richardson and (now 2012) former USTC student Dev Basu about SEO 2012   Part 1 covers SMO Social Media Optimization brand presence on social media networks Google+ local search GPS Google Places

video of a conversation between Prof. Tim Richardson and USTC student Dev Basu about SEO 2009  youtube.com/watch?v=jibSpHsdHf8 Part 1 covers Proactively Submit the URL to a Search Engine Title: the title of the page Paid Submission Content text / words images audio META TAGS Meta Description Tags and  Meta Key Word Tags

SEO 2009 Part 2 covers  youtube.com/watch?v=g25l1LNgQwg Links  Links In, Links Out, Two way links Link Exchanges and Link Reciprocity Time, Frequency of updating Traffic Click Popularity Understanding the Algorithm UPC product code numbers Blogs Checking your index coverage WAP Enabled / G3 Analytical tools such as Google analytics

click on the screen capture to obtain the PDF version of the .PPT that USTC student Dev Basu used in his Guest Lecture to the UTM class (CCT322 and MGD415) in March 2009 The information in this powerpoint would be useful for students at UTM  in courses  CCT322 MGD415 UTSC in course  MGTD06 Seneca College in courses BCS555 MRK619

This web page has audio clips - just click on the icon (like the one to the left) and you can hear Prof. Richardson's voice adding additional information to topics on the page.

turn on your speakers to hear audio clips

During the 2nd week of February 2008, Richardson was interviewed by Matt Hartley of the Globe & Mail about Search Engine Google for an article titled "Google's celebrity, not technology, keeps it No. 1". Richardson explained why Google ranks as the No. 1 Search Engine and also provided some tips as to how websites are ranked.  witiger.com/ecommerce/articleGoogle2008Feb8th.jpg In the article, the main points made by Richardson are discussed on the page  witiger.com/ecommerce/searchengineissues.htm On this page  witiger.com/ecommerce/searchengineranking.htm the relevant material is Richardson's comments about "How Sites are Ranked" Richardson told Hartley that "Companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo closely guard the secrets of their search engine algorithms; however, there are some elements that are widely known to play a role in determining a site's ranking in any keyword search." In the article by Hartley, Richardson was quoted commenting about Identification and labels:  (the title, and URL) Spiders Content

www.canadianbusiness.com CB titled the article "Search-engine savvy: 10 tips on how to get your website noticed NOW"

In November 2007 - 4 years after the initial article was written, it was considered that some things need to be updated. Prof. Richardson welcomed updates and contributions from students at Seneca College and University of Toronto and it happened that one UTSC student, Dev Basu knew quite a bit about SEO; therefore, in the 2nd week of November 2007 Dev's updated comments were woven in to the content below. Dev's huge site is  dailymoolah.com

INTRODUCTION

Many companies that have had a web site up and running for a while, become very enthusiastic about making sure they rank high in the leading Search Engines. While ranking high can lead to hits, which may lead to business, let us not forget that ranking high in a Search Engine is only one part of a sub-set of the Promotional Mix. As a reminder, the Promotional Mix is a sub-set of the basic 4P's of marketing Product Price Promotion Place The Promotional Mix is the mix of what your company does to promote itself within the basic categories of Advertising paid advertising free publicity Sales Promotion Personal Selling Remember that improving your ranking in a Search Engine comes under the heading of publicity (and paid advertising if you also use "paid submission") - there are three other things you should continue doing to promote your company. WTGR

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4 Reasons why  this is important

Before we begin with "10 things you can do to increase the chance a Search Engine will rank your web site higher ", let us first consider "4 reasons why you need to understand why ranking in a Search Engine is important". Firstly, people no longer type in www.hotel.com expecting to get a hotel, they know they will get a travel industry portal. We understand now that people look for information using a search engine instead of typing in various URLs by chance.  Secondly, the content on the Web (text, images and audio) is being created, and uploaded at a rate faster than the ability of the search engines to index this data, - as a consequence, it is getting more and more difficult to be “found” in a larger and larger mass of un-indexed and un-connected pages. If you don't rank well in a search engine, your site may not be found by searchers. Thirdly, people are becoming impatient using search engines and are discouraged when they see X,000 returns on the three words they typed in. In order for you to increase the chance of the viewer clicking on your site, you want to be in the top 2, 3, or 4 pages because most people will not take the time to scroll further than that. Fourthly, B2B and B2C customers are indeed using Search Engines to find vendors and from the results of these searches they are buying. The “Canadian Inter@ctive Reid Report”, produced by Ipsos-Reid,  www.witiger.com/ecommerce/Ipsosreid.htm  reveals that a significant percentage of Canadians research online before making a purchase decision. 43% of active internet users researched online the purchase of a consumer electronics product before making the purchase; 36% air travel, and 27% an automobile. The conclusion one draws from so many people using the web to research a purchase is that one should make sure your offering can be positioned within the information these people are accessing so you can have a chance to be the successful seller; the best way to be in that position is for your site to rank high in the key words that are being used in a search which fits the words describing your offering.

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The following list has un-numbered bullets, instead of numbering – why? Because it is useful to understand that few of these points are more valuable than the other, but in combination they can produce results. Focusing on improving your site by addressing one or two of these points might not produce measurable results, but, trying to co-operatively address four or five of these points will improve your ranking.

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o Proactively Submit the URL to a Search Engine    o Title: the title of the page    o Paid Submission    o Content      o text / words      o images      o audio    o META TAGS      o Meta Description Tags and       o Meta Key Word Tags   o Links         o Links In        o Links Out        o Two way links        o Link Exchanges and Link Reciprocity

o Time    o Frequency of updating    o Traffic    o Click Popularity    o Understanding the Algorithm    o UPC product code numbers    o Blogs    o Checking your index coverage    o WAP Enabled     o Analytical tools such as Google analytics

Submit your URL

Proactively Submit the URL to a Search Engine URL means Universal Resource Locator, it is the line in the browser window that begins “http://www……”.The business model for many Search Engines is similar to the Advertising based model that periodicals use – great content to attract the viewer/reader and sell that demographic to advertisers. Therefore Search Engines will obviously allow content producers to submit a URL since it goes towards increasing the entire collection of indexed pages and further contributes to the value of the collection which in turn attracts users and leads to having a stronger demographic to sell to advertisers. While this logic may seem obvious the leading Search Engines do not necessarily make it easy to submit a URL and therefore there are a number of consulting entities that facilitate submissions for fees.  Submit the URL  most Search Engines invite submissions so they can increase the size of their indexed database, which in turn makes them a more valuable Search Engine, which in turn allows them to charge more for advertising Search Engines make money like newspapers - the greater their "readership", the greater rate they can charge for advertising, and make money although many Search Engines will accept money for placing higher in the listings, most all Search Engines will accept a basic submission for free

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Submit your URL

Proactively Submit the URL to a Search Engine For a small company, proactively submitting the URL, of several of your website pages, is a relatively easy process. The process usually begins with simply clicking on “submit URL” which can be found in one form or another on the right-hand side of the main page of the more popular Search Engines. Submitting your own URL is a little like writing your own story of how the Leafs game was and having it posted on the Toronto Star website along with hundreds of other fans’ postings. Submitting individual URLs to multiple Search Engines can be very time consuming so in a Darwinian way there has evolved some sites where you can click through a series of steps describing a particular web page and have that URL submitted to a number of sites simultaneously. Some sites provide multiple submission services for a fee, others do it for free based on the advertising they draw for the service.

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Submit your URL

Proactively Submit the URL to a Search Engine To follow the steps for submitting a site, it is best to start from the "directory" section of Yahoo. If you click on the screen capture above you will see a typical display of a Yahoo category. This particular one is for Museums. On the far right of the screen you will see the words "suggest a link". If you click there it will take you in to a menu from which you can suggest  site to add in to the directory of http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Museums_and_Exhibits/ If your site has content that legitimately belongs in this sub-category then Yahoo will add your URL to their list. On a cautionary note, be suspicious of sites that claim to mass-submit your URL to many dozens or hundreds of Search Engines – there are less than 10 major Search Engines you care about being found in, the rest are highly specific to particular industry sectors and probably not relevant to your business.

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Submit your URL 2007 UPDATE

UTSC student, and SEO "student" Dev Basu adds "While I used to do this [proactively submitting the URL] early on in my career, I soon found a better tactic that will get you indexed a lot faster. Even if you have a brand new site, all you need to do is get a respected site (Google Page Rank 4+, ideally PR 6) to link to you. While this might seem difficult, this is surprisingly easy to do and can be achieved using a variety of methods – For example, many blogs have the ‘no nofollow’ attribute for their comments section. All one would need to do is to make a comment, leaving behind their website url and Google would index the site within 24 hours guaranteed." Dev's suggestion is sort of like the recommendation for wannabe celebrities - one way to get famous is hang around with famous people - in a similar way, one way to make sure you get listed is to have your URL listed on well known sites Dev says here are some other ways to get indexed http://www.dailymoolah.com/2007/07/19/how-to-get-indexed-by-google-in-under-3-days/

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Title things to improve your ranking in a search engine

Title A page's title is often confused with its name. To clear things up, the page name is equivalent to the file name -- i.e., abcdefg.htm -- whereas the page title is the word or words that show up in a browser's title bar. The page title should be crafted carefully. AltaVista suggests it is what search engine users see first when they scan a list of query results, and Inktomi's Buchheim notes that it is not enough to rank high in a search engine. "You also have to ... be enticing enough to click." Indeed, enticement to click is based on both an attractively worded title and the accompanying description, which comes from the META description tags Some Search Engines pay particular attention to the title of the page and use the words in the title to show up in the "found" line in the results of a search Having a well crafted title that is not too short, but not annoyingly long, is a challenge for people that do not know HTML, nor how a page is actually constructed, it is important to understand that the "title" of the page is not the name of the "file" of the page document. example file name: eastbridges.htm title: Bridges on the eastern Trent-Severn Waterway

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Paid Submission

While cost conscious firms may shy away from the cost of Paid Submission services such as Paid Inclusion, there are valid reasons to make this investment. Dennis Buchheim, director of Paid Inclusion at Yahoo!’s head office in Sunnyvale California, told witiger that paid inclusion not only helps provide consumers with more relevant results, it also helps businesses ensure their presence in algorithmic search results. The service of paid inclusion allows the client to receive reports which contain information such as the particular words used by searchers who found your site and clicked on it. Knowing such information is valuable since it allows the owners of a site to make further adjustments and refinements to rank even higher in a competitive environment. Buchheim says that by enabling businesses to analyze key reporting metrics and to measure the quality of their metadata, businesses can optimize ROI and increase conversion rates. (parts of the interview that Prof. Richardson had with Dennis Buchheim were carried in the Dec 2003 issue of Canadian Business magazine) Paid Submission sometimes popular Search Engines like Yahoo invite companies to pay extra for submitting in the expectation that they will then rank higher than other businesses in the same topic there is some speculation as to whether paid submission actually works but some Search Engines like Yahoo put these "Sponsor Matches" above the list of "Web Site Matches" so depending on your situation, it might be an alternative if you are not confident of being able to affect the other 9 points on this list. permission to quote Dennis Buchheim,director of Paid Inclusion at Yahoo!’s head office in Sunnyvale California was given by Mr. Bucheim in phone calls and emails in October 2003. This was an interview conducted directly by Prof. Richardson. Also included in permissions was Colleen Finnegan of Yahoo's office in Toronto. Copies of permission emails are kept on file in the permissions binder.

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Paid Submission

Paid Submission Paddy Kamen in the Toronto Star 2001 July 5th Kamen explains that "There are many ways in which search engines garner revenue from Web site  owners hungry for good listings. While advertising is the largest revenue source for most search engines, other revenue generators include.." paid submission,  paid inclusion,  paid placement and  content deals

Paid Submission

"Paid Submission: Rather than wait for the search engines to find his or her site, the Web site owner pays to have the site evaluated. There is usually no guarantee of a listing with paid submission." "Paid Inclusion: Normally a search engine will list only the home page of a Web site. With paid inclusion, the engine will delve more deeply into a site and list other pages in additional categories. This is also referred to as a "deep" listing and likely leads to more traffic to the site in question." "Paid Placement: This is a simple pay-for-position arrangement. Some of the links are placed at the top of the list and, in their case, referred to as "featured listings". (According to AltaVista public  relations spokesperson Kristi Kaspar, "featured listings" will soon be referred to  as "sponsored listings.")" "Content Deals: Ever wonder why a Barnes & Noble window always comes up with book titles on just the subject you're searching under when you're in  the Yahoo search engine? That's a content deal. As another example go to Lycos and search under "depression". You'll see "read about depression" under the Popular Sites heading. The link takes you to WebMD's content." permission to quote from the Toronto Star given  by  the writer Paddy Kamen, (2001 and 2004) and by Joanne MacDonald (TORSTAR SYNDICATE SALES) in emails in 2004. Copies of emails kept on file in the permissions binder.

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SPIDERS rank the content

Search Engine indexing software is nicknamed “Spiders” to reflect how they crawl through a web site's pages. Sometimes SEO specialists also refer to the software as "bots" - short for robots. Spiders record several aspects of a page, including the actual text. In the record that is created and indexed, the Spiders identify the frequency of particular words on a page and this becomes part of a complicated algorithm that calculates the value. If one page contained the word “cancer” 4 times and another page contained the word “cancer” 12 times, plus they had the word “cancer” in the Meta Tags and maybe also the Title of the page, the second page would rank higher. The algorithm also calculates and ranks how words are connected to other words, such as car parts, car finance, car warranty for the web page of an auto dealership.

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SPIDERS CRAWLERS BOTS

Allison Wallis in MRK 410 June 2005 found a good definition of Spiders from http://whatis.techtarget.com .   " A spider is a program that visits Web sites and reads their pages and other information in order to create entries for a search engine index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a "crawler" or a "bot." Spiders are typically programmed to visit sites that have been submitted by their owners as new or updated." "Entire sites or specific pages can be selectively visited and indexed. Spiders are called spiders because they usually visit many sites in parallel at the same time, their "legs" spanning a large area of the "web." Spiders can crawl through a site's pages in several ways. One way is to follow all the hypertext links in each page until all the pages have been read." In order to allow spiders to effectively crawl your site, it helps to have easy navigation that will allow all pages to be linked to all other pages through some simple menu bar - then the number of pages you have "indexed" can be high and this wil help the over all rankingof your site. Googlebot is Google's web-crawling robot. Google freely describes basic information about this program and what it does at  www.google.com/bot.html

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no SPIDERS

There may be some pages on a website that you do not want to show up in Google, for example pages that are password protected or other content with difficult to find links. To keep the Googlebot from following links on your pages to other pages or documents, you should add a meta tag into the header tags of your page. The code looks like this: <META NAME="Googlebot" CONTENT="nofollow">

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CONTENT - WORDS

words the amount of words on a page and their arrangement and relevance to the title can improve your ranking If your title was "History of bridges and rivers in Ontario" then your ranking would improve if you indeed had on that particular page a list of all the rivers in Ontario that had bridges Repeating the same word more than 3 times is a spamming technique known as Keyword Stuffing - do not repeat words unless they are in a grammatically correct sentences - Search Engine algorithms use techniques to block sites that use stuffing words - frequency  frequency of particular words on the page indicates the likelihood that the search engine software will pick up on your key words and indicate to a search result that you have the content people are looking for - the more words in a topic area (compared to another page) the higher you'll rank sometimes webmasters try to "trick" Search Engines by filling white space at the bottom of the page with dozens of words hoping that this will trigger particular Search Engines to rank the page. Search Engine companies know this trick and try to avoid this by discounting words unless they are linked in sentences that have grammar structure that makes sense.

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CONTENT - WORDS 2007 UPDATE

UTSC student, and SEO "student" Dev Basu adds "The ideal keyword density is anywhere between 3-5% for tier 1 and tier 2 (top level) keywords. Search engines use a technique known as latent semantic indexing to figure out keyword spamming these days and actually compare the closeness of keywords to each other to decide if the keywords are part of natural language or grammar." Dev's suggestion is importasnt to keep in mind because basically, the smart folks at Google hate to be tricked and every time some SEO specialist figures out a technique to allow higher ranking, the Google people tweak the algorithym to make sure that technique will not score high.

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CONTENT - WORDS latent  semantic indexing 2007 UPDATE

Aaron Wall writes about latent semantic indexing  in SEO Book.com, a leading SEO blog  Wall explains at  www.seobook.com/archives/000657.shtml "If all your links are heavy in a few particular phrases and light on other similar phrases then your site may not rank as well." Instead of using SEO in all the links some of them may use phrases like search engine optimization search engine marketing search engine placement search engine positioning search engine promotion search engine ranking Instead of using book in all the links some other good common words might be ebook manual guide tips report tutorial Wall explains that mixing up the words on the page like this is better for your ranking with Search Engines like Google.

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CONTENT - IMAGES

Images   o having many images on a page does not improve your ranking unless the name of the image file is relevant to the title of the page, eg. on a page titled "Brides of Ontario", it would help to name your images trentbridge1.jpg, napaneeriver2.jpg, etc.   o some image formats do not translate into searchable units, for example, it may be kewl to put Flash on your page, but nothing in Flash can be picked up by the Search Engine algorithm so that content will not be indexed   o keep in mind that newer versions of Search Engines, like Google in 2003, have indexing capabilities by the name of an image so if you name your images appropriately, they can possibly be found in a Google search by images, as well as by text   o "Flash content is graphic and not read by search engines. Imagine you make a TV ad that has no sounds, just pictures. Now broadcast that on radio. The pictures aren't seen, no sound is heard, so there's just nothing. Search engines don't see pictures. The "sound" they do get is text. No text, then nothing." interview with Danny Sullivan by Meryl K. Evans   o "If the Flash content is just interactive, games, marketing fluff or branding, it doesn't really matter. If Flash contains a lot of text content, though, you need to find a way to make it visible to search engine indexers. Exporting from Flash means that you get the links and text in comment tags--if you remove the comments and surround them with <noscript> tags, the search indexer can read them." - Danny Sullivan

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CONTENT - IMAGES 2007 UPDATE

UTSC student Dev says "Regarding Image Content – Inclusion of <ALT = > tags is given heavy weight by SE’s. Additionally, SE’s (Google essentially) is now capable of figuring out what an image is about based on the text surrounding the image. With regard to Flash content, there is a technology called SIFR that allows use of text visible to crawlers that shows up as Flash rendering to the human eye."

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CONTENT - AUDIO

Audio Having many audio files linked to a page does not improve your ranking unless the name of the audio file is relevant to the title of the page, eg. on a page titled "History of Fort Henry", it would help to name your files march1.midi, trumpetcall2.wav,  etc

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META TAGS

META TAGS   o META TAGS are within the HEADER TAGS on the background HTML code on the web page and are invisible to the reader - but the search engine spider software picks up on these words   o You can view the META TAGS from Netscape by clicking on "View" in the browser toolbar at the top, then scrolling down the small sub-menu and clicking on "Page Source". For Internet Explorer, click on "View" in the browser toolbar at the top, then scrolling down the small sub-menu and clicking on "Source"

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META TAGS types

o There are several types of META TAGS, but for the purposes of ranking in Search Engines, we are concerned mostly with the Meta Description Tags and the Meta Key Word Tags.    o The Description Tags are used to tell the user of a Search Engine what the page is about   o The Key Word Tags are used to tell the Search Engine software all the topics covered on the page so it can index the page according to various word searches.

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine META TAGS

Meta Description Tags look like this click to view larger - this is a screen capture of the background code on the page of www.witiger.com META Description tags META Description tags help in that they cause people to want to click on your site if it shows up in a search - meaning, if your site ranks, and shows up on a Google or Yahoo list, you still have to incite people to want to click on the link. A properly formulated sentence that is grammatically correct will be useful to use in the META Description tags because it will allow the searcher to clearly understand what your site is about

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine META TAGS

Meta Key Word Tags look like this click to view larger - this is a screen capture of the background code on the page of www.witiger.com META Key Word tags META Key Word tags are the tags that tell the Search Engine what various topics are discussed in the page. This is the spot where you type in as many words, and combinations of words, as possible so as to increase the chance that somebody can find your site based on that word association.

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META  KEY WORD TAGS UPDATE 2007

Meta Key Word Tags UTSC student Dev says "Key Word Frequency/Density – The ideal density for keyword repetition on a web page is about 5% for the major keywords. It’s important to give major keywords appropriate markup, such as placing them in <H1>, <H2>, <H3> tags to be given more weight to the SE algorithm."

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine META TAGS

Adding in a lot of "KEY WORDS" in your META TAGS string can help search engines rank you, compared to other pages that use fewer META TAGS, or have no META TAGS on the page. This is a screen capture showing a good example of the META Key Word tags for www.globerisk.com Some companies have been accused of "cheating" the software that is used by the Search Engines by using the META Key Word and META Description tags of their competitors, eg. Nike using the word "Reebok" in their META TAGS to try and draw people searching for Reebok shoes - in practice, this type of cheating is not very effective - however the adult sites try it all the time and put in words like "business, vacation, car loan" in their META TAGS to try to draw hits to their pages

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How to improve your ranking in a search engine LINKS

KEY POINTS There is a number of sources that say of all the things you can do to make your site rank high in a Search Engine - one of the best things is to make it "valuable" - meaning, Links In, and Links Out. WTGR "Link popularity, which refers to the number of links pointing to and from related sites, is considered by many search engine experts as the most important element of a site's relevance in search engines" Michael Wong from http://www.stickysauce.com/articles/searchenginetips/links.htm Brian Bend of BCS 555 found the www.stickysauce.com page in Nov 2002, thanks Brian.  Michael Wong explains  "There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and outgoing links.  1. Internal Links Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site.  2. Incoming Links Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of incoming links:  3. Outgoing Links Outgoing links refers to links pointing to other related sites from your site.

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine LINKS IN

Links In (incoming links) Finding a way for other sites to link to your's will cause your site to rank high. It also means people can find your site without even going through a search engine - which can be very advantageous since the key objective it to get people to see your page - ranking high in a search engine is just a method Having other sites to link to your's may be difficult for a new site, but if you give the other sites some reason why it would be useful to provide your URL, then you increase your exposure. Other than simple reciprocity, you could offer to identify other sites with a brief paragraph - this "extra mile" might endear yourself to a site that would otherwise turn you down example see bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm versus see bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm for a thumbnail gallery of old and new bridges across the rivers of Eastern Ontario. Some of the pictures of covered bridges are large enough to use as decorative desktop wallpaper Extensive "offline" networking is required to get companies to agree to link to your site - this is more of a business issue than a technical issue.

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine LINKS IN

Links In To find out if you are already linked to other sites, try using http://www.ineedhits.com/free/popularity/ when we did this entering www.witiger.com we obtained the following result in the screen capture below   click on the screen capture to see a readable image which shows how we ranked for July 2003

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine LINKS OUT

Links Out Having many links on your page, out to other pages (pages on your own site, as well as other sites) will cause your site to be considered more valuable because going to your site allows browsers to in turn link to other information on other pages You can make links out to trade associations, government agencies, other companies, academic organizations, etc. - all for the purpose of having more "value" on your site Some companies may be sensitive to having links to their site if the traffic is high so make sure you get permission for well known entities, you don't want people complaining that you are causing them an increase in bandwidth charges.

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine LINK EXCHANGES LINK RECIPROCITY

Links Reciprocity Links that are two-way are more valued by Search Engines than one-way links that are not reciprocal. One of the things managers need to consider when the web master is trying to add in reciprocal links is the time that will be required to make contact with various organizations to set up such reciprocity. Developing reciprocal links requires a management evaluation of a relationship with another enterprise and is not just a technical matter. It might be days or weeks to affect one reciprocal relationships as a series of phones calls and emails need to be concluded. Since it is understood that setting up reciprocal links is time consuming and involves some degree of a relationship between two entities, Search Engines therefore value such links much more highly than simple one-way links in or out. Convincing other high-quality sites to link to yours also means people will be able to find your site without going through a search engine. This can be advantageous because the key objective is to get people to see your page -- and high rank in a search engine is just one way of achieving this goal. The process of obtaining links from other sites may be difficult for a new domain, but if you give other sites a valid, compelling reason to link to your URL, you increase the chances that they will do so. Other than simple reciprocity, you could offer to identify other sites with a brief paragraph. This willingness to go the extra mile might endear you to a site that otherwise would turn you down.  For example: "See bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm," does not read as well as: "See bridges www.bridge.com/eastbridges.htm for a thumbnail gallery of old and new bridges across the rivers of Eastern Ontario. Some of the images are large enough to use as decorative desktop wallpaper."

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KEY POINTS

When we say developing reciprocal links requires a management evaluation of a relationship this means that someone has to pick up the phone and call / email another company and say "we want to link to your web site, is that OK?, and, by the way, do you want to link to our's". This is a non-technical thing which means it will take some time and due to its subjective nature, each request may be dealt with quickly or slowly. The management evaluation part refers to some boss saying "O.K., tell our webmaster its all right to link to zzz.com". Webmaster's cannot make these decisions on their own because there may be several ramifications of linking to another company's website such as implied endorsement. WTGR

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine LINK EXCHANGES

Links Exchanges  If you do not know many online enterprises with whom you could dialogue and link sites you could consider paying for the services of Link Exchanges and Link Farms. Some people consider such Link Exchanges useful since it can have some small contribution to increasing your ranking but there are also a number of people that are critical of the value of these services.  Michael Wong of www.mikes-marketing-tools.com warns "... Never ever use links from link exchange sites and link farms.” In Wong’s opinion “Link farms are networks of heavily cross linked pages on one or more web sites, with the sole intention of improving the link popularity of those pages and sites.” Wong suggests “Many of the top search engines consider such links as spam, so stay clear of these types of links." Alta Vista’s John Glick confirmed that for their purposes, links that come from link farms are considered spam and if the particular site does this excessively they might be dropped from being listed..

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FINAL  WORD  on linking ©WTGR

Written by WTGR June, 2005 There are hundreds of Search Engines, but for business people concerned about "being found", there are less than 5 that really count, and only 1 that is mandatory - "Google", if you don't rank in Google, nothing else matters. The basics of ranking high in Google is PageRank™,  - this is a system for ranking web pages developed by the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were students at Stanford University. While Google continues to develop new techniques and new mathematical additions to their indexing algorithm,  PageRank remains the fundamental underpinning of how the pages are scored and indexed.

Google says "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web" - what that means is, pages become popular because 1. other people go there, and click around on the content because it fits what they are looking for
2. based on the interest in the content, other sites may link to that page, which Google interprets as a "vote" for your page
3. if a lot of sites link to your page then Google thinks you must have something of interest (as "voted" by the many visitors) and will rank you comparatively higher than other sites of the same content.

Basically, in Google's own words "Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B." Additionally Google looks at other things in addition to the "votes" indicated by hits and linking, it also tries to analyze the "quality" of the links coming to your site. If those incoming links are "important" pages, then you will score higher. Google explains "Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search."

It is also important that the content on the pages match the indexed information Google stores, meaning Google doesn't like to be "faked out so it combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to people's searches. These "sophisticated text-matching techniques" are based on very advanced mathematical algorithms and if anybody tells you (outside of a Google senior staffer) that they understand that, they are a bold-faced liar, it is one of the most closely guarded secrets in business and ranks (pun intended) right up there with the formula for Coke and the names of the 11 herbs and spices used by KFC (as well as the real age of Dick Clark and where is Elvis).

Point # 3 can be considered a bit illogical, this is like saying "If you are popular, people will think you are popular", - or, to use a 2005 analogy, "Paris Hilton is famous, because she is famous". So, this begs the question, ...

how do you get famous in the first place, how do you get started? How do you get other sites to link to you for no reason.

Answer, you give them a reason -

For example, one simple thing you can do is explain the preceeding two paragraphs to the webmaster of your target site and show them that they too can increase their ranking by having more links, and obviously, you explain that you'll link to them, which gives them an incoming link. You can also annotate the links with words and phrases that make it attractive for people to click there.

How do you know which sites are already linked to you in google, type in link:www."your url" and press enter. Be warned, Google's boast is not 100% accurate - when I did link:www.witiger.com I found sites I knew that linked to me, but there were many others not listed - meaning Google didn't have them recorded as linked to me. This shows how vulnerable Search Engine software is due to the fact that there are always links, and sites unindexed by Search Engines because content, and links to content, is being created every day faster than the ability of Search Engines to index it.
 

FINAL  WORD  on linking ©WTGR

META TAGS, naming images, title of the page, time the site has been up, etc. etc. are all important, but the 4 paragraphs above is one of the most important and valuable things I could tell you in this unit on Search Engine Ranking. T. Richardson, June 4th, 2005

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Time The longer your site has been up, the higher it will rank competitively due to two reasons 1. Search Engine software is having a hard time categorizing and indexing all the new web pages being built each day. The longer your site is up, the greater chance you will have been found by a search engine. 2. The longer your site has been up, the more chances that other sites will find content there that is of value, and link to it, or refer to it - which increases your link value, and increases your site ranking.

This Omega DeVille Chrono, shown above, is owned by Keith Downing who is a regular participant in the Timezone.com chat and a recognized watch expert
 

things to improve your ranking in a search engine UPDATE

Frequency of Updating Search Engines like to rank sites that are current and provide valuable information that has been recently updated Making frequent changes to your page and the content - compared to other sites who don't -  will give you a higher rank

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine TRAFFIC

Traffic Some Search Engine algorithms are structured to calculate a value for the hit a site receives this means that if a site gets a lot of hits, it will be considered valuable, and rank high in a Search Engine - this can be logically a bit intimidating because in essence it is saying "the best way to be popular is to be popular" so the question is raised, how to you get traffic in the first place links in are one of the ways you can get hits on the site without having to rank in a Search Engine at all - concentrating on obtaining links in from other sites will ensure that at least your page is hit - however these might not be "sticky" hits - meaning hits from people that will stay long on the site and click around

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine CLICK POPULARITY

Click Popularity This is like saying "If your beautiful, people will say you are beautiful" - which means if you get a lot of clicks on your, that will help you get more clicks - duh ?? Richard Zwicky explains "To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results." "Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engine's results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be."  www.metamend.com/search-engine-feedback-algorithm.html Zwicky adds "Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. " permission to quote from metamend.com given by Robert McCourty in email 2004 March 11th

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CLICK POPULARITY Click Fraud

Tardip G. in BCS 555 in November 2005 send in an interesting email about click fraud Tardip said "Hey sir....after listening about fraud occuring on the internet, I decided to look a little further on my own.  I searched "internet fraud india" in Google to see what kind of online fraud was happening in India.  There were some interesting aritcles, but one that caught my attention did not focus on India alone, but  addressed the issue of Click fraud as a global issue on the internet.  The article foucusing on the US and how Google is affected by this fraud.  It also reveals how click fraud is either automated or done manually (by humans).  If people do not use online robots, "bots", they resort to employing low cost workers  from China, India or other counrties to click on ads, and text links. It's an interesting article." Tardip is referring to a situation where companies pay people to sit at a computer connected to the web, and have them repeatedly click on a link - this repeated clicking will be registered such that Google's software will then give a higher score to that link and rank the content higher. This is being done by companies selling highly competitive products online where such activities can make a difference in the ability to rank high, and be found, and make a sale online.

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CLICK POPULARITY Click Fraud

The article found by Tardip was at   http://news.com.com/Exposing+click+fraud/2100-1024_3-5273078.html on the CNET news site Stefanie Olsen, the author, explains "Click fraud is perpetrated in both automated and human ways. The most common method is the use of online robots, or "bots," programmed to click on advertisers' links that are displayed on Web sites or listed in search queries. A growing alternative employs low-cost workers who are hired in China, India and other countries to click on text links and other ads. A third form of fraud takes place when employees of companies click on rivals' ads to deplete their marketing budgets and skew search results."   KEY POINTS If you click on a rivals banner ads, the company will have to pay a fee for the click through, but because you are not buying anything, it is a waste. If you do this at a high enough rate, you can cause companies to pay very large amounts for click throughs that do NOT result in sales, and this can be a wasteful use of marketing promotions money. WTGR

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine ALGORITHM

Search Engine Algorithms "The search engine algorithm is a complex mathematical formula used by the search engines which looks at key elements concerning a Web page (head tags, word density, word priority, links to the page and other factors) to rank any given Web page within the search results for a given query. What is important to understand is that every search engine has a unique algorithm and that these algorithms are constantly being reviewed and modified by the search engines to help prevent search engine spammers from getting listed and to ensure that the most important pages get ranked first. So a number one listing in Lycos doesn’t guarantee a number one listing in Google or any other search engine." Alan K'necht of www.knechtology.com/K'necht is a Toronto based Search Engine Positioning & Web Design Consultant

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine R  U  INDEXED

Checking how you place in the Search Engine Algorithms You can't rank in a Search Engine if your pages aren't even indexed. Meaning people can't find your book in the library, if the librarian hasn't put it on the shelves. One of the most obvious things you want to do to check to see how will you are indexed in a Search Engine - meaning check to see how many of the pages on your site, are indexed in the files collected by the various Search Engines. You can do this checking quite simply go to Google for, in the little window for typing in search words, type in "site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com" AltaVista type in "domain:www.yourdomain.com" Yahoo type in "site:yourdomain.com or domain:yourdomain.com"

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things to improve your ranking in a search engine WAP Enabled

In 2005, and more so in 2006, people are using their cell phones to search the web. Having a web page thatis "friendly" to WAP enabled cell phone users could give a company a competitive advantage at a time (early 2006) when this is just "coming out" and early adopters may profit. Since 2002 and 2003 people have used cell phones to look at web pages. This was not very exciting because the pages took a long time to load and the processing power of a cellphone cannot compete with a laptop computer. Actually searching the web with a search engine did not become popular until Google created capabilities to allow cell phone users to search listings that were WAP enabled. Google allows cell phone used to use Google Local on their phone using  XHTML see  http://www.google.com/mobile/loc_search.html Why is XHTML important? As Kevin Ryan explained, "Early WAP doesn't work with HTTP, so they can't read HTML, so we have to wait for devices to be equipped with WAP 2.0 since they can only read WML or xHTML." "WAP is an acronym that stands for Wireless Access Protocol, which is (on a very basic level) the technology that a cellular phone uses to connect to the internet. There are several WAP browsers."  http://forevergeek.com/articles/unlocking_the_power_of_wap.php   WAP requires cellular airtime. Customers using WAP will be charged, in minutes of time spent on the wireless web, for data transfer on their phone bill. Therefore if you want people to look at the content on your page, make it short and to the point so that do not get ticked off about the air time they are using and cut the connection. AOL Launched a service in Dec 2005  that "...give users easy access to the AOL Search, Pinpoint Shopping and AOL Yellow Pages services.  Now available via mobile browser at http://mobile.aolsearch.com, the AOL Mobile Search Services let users search the Web, comparison shop for products and access local listings from their mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs...." You can also search Google from your Cell Phone using SMS by text messaging One must send all your google SMS messages to 46645 (this corresponds to GOOGL on your phone.)

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UPC Product Code  Numbers

Companies that sell physical products that contain product information on the packing, such as UPC codes, should have those UPC code numbers on the web pages on your site. So when some people search with the UPC code number, your page describing the product can be found.   Searching with UPC code numbers has become popular in 2005, 2006 for people who want to be taken directly to the manufacturer's site instead of dealing with misc. search returns that are unrelated. In a normal search, you type in the name of a product and you will receive returns listing all webpages that contain that word - this can be useless if the word is too general and not specific - but numbers are highly specific and the longer the number, the more likely the search returns will be small, making it easier to scroll through the results. Example if you search Google with the words "digitial camera" you get 41 million returns in Feb 2006 - too many to scroll through if you search Google with the words "stylecam blink II digital camera" you still get a large response, 42,000 returns BUT if you search Google with the UPC number for the stylecam blink II digital camera "815251000743" - you get 38 responses and 38 is a reasonably small number to look through

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Blogs (Web Logs)

student Sergey P., in MRK410 Feb 2006, is involved in doing SEO for companies and he suggested that we should have an entry on this page to discuss how adding a Blog to your site can increase your ranking as Blogs have become very popular in late 2005 and early 2006. student Bilal J. in CCT 322 at UTM in March 2006 noted Pechersy's comments and also emailed Prof. Richardson with a long contribution based on his (Jaffery's) personal experience with SEO and blogs. Bilal said Hi Sir, I wanted to share some useful information on Blogs and their impact on search engine rankings.  I have some experience working as a Search Engine Optimizer for some clients and as online Marketing Coordinator for few companies. I have learned that Blogs have a huge impact on improving page-rank on search engines. Google puts a big emphasis on links from blogs. Their reasoning is based on the fact that if people are talking about your 'site' or 'service', then it must be good and worthy of being in a search engine.  Blogs are also considered important because the content is updated more frequently than a typical website.  There is a real person behind the blog and visitors are always interacting with the content as well by responding via comments, track backs and links. Google's emphasis is on 'real' content that serves some purpose to the visitor as opposed to commericalization of the content.

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Blogs (Web Logs) RSS feeds

Bilal continues Most of the Blogs also feature RSS feeds that can be also embedded in other websites. The content is updated automatically all over the web when the main website is updated. For example, a portal that I have designed, (www.desivibe.ca), we increased our page ranking and even traffic by including live RSS feeds for the visitors. It allows content to be syndicated on people's blogs, personal pages ( google.com/ig, my.yahoo.com) and even dedicated RSS readers. For eg, http://www.level4.ca/~desivibe/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1 offers RSS 2.0 feeds from our portal for anyone who is interested in keeping up with the articles posted on LIVE basis. The real future of the world wide web is in the live linked content that puts emphasis on content vs commericalization. There is also a great site on SEO and Blogs, http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Blogs-and-Search-Engine-Optimization/ . Notice how they are using descriptive URLs to boost keyword ranking on Google and Yahoo. I have implemented the same strategy on my upcoming commerce site for Satellite Hardware ( http://www.FTA4Cheap.com) as well and have noticed a positive impact on the Page Rank as well. I hope this at least steers someone interessted in SEO in the right direction. Regards,  Bilal J www.bilal.ca

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Blogs (Web Logs) UPDATE 2007

UTSC student Dev says " I agree wholeheartedly with Bilal from your UTM class regarding the SEO benefits of blogs. I’ve worked with clients such as Discovery Channel, HMV, BelAirDirect and Canadian Management Centre and all have benefited from the inherent SEO infrastructure that can be leveraged through a blog." "the free blogging platform Wordpress offers a versatile and robust architecture that is ideal for SEO. Key benefits of blogs include, customizable content structuring systems, blog pinging services, RSS feed syndication. I currently have around 13000 unique visits and 30,000 pageviews per month with 125+ RSS subscribers on my blog – www.dailymoolah.com"

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Blogs (Web Logs) UPDATE 2008

UTM student Bilal emailed in Sept 2008 to say " I ended up working as the Web Marketing Manager for IBM and it couldn't been without your support!"

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Blogs (Web Logs) UPDATE 2011

UTM student Maciej (Majic) D. emailed in Jan 2011 to say " I ended up working as the Web Marketing Manager for IBM and it couldn't been without your support!" I've gone through the SEO section and noticed the sub-section on blogs. I felt that an adequate explanation of trackbacks/pingbacks was missing. Trackbacks/Pingbacks are a powerful link building feature available by default in popular blogging platforms such as WordPress. A pingback occurs when an author publishes an article which contains a link to another post, typically on a external blog. The 'other' blog is automatically notified of this link (pingback), and if the admin/author/editor approves it, a linkback is added to the page which is being linked to. Typically, this link appears above, or below user comments, and is treated as a response to the post, known as a trackback. Keeping in mind that external links to your page(s) increase PageRank on Google (and other search engines), writing interesting and useful content, as well as building relationships with other bloggers can significantly boost PageRank through the use of this simple, yet powerful feature."

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The people at Google obviously know a lot of site builders want to rank high in Google. They know that a lot of people claim to have tricks and tips about how to rank high in Google so dispell some myths and provide some basic common sense help, Google has put a page on their site to help people understand what Google does in order to rank a page for listing. WTGR

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Google analytics

Update March 2006 Knowing that a lot of site builders want to rank high in Google, has resulted in Google creating products and services to facilitate this.   In March 2006, student Igor M. at UTM (University of Toronto at Misssissauga) in CCT 322 emailed to talk about Google analytics - a tool he has been using. Igor also served as Advertising Director, Erindale College Student Union - he can be found at igormazic.com Igor said Hello Prof. Richardson, Last night in CCT 322 you mentioned how analytics tools for monitoring website traffic, and visitor trends, could prove to be a great asset when trying to optimize your search engine results. Normally such services come at an additional cost from either your hosting service or could be purchased as software. However, about a year ago [in 2005] Google acquired California based Web Analytics and made its services free for general public use under the name: Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics/. The service is an excellent tool that among monitoring the general traffic flow and the geographic information of your visitors, also measures the success of your online marketing initiatives (via data on the pay-per-click AdWorlds model).  Whether you just want to see what part of the world your visitors are from, or need to make important decisions regarding your marketing strategies, Google Analytics is an excellent tool that can do all of this for free. Cheers, Igor M.

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Google analytics

Attached is a screenshot of the activity on my Google Analytics account for igormazic.com over last 5 months. -  Igor Mazic   students are invited to click  and see the metrics provided for Igor's site so you can have some idea of the information available with this service.

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Removing your URL

The preceeding material on this page deals with doing things to cause Google and other Search Engines to find, and rank your pages higher. What if you want a page taken out? Using <META NAME="Googlebot" CONTENT="nofollow"> Only applies in a proactive sense to stop a page being listed in the first place, what do you do to take a listed page out?   Gordon L., a student in MGD415 at the University of Toronto in Feb 2008, sent an emai in which he discussed this quandry and how to deal with it. Gordon also found a short video on Google's site that explains what to do. Gordon said "... from the same lecture, you have taught us the meta-tags "nofollow" to stop search engine from "discovering" your page. Well, I have stumbled upon this video of Matt Cutts, who works for Google's quality group that specialized in SEO issues. From the video, he showed different methods of removing your URL from Google (and other search engine) aside from "nofollow" – which he explained in detail and also show a flaw in it. There are others he recommended more over "nofollow"! Hope this interests you!" http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/remove-your-content-from-google.html"

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KEY POINTS

There are lots of people that give advice about ranking in Search Engines - some entice you to look at some simple common sense free info, and others encourage you to subscribe to a service. WTGR

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"Expert" advice on improving your ranking

site by Dr. Kevin Nunley  www.drnunley.com "Forget about those services that promise to list you on thousands of search engines. There are only three search engines that really count. Because a number of the majors use the same database, you can register on one and show up on several of them." an excellent article with some practical advice WTGR Here is an example of three good tips that Dr. Nunley provides 1. "Don't waste time trying to get on Yahoo," says Jerry West, search  engine expert with NetGateway. "Instead, submit your site to HotBot.com." Both use the Inktomi database. A listing on HotBot  virtually guarantees a showing on Yahoo. 2. Recently AltaVista surged in user popularity. It ranks as one of the best places to have your site listed. Alta Vista rotates visitors through  four databases. If you don't see your site listed, try again in 15 minutes when the next database will be on display. Register with Alta Vista weekly to get your site listed in all four databases. 3. You will also want to submit your web address to Excite, perennially one of the most used engines. Like HotBot and Alta Vista, Excite spiders through your site in a matter of seconds. Your listing can show  up within a few days.  permission to link / quote given by Kevin Nunley in email Dec 2004. Copies of emails kept on file in the permissions binder.

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"Expert" advice on improving your ranking

.  KEY POINTS Yahoo was the first big search engine to be popular and made a lot of money for its founders - some people still think it is important to rank high in Yahoo - even though intermediate and advanced web surfers use Google. WTGR  .  As quoted form Dr. Nunley's site above - ""Don't waste time trying to get on Yahoo," says Jerry West, search engine expert with NetGateway. "Instead, submit your site to HotBot.com." Both use the Inktomi database. A listing on HotBot virtually guarantees a showing on Yahoo." If you ignore this advice from West and still want to directly interact with Yahoo to improve your ranking Yahoo allows you to submit a site for free, though they entice you with an option to pay a fee which might ensure a higher ranking.

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"Expert" advice on improving your ranking

KEY POINTS Alta Vista has been well known as a Search Engine for some time but became less popular in 2001 and 2002 as Google became more "famous". WTGR  .  As quoted form Dr. Nunley's site above -  "Recently AltaVista surged in user popularity. It ranks as one of the best places to have your site listed. Alta Vista rotates visitors through four databases. If you don't see your site listed, try again in 15 minutes when the next database will be on display. Register with Alta Vista weekly to get your site listed in all four databases" The author of www.witiger.com has found that in some cases Alta Vista served to provide a more true ranking of "value sites" compared to Yahoo which was clogged with commercial URLs. example, in searching using the words "e-commerce professor", we found that Tim Richardson's site witiger.com ranked 9th on the first page in Alta Vista and 10th on the first page in Yahoo in 4th week of July 2003 - in Dec 2004 Richardson ranked #1 in google, #1 in yahoo and #1 in Alta Vista

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"Expert" advice on improving your ranking

With a "Basic Submit", you can "...Add or remove up to 5 URLs at a time from the AltaVista global database. URLs will generally be evaluated within four to six weeks of submission. Basic Submit is a free service." Click on this screen capture to see how it works for AltaVista

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KEY POINTS

Aside from talking about how search engines rank sites, and the best ways to find information using them, we should also take some time to mention that some search engines can NOT be relied upon to honestly offer up the information based on an order or rank as you might presume. That is to say the underlying principle of how search engines list the "returns" they show you after a search has been conducted, is that these returns will be based on sites that most closely match the words you searched sites that are the most pppular ones "hit" for words related to that search However, there has been some people (including journalist Paddy Kamen) who are willing to expose how some search engines provide listings which are not honestly based on the words of your search - but rather based on money paid to them by companies that want their sites listed higher. WTGR

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Search Engine integrity               Search Engine integrity           Search Engine integrity                             Search Engine integrity

"Tainted Search" by Paddy Kamen in the Toronto Star 2001 July 5th Kamen provides a good analogy between search engines and grocery stores. Kamen questions  "...Is an Internet search engine more like a grocery store or a library?   While search engines provide  access to vast amounts of information, they are much more like grocery stores than libraries.  Both grocery stores and search  engines offer suppliers a chance to  reach you, the potential customer.  Both offer valuable "real estate" that  suppliers pay for. Both provide the public with a service. But it's not a public service. Consumers need to be aware of the difference.   In the grocery store, suppliers pay more to have their product on certain shelves. It's no accident that you find some products with 25 "product faces" at eye level but you have to look hard for even a few "product faces" of  something else on the bottom shelf. Search engines also offer suppliers of goods, services and information an  opportunity to connect with the public. With millions of people surfing the Net  at any given moment, every business with a Web site wants you to look at  their site. And, like getting on the right shelf in the grocery store, they all want  to be listed in the place you are most likely to see them: the first page of search results relevant to their area of business." So, the inherent temptation is that the companies building the search engines will take money from people who want to be listed higher for key word searches - such as "used cars". "apartments rent", "discount airfare", etc. Ranking higher in a search engine can mean a substantial benefit for some companies in a competitive marketplace  Kamen adds  "What many consumers aren't aware of, however, is that what appear to be  unbiased search results may in fact be paid-for listings.  Each search engine has its own way of describing paid-for links. And consumers often can't tell the difference.  Go to Alta Vista, for example, and search for "cheese". At the top of your results you will see three "featured links". These are paid for. Next you will see a note that says: "We found 1,022,064 results." Under that you will find 11 links (these are not paid for). Under that you will see an "Extend your search" category that lists a further six sites. Some of these are also paid for. At the  bottom of the page you can click on directories. This will take you to directory  results that are powered by LookSmart. All commercial sites in the LookSmart directory are paid.  Therefore, out of 20 links on the first Alta Vista results page for cheese, as many as nine are paid for. This first page is the most valuable "real estate", as most users will not explore the 1,022,044 remaining results.  "Consumers often give more credit to search engines than they should," says Bill Sweetman, vice-president of interactivity for Delvinia Inc., a  Toronto-based Interactive media research company. Sweetman cautions that  searching is a "user beware" activity. "While there are search engines that try their best to find the sites most relevant to your terms of search, for others the  motive is to feed you the highest bidders in that category."  Frances West agrees. "It's hard to know which ones are using  pay-for-placement," says the Internet specialist with the Toronto Public Library system. "Some will tell you that they charge for faster indexing but what's really insidious is when paid-for links are placed in the results."

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Sites to Submit URLs to Search Engines
applies toChapter 4, page 134-135

	-away.com/	Includes a long list of other search engine sites you can submit to + information on what NOT TO DO  http://www.submit-away.com /spamming.htm
.	http://www.selfpro motion.com/	A quirky site run by a single person (Robert Woodhead) that offers good advice, as well as listing you with all other search engines.
	http://www.altavistacanada	Includes design suggestions to make your web site perfect before submitting
	http://www.studyweb.com/	This site caters to academics wishing to list their course pages and teachers wanting to post their homepages

In December  2003 "10 things to increase..." was published in a longer, two part series, in the famous online media site  www.ecommercetimes.comECT titled the article"10 Ways To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking"

original part one, at www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32391.html or copy at www.witiger.com/ecommerce/searchenginerankingECT~PART~A.htm . original part two at www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32401.html or copy at   www.witiger.com/ecommerce/searchenginerankingECT~PART~B.htm

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The ECT article was picked up by other websites and the story carried on sites such  LinuxInsider.com part one at http://linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32391.html part two at  http://linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32401.html

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In addition to LinuxInsider.com, the ECT article was carried on technewsworld.com part one at  www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32391.html part two at  www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32401.html

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In addition to LinuxInsider.com, & technewsworld.com, the article was also on Wonk /www.marketingwonk.com/archives/2003/12/16/search_engine_optimization_tactics_listed/ Wonk's site also has reader comments about articles

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SEG is a portal about everything to do with Search Engines for a while in January 2003, they listed Prof. Richardson's "10 ways..." as a "Recommended Article" on their site with a link back to the ECT pagewww.searchengineguide.com/cgi-bin/news /recommend_it.cgi?ID=5327

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When "10 things to increase..." was published in a longer, two part series, in www.ecommercetimes.com, it proved to be very popular and it was ranked as the # 1 read during the 2nd week in December 2003, as indicated by the screen capture to the left.

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permission to quote Dennis Buchheim, director of Paid Inclusion at Yahoo!’s head office in Sunnyvale California was given by Mr. Bucheim in phone calls and emails in October 2003. This was an interview conducted directly by Prof. Richardson. Also included in permissions was Colleen Finnegan of Yahoo's office in Toronto. Copies of permission emails are kept on file in the permissions binder.
 
 

witiger.com	CONTACT I MAIN PAGE I NEWS GALLERY I E-BIZ SHORTCUTS I INT'L BIZ SHORTCUTS I MKTG&BUSINESS SHORTCUTS I TEACHING SCHEDULE
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	MISTAKES ITEXTS USED I IMAGES I RANK IDISCLAIMER I STUDENT CONTRIBUTORS I FORMER STUDENTS I
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  Prof. W. Tim G. Richardson © www.witiger.com