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Expert
answers to your search engine positioning questions (part two)
By
Sumantra Roy
QUESTION
14:
I was told link popularity is the number one criterion used by
the top search engines to rank sites. As a webmaster for my own website as well as sites that belong to my customers, I am now
doing the following two things to boost link popularity:
i) I have joined several popularity farms like LinksToYou.com, in the hope that hundreds of other sites will point to each of my
sites.
ii) For my benefit alone, I create links to my home site on each page on all my customers' sites.
Please let me know what I am doing right or wrong and tell me what else I can do to boost link popularity.
Jim Wood
Answer:
Hi Jim,
While link popularity may not be the number one criterion for ranking sites, it is definitely an extremely important criterion.
However, the methods that you are using are not the ones I would recommend.
The first method that you are using may actually backfire on you. Of late,
Google has been banning sites which are members of link farms. The reason is
simple - Google's algorithm depends to a large extent on link popularity.
Hence, any product or service which can artificially boost the link popularity of sites can
wreak havoc on Google's ability to rank the most relevant sites first. Thus, it is perfectly logical for Google to start banning
sites which are members of such link farms. Furthermore, there are several other problems associated with such link farms:
i) They generally require you to add a visible graphical or text link from the home page of your site to the page in your site
which contains the links to the other sites. This means that there is every possibility that one of your visitors may see the
pages containing the links. How would you like it if they saw one of your competitors or an adult site at the top of this page?
ii) Many of these link farms give the same pages to all their members, i.e. the pages that you have to upload to your site are
no different from the pages that I have to upload to my site. Many search engines detect such duplicate pages in multiple
domains and may penalize these domains for spamming.
iii) These link farms link each member's site with the sites of all the members. This means that you will get a lot of links that
are completely unrelated to your site. Unrelated links are not as valuable as links from related sites.
Now, with regard to your second method, while it doesn't have most of the problems associated with the first method, it is not
something that your customers may actually like. For instance, when we optimize a client's web site, we could add links to our
site from the pages that we create for our client. However, we don't do it because it is not in the best interest of our
clients.
Now, even if your clients do not mind your adding the link, this method still suffers from the third drawback associated with the
first method. Your clients' sites are most probably unrelated to your site. As I mentioned, links from unrelated sites are simply
not as valuable as links from related sites.
You don't really need to use these methods to boost your link popularity. There are lots of legitimate, effective, and less
risky ways by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. For a detailed description of all these methods, see my
article at http://www.DomainsNow4U.com/link-popularity-article_9.htm
Article
by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine
positioning specialists on the Internet. Read more about how
to get high positions in the search engines by clicking this link.
QUESTION 15:
My site is in a niche area and there aren't too many other sites
in this field. Whenever someone types in my most important keyword in Yahoo!, only 3 other sites come up in Yahoo!'s Web
Sites section. Now, I am ranked no. 1 in Google for that keyword and hence, I am also ranked no. 1 in Yahoo!'s Web Pages
section.
Do you think it is still worthwhile for me to spend the $199 for
Yahoo!'s Business Express program?
Jeremy Olsen
Answer:
Hi Jeremy,
Yes, I think it is still worthwhile for you to pay $199 to Yahoo!. This is because of 3 reasons:
i) Yahoo! first displays the Web Sites section (which consists of sites present in Yahoo!'s directory), and then provides a link
which takes people to the Web Pages section (which contains sites from Google). Now, look at this from the point of view of people
who have searched for the keyword. A certain percentage of them (generally those who are new to the Internet in general or Yahoo!
in particular) will not be aware of the fact that they can find more results in the Web Pages section.
Hence, they won't click on
to the Web Pages section and will restrict themselves to the 3 sites that Yahoo! has displayed in the Web Sites section. Thus,
even though you are no. 1 in the Web Pages section, you may be losing a large percentage of the traffic from Yahoo! that you
could have got had you been listed in the Web Sites section.
ii) Secondly, a certain percentage of Yahoo!'s visitors do not use its Search
feature. Instead, when they want to find some information, they browse around Yahoo!'s directory going from
category to category. If you are not listed in Yahoo!'s directory, you will obviously not be able to attract such
visitors into your site.
iii) Thirdly, a listing in Yahoo! improves the link popularity of your site. Link popularity has become an increasingly important
factor as far as the ranking of your site in the search engines is concerned. Now, what is important is not only the number of
links to your site, but also the quality of the links. Links from an "important" site add more to your link popularity score than
links from less important sites. No link is as important as one from a large directory like Yahoo!. Hence, by getting your site
listed in Yahoo!'s directory, you can actually improve the ranking of your site in the search engines.
Hence, for all these reasons, I still think it is worthwhile for you to get your site listed in Yahoo! by paying $199. In order to
see how you can get the best possible listing in Yahoo!, see my article at
http://www.domainsnow4u.com/yahoo-submission-article_12.htm.
Article
by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine
positioning specialists on the Internet. Read more about how
to get high positions in the search engines by clicking this link.
QUESTION 16:
I Recently, I was doing some research on which of my competitors were ranked well for my keywords. I found that there was a
particular page in one site which was ranked in the top 10 in AltaVista, Google, Excite and quite a few of the other engines
for my most important keyword.
However, while the Title tag of the page contained the keyword, the keyword wasn't present
anywhere else in the page. Can you explain how this site managed to do well in the search engines without having keywords in the
body of the page?
Andrei Vishnayev
Answer:
Hi Andrei,
That site has probably used a technique called page cloaking. This allows it to show one page to its human visitors and one
page to the search engines. The page which was shown to the search engines must have contained the keywords
throughout the page.
However, since the page which was shown to you (i.e. the
one meant for human visitors) is not going to be shown to the search engines, it need not contain the keyword. You can learn
more about what page cloaking means by reading my article on this topic at
http://www.domainsnow4u.com/page-cloaking-article_14.htm.
My advice to you is to not give in to the temptation of using page cloaking just because one of your competitors is currently
getting good results by using it. Sure, the site may be doing well now. But will it be in the top 10 in the engines 6 months
from now? I can almost guarantee that it won't.
The search
engines do not like sites which use page cloaking because it prevents them from being able to index the same content that
their visitors are going to see. And if they find that a particular site has used cloaking, it may ban that site forever
from their index. Do you want to risk that?
Sites generally use page cloaking when they find that they can't create a page which the search engines like and which also looks
pleasing to the human eye. However, it is possible to create a page which is optimized for the search engines and also looks
good to humans. Sure, it takes a lot more hard work - but it can be done. And doing so will ensure that your site gets a top
ranking in the search engines not only today but also in the future.
Article
by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine
positioning specialists on the Internet. Read more about how
to get high positions in the search engines by clicking this link.
USEFUL LINKS
i) WebPosition Gold -You can make full use of the information on
this page only if you are using WebPosition Gold - the software that almost
every search engine ranking expert uses. If you are seriously
interested in search engine ranking, using this software is an
absolute must. Download a free trial version from http://www.DomainsNow4u.com/home/webpositiongoldtrial.htm
ii) Choosing the correct keywords for your site - The first step
in any search engine positioning campaign involves identifying the keywords for which you should optimize your site. Do you know
the keywords for which you should optimize your site? No? Learn how to locate the correct keywords for your site at
http://www.DomainsNow4U.com/keywords-article_2.htm
iii) Improving the Link Popularity of your site - Almost every search engine is using link popularity as a factor when it comes to
ranking web sites. More the number of relevant links to your
site, higher will be your ranking in the search engines. Learn how you can
improve the link popularity of your site by going to http://www.DomainsNow4u.com/link-popularity-article_9.htm
iv)
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v)
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vi)
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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. Read more about how to get high positions in the search engines by clicking this link.
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