website business optimization
PageRank
I always imagined PageRank was called that because it ranks web pages! Apparently though its named after the co-founder Larry Page, of the patented process used by Google to determine the "worth" of websites. I guess the double entendre was not missed by those who named it though. Google describes PageRank as follows (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html): "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"." So what determines a web pages worth is its value, as determined by other web site owners, according to whether or not they link to it. The quality of the links is important, not just the quantity: a page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank gets a high PageRank itself. Web pages with no links get low PR values as there is no support for them. This is why getting backlinks to your site is so important, and why you will hear people wittering on at length about using things like automated social bookmarking, how to make money blogging and the importance of related vs unrelated backlinks. Backlinks are clearly a critical part of website business optimization, and website business optimization services often concentrate on this aspect for promoting their clients websites. For anyone who understands, the PageRank is based on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one (like gale force ratings are). Other factors, such as the relevance of search words on the page also influence PageRank, which is why relevant links are much better than un-related ones: Aunty Sues web page on flowers doesn't want links from uncle Sids site on car mechanics! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It always pays to remember that Google is not the only search engine on the web, and you will hopefully get traffic from other search engines too. Also other factors will influence your search engine optimization for website, especially the use (or misuse) of keywords. Apart from backlinks, which are considered in detail on other pages, here are some things to consider when you are learning seo: keywords
Choose the keywords you are going to cover before starting, use ones with plenty of demand but less supply. SBI! Is good at finding these. In fact I can thoroughly recommend the use of SBI! for people building a niche website, especially those new to website building for business purposes. The reason being that it takes you step-by-step through the whole process from webpage building to monetisation. Using just SBI! and no other prior knowledge or help I built a niche website that consistently ranks number one and two on Google searches for its keyword. I got backlinks to this without even trying! Apparently people seem to have found me and back-linked just because they like the site. A keyword is a word or a short phrase (it's what people use to search with when looking for your topic). Don't use more than 5 keywords per page (that can be 5 phrases). Keywords should be separated by commas and a single space. Include your main keyword in the first 90 characters of text if at all possible. Include it in the first 500 characters without fail, but not more than twice in those 500 characters – the search engines will think you are keyword spamming and won't like it. It seems that in the text as a whole one keyword per 6-800 characters is about right. Apparently a density of about 3-7% of words is good. Make sure you use your main keyword near the end of the web page too. Scatter the other secondary keywords at about the same density or less through the text. Many people make the mistake of over-using keywords. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- website content
Both human visitors and search engines like content: informative or entertaining (or both!), but without being too long-winded. It might seem odd that some of this stuff has anything to do with website business optimization, but the fact is you can't sell anything without visitors, and the search engines bring visitors. Visitors to niche marketing sites often visit because they are looking for information, and they return if they like your content. They recommend you to their friends, they link their sites to yours. It's absolutely true - I have witnessed it personally. Then if you monetize a popular site some people buy your goods or services, or click on your Adsense or other pay per click advertising. You can write content yourself, if you have a way with the words. You can also get other people to write articles for you. A compromise is to buy public label rights articles and use these, especially if you have a niche site. If you do use pre-written stuff be careful to check for general quality, grammar and spelling and also consider keyword optimisation carefully. Personally I think it's better to at least write the home page and tier one pages (those directly accessed from your homepage), so that you know these have useful content and are well optimised for the search engines. Then if you plan a bigger, more general site, consider out-sourcing article writing. A serious niche website probably has at least 30 content pages. Make sure your main page and all your tier one pages (those accessed directly from the main page) are well optimised. You do not have to write all the articles for tier two pages – there are places to get free articles (for which you provide their short biography and a back-link associated with the article, and credit the source). Keep an eye on the quality of such articles though as it varies a lot. Two good places to start are below, there are loads of them on the web: http://www.articlecity.com/search.shtml If you are just selling a particular product some people do seem to succeed with just one or a few really well optimised, promoted and advertised pages. Many people test such pages using free web space, especially that available on places like Squidoo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- website format
Anyone learning seo might like to keep the following in mind for their website business optimization: Website and Page Names: The website name is it's domain name or url (uniform resource locator). For sites and pages choose a name with your main keyword if one is available. Hyphens are okay to separate words, but better if there's none, or one, apparently, same applies to page names (I'm told people don't like typing the hyphens!). www.thisisthewebsiteurl.com/thisisthepagename.html Page Title: Include your keyword in the title, use large type (H1 if possible, or H2 – H stands for header text, it's part of the html code, html stands for hypertext mark-up language). Description: The text people will see when they use a search engine to find you. Ideally should be no longer than 200 characters. Include your main keyword once, and once only, exactly the way that you entered it in the keyword section (check there are no typing errors). Headline at the top of the page: Your main keyword must be in the top headline. Include it once, and once only, as you entered it in the keywords. Text Links Within A Page: Your main keyword should appear in a text link, but in no more than two such links as this could be considered spamming. Pictures: Don't use too big photos, they take ages to load. You can put photos in a page of their own and link to a thumbnail (smaller version), for people who want a closer look! Photos are best in jpg format or for backgrounds and such gif files are okay, or these days png (portable net graphics). There's free photo editing software on the web, I sometimes use Picnic. I found people really happy to provide photos for a niche site if you offered a credit (just their details with a thank you), a link and a couple of sentences or so about the picture. Doing this also got people interested in my site, and they often told their friends – starting the traffic off. Tables: These can be useful for laying out text, and combining it with photos, and/or advertising, such as Google Adsense. HTML: A little html can be useful. Don't be scared of HTML (hypertext mark-up language). It really is quite easy and there's loads of help on the web, with sample code to help you do things you might need, such as sub and super scripts. For some sites I design basic html templates which I will use on several or most pages in a site. The html includes site-wide adverts and links, which I often put in a column on the far right hand side. This saves me no-end of otherwise repetitive work, and therefore time too. I just then just insert relevant text, titles, photos and links as I need to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since they are so important I suggest you continue by looking at how backlinks affect website business optimization. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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