Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Marketing

Web Site Development

 

Google Search Engine Optimisation tips.

1) Ensure that your backlinks include keywords from the destination page.

Google takes account of the inbound links to your pages and text included in the link text. To get the highest value from inbound links they must include text which is relevant to your page.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 1.3.1 & 2.2

[Abstract 1.3.1]
'In particular, link structure and link text provide a lot of
information for making relevance judgments and quality filtering. Google makes use of both link
structure and anchor text'

[Abstract 2.2]
'The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine. Most search engines associate the text
of a link with the page that the link is on. In addition, we associate it with the page the link points to.
This has several advantages. First, anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than
the pages themselves.'

Hilltop: Search engine based on expert pages

[Abstract 1.2 (ii)]
'We believe a page is an authority on the query topic if and only if some of the best experts on the query topic point to it. Of course in practice some expert pages may be experts on a broader or related topic. If so, only a subset of the hyperlinks on the expert page may be relevant. In such cases the links being considered have to be carefully chosen to ensure that their qualifying text matches the query'

Example: Example google tips page

2) Vary SEO back link text.

The Google bomb is a means of attempting to get higher ranking by using concentrated words in high volume backlink text. This may have proved effective a couple of years ago but varying text and qualify backlink text with on page text will bring greater and broader results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

[Abstract]
'An example of Google bombing is if a user registers many domains and all of them link to a main site with the text "... is a living legend". Searching for "living legend" on Google will return the main site higher in the ranking, even if the phrase "living legend" doesn't appear on the main site. A common means of exploiting this is through weblogs, where although the entry may disappear from the main page quickly, the short-term effects of a link can dramatically affect the ranking of a given site. Empirical results indicate that it does not take a large number of websites to achieve a Googlebomb. The effect has been achieved with only a handful of dedicated weblogs.'

Example: Google methods tips page

3) Emulate academic publication.

Google has evolved from an academic project by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, with this in mind and the goal statement cited below, we believe that, although Google is now a commercial entity, its origins and early driving forces were very much towards providing links to academic information.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 1.3.2

[Abstract]
'With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and understanding into the academic
realm.'

Example: Example google tips page

4) Use your primary keywords in your page title.

Google puts great importance on the combined page title and PageRank.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 2.1

[Abstract]
'For most popular subjects, a simple text matching search that is restricted to web
page titles performs admirably when PageRank prioritizes the results. For the type of full text searches in the main Google system, PageRank also helps
a great deal.'

Example: Example guide page

5) Use fully qualified URLs or ensure you use only one URL per page as backlinks.

Google assigns a new docID for new pages found when it crawls existing known pages. By using different URLs you may create two docIDs and disperse backlink records. i.e. http://www.isss.co.uk -> http://www.isss.co.uk/index.asp refers to the same page.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 4.1

[Abstract]
'Every web page has an
associated ID number called a docID which is assigned
whenever a new URL is parsed out of a web page.'

6) Ensure your keywords are present in the largest text on your page.

Google records two types of word occurrence, fancy and plain. Fancy hits include words in the URL, title, anchor text and meta tags; plain hits are everything else. For both types of word occurrence google records the position and relative text size.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 4.2.5

[Abstract]
'There are two types of hits: fancy hits and plain hits.
Fancy hits include hits occurring in a URL, title, anchor text, or meta tag. Plain hits include everything
else. A plain hit consists of a capitalization bit, font size, and 12 bits of word position in a document (all
positions higher than 4095 are labeled 4096). Font size is represented relative to the rest of the document
using three bits (only 7 values are actually used because 111 is the flag that signals a fancy hit).'

Example: Example google page H1 is size 4

7) Include your keywords in all types of HTML tags but don't over populate the page.

Google counts the number of word occurrences in each type of tag but will not account for occurrences over a threshold amount. By over populating a page with a keyword you may trigger a spam filter which will adversely affect the search result position for your page.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 4.5.1

[Abstract]
'Google considers each hit to be one of several different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font,
plain text small font, ...), each of which has its own type-weight. The type-weights make up a vector
indexed by type. Google counts the number of hits of each type in the hit list. Then every count is
converted into a count-weight. Count-weights increase linearly with counts at first but quickly taper off
so that more than a certain count will not help.'

Example: Example google page HTML tags

8) Keep keywords of a keyword phrase close together and in the correct order

Google considers words of a broad search term against documents with matching terms and weights documents by proximity of words and order.

Anatomy of a large scale hypertxtual search engine. 4.1

[Abstract]
'Now multiple hit lists must be scanned
through at once so that hits occurring close together in a document are weighted higher than hits
occurring far apart.'

Example: Example google page proximity

9) Become an expert page or a target of an expert page.

Google values links and content from authoritative expert pages. Google identifies expert pages by analyzing target pages from authoritative and diverse directories, to find pages which are subject specific and link to multiple nonaffiliated same subject pages. To become or find an expert page look for pages with ample content, which have multiple links to same subject pages, which are well structured and are listed in high ranking directories.

Hilltop: Search engine based on expert pages

[Abstract 1.2 (i)]
'We define an expert page as a page that is about a certain topic and has links to many nonaffiliated pages on that topic. Two pages are nonaffiliated conceptually if they are authored by authors from nonaffiliated organizations'

[Abstract 2.3]
'In doing so we only index text contained within "key phrases" of the expert. A key phrase is a piece of text that qualifies one or more URLs in the page. Every key phrase has a scope within the document text. URLs located within the scope of a phrase are said to be "qualified" by it. '

Example: Example google page structure

10) Link to and obtain links from similar subject sites.

Google organizes sites in subject communities and calculates ranking accordind to Pagerank calculations within that community, thus query result positions are improved by the score of authoritative links from sites of similar subject matter. Joining communities not only assist achieving higher search result positions but also attracting qualified traffic from other sites.

Hilltop: Search engine based on expert pages

[Abstract]
'Hilltop most resembles the connectivity techniques, PageRank and Topic Distillation. Unlike PageRank our technique is a dynamic one and considers connectivity in a graph specifically about the query topic. Hence, it can evaluate relevance of content from the point of view of the community of authors interested in the query topic. Unlike Topic Distillation we enumerate and consider all good experts on the subject and correspondingly all good target pages on the subject'

Google re-renks SERPs specific to a user query. When an initial result set has been obtained for a user query the results are re-ranked to find the most relevent results for that query, this is done in a similar way to which PageRank ranks community pages but again limits the scope of the calculation to the query result set. Having backlikns to your page from pages which are returned in the same query will increase your re-ranked score and improve your SERPs position.

Ranking search results by re-ranking the results based on local inter-connectivity US 6526440 B1

Summary of Google invention

[Abstract]
'The LocalScore for each document x is based on the relative support for that document from other documents in the initial set (the computation of LocalScore is described in more detail below with reference to FIG. 3). Documents linked to by a large number of other documents in the initial set (i.e., documents with high relative support), will have a high LocalScore.'

11) Avoid poison words.

Google filters poison words which are closely associate with commercial, explicit, or in bad taste.

Vaughns poison word list Google florida update

[Abstract]
'Dictionary test - is phrase listed in Florida dictionary. If yes apply filter'

12) Take heed of Google search engine optimisation guidelines. Don't over optimise!

Google will identify and filter over optimised sites. The Google guidelines may be a little restrictive but take care not to bend the rules too much, or you may regret it.

Google webmaster guidelines

13) Don't overlink.

Don't have the majority of inbound links coming from one source, this may be seen as commercial or link farm anchors.

Vaughns Google Florida update chart

[Abstract]
'Does the site have many links from the same domain. If yes apply filter'

14) Clearly identify Shopping items.

Google identifies documents which have items for sale on them and extract sale attributes, if you are selling items on your site ensure you clearly identify sale items. If you are not selling items ensure you don't falsely identify shopping items.

Methods and systems for information extraction 0131764A1

Summary of Google patent

[Abstract]
'Shopping documents can contain attributes of the items, such as, for example, the price of the item, an image of the item, a SKU number for the item, and a version of the item'

15) Build clear sitemaps.

Google crawls your site by identifying internal links from previously indexed pages. If you have orphaned pages or deep linked pages, they may not get indexed or may be removed as redundant pages, also if you use JavaScript or other methods of linking which are difficult for the crawler to identify links; you may have problems getting pages indexed. Ensure you have a sitemap which has static HTML links and/or use an XML sitemap. Including a robot.txt file and including the robots meta tag in your pages helps.

iSSS sitemap network

16) Select your backlinks.

Any site can choose to link to your site, however when actively building backlinks you should identify sites which link to similar sites. By having related sites of a similar theme and related links, your site will appear more relevent to the subject matter and achieve higher natural rankings.

Techniques for finding related documents US6754873B1

Summary of Google document

[Abstract]
'The list of related web pages can be gnerated from the forwardlink set according to the score of the web pages. In other words, the score is an indication of the relatedness to the selected web page and the higher the score, the more related the web page is'

17) Keep your content unique.

Google has no benefit in providing search results which have identicle or near identicle content. Having content which is identified as a duplicate of content which has been previously indexed could be detrimental to your site, your site will be displaced if other sites have the same content and are considered more important or trustwothy by Google.

Check for duplicate documents to avoid accidental repetition. CopyScape document checker

Detecting duplicate and near duplicate content US6658423B1

Summary of invention

[Abstract]
'In response to the detected duplicate documents, the present invention may also function to eliminate duplicate documents (e.g keeping the one with the best PageRank, with the best trust of host, that is most recent)'

18) Account for inflection, compund words and orthographic variation in keyword frequencies.

Google identifes words which are related to each other, in-order to expand and improve user queries. If expanded words are included in your document there should be a stronger indication of relevance to the user query to the keywords in your documents.

When fine tuning word frequencies you should also count the expanded keyword set.

Systems and methods for improving search quality WO 2005066847

Summary of Google paper

[Abstract]
'a method may generally include identifying a set of terms associated with a document, expanding the set of terms by further associating with the document one or more alternative spellings, additional inflectional forms of at least one term in the set of terms, and/or one or more alternative representations of at least one compound term in the set of terms, and indexing the document using the expanded set of terms.'

19) Include associated supporting keywords.

Latent semantic indexing is a well documented method of identifying document keywords without explicit citation. If you use keywords which are not related to the content within your document, an LSI analysis may result in your keywords been discounted as out of context words. To find associated keywords, search for your primary keywords and find common supporting words which are used on the top 10-20 pages returned by the search, or you can use the a tool like the SEOchat.com keyword suggest to find related words

i.e for a keyword of abdominals you may need to include words such as - abs, muscles, stomach, obliques, 6 pack etc.

 

[Abstract]
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