Optimisation Help
HTML size
Page size
matters because search engines limit size of a cached page. For
example, Google will only cache a full page if the size of its
HTML is less than 101 Kb (images and external scripts are not
included). Yahoo! caches text of up to 500 Kb per page. This
means if your HTML page is too large, search engines will not
cache the full page, and only the top part of the text will be
searchable.
Last modified
This
attribute shows how old the document is. It is taken from the
server response to HTTP request. You can see if your page has
been updated lately.
Same colour text and
background
If the
colour of the text on a page is close to the background colour,
the text becomes almost invisible. As a rule, this technique is
employed to populate a page with keywords without damaging its
design. Since it is considered as spam by most search engines,
we suggest that you do not try it. NOTE: If a text of the
same colour as the background is found on the analyzed page.
Tiny text
If a page
uses Cascading Style Sheets and there are fonts smaller than 4
pixels, they are reported as tiny texts. Most search engines
consider tiny texts as an abusive practice - this is why you
should avoid using them
Immediate keyword repeats
The same
keyword repeated one after the other a few times, for example
air tickets on-line, air tickets, air tickets, air tickets, air
tickets in Hong Kong is a questionable trick. For this example,
there will be three repetitions reported, because the keyword
was placed three times in a row after it was used first. Such
repetitions are considered as spam by most search engines.
Controls
If the page
has HTML tags (HTML only, not other scripts) that create
controls, it will be mentioned in the report. Try to avoid too
many controls on your page, especially in the top area, since it
may decrease your keyword prominence and result in low rankings.
Frames
Frames use
is reported here. Not all search engines support frames, i.e.
can follow from a frameset page to content frames and index
texts. If your website consists of frames, and you cannot
redesign it, you can solve this problem by putting the content
of an optimized page with links to other pages into a <NOFRAMES>
HTML tag.
External and Internal
JavaScript
If there is
a Script tag with a link to a JavaScript external file on the
page, it will be mentioned under 'External JavaScript'. Embedded
(internal) JavaScript representing the full content of the
SCRIPT tag will be reported here as internal JavaScript use. Do
not use too many embedded scripts on the page, because your
keyword prominence will be reduced, and thus your page will be
ranked lower on search engines. We advise putting the script in
an external file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as
possible.
External and Internal VBScript
If an
external VB Script file is referenced from the page, it will be
mentioned under 'External VBScript'. Detected
internal VBScript within the SCRIPT tag will be reported as
Internal VBScript use. Please note that excessive use of scripts
in the top area of the page dilute keyword prominence and
therefore affect your rankings. Put the script in an external
file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as possible.
File robots.txt allows
spidering
Robots.txt
is a text file placed in the root directory of a website to tell
robots on how to spider the website. Only robots that comply
with the Robots Exclusion Standard will read and obey the
commands in this file. Robots.txt is often used to prevent
robots from visiting some pages and subdirectories not intended
for public use. However, if you want search engine robots to
spider your site, there should not be disallowing commands
included within this file for all or particular search engine
robots.
<HEAD> area
Each HTML
document should have a HEAD tag at the beginning of each
document. The information contained inside the head tag
(<HEAD>...</HEAD>) describes the document, but it doesn't show
up on the page returned to the browser. The Title tag and meta
tags are found inside the Head tag.
<TITLE> tag
Syntax:
<title>Web Page Title</title>
An HTML tag
within the Head tag is used to define the title of a Web page.
The content of the Title tag is displayed by browsers on the
Title bar located at the top of the browser window. Search
engines use the Title tag to provide a link to the site matching
the user's query. The text in the Title tag is one of the most
important factors influencing search engine ranking algorithms.
By populating your most important keywords in the Title tag, you
dramatically increase the search engine ranking of the page for
those keywords.
Stop Words
To save
space and speed up searching, some search engines exclude common
words from their index, therefore these words are ignored when
searches are carried out.
'The',
'or', 'in', 'it' are examples of such words. These words are
known as "stop words." To make your pages search
engine-friendly, you should avoid using stop words in the most
important areas of your page like title, meta tags, headings,
alternative image attributes, anchor names, etc.
Besides,
stop words have no contextual meaning - using them in short
areas such as a title, headings, and anchor texts will reduce
weight, prominence and the frequency of keywords.
Keyword frequency
Frequency
is the number of times your keyword is used in the analyzed area
of the page.
Example: If
the page's first heading is 'Get the best XYZ services provided
by XYZ Company', frequency of keyword 'XYZ' in the heading will
be two. Frequency relates only to the exact matches of a
keyword. Therefore, frequency of key phrase 'XYZ services' will
be one, because as exact match, this keyword is used only once.
Search
engines use frequency as a measure of keyword importance.
Search
engines rate pages with more keywords as more relevant results,
and score them higher. However, you should not use too many
keywords, since most search engines will penalize you for this
practice for being seen as an attempt to artificially inflate
rankings.
Keyword weight
(density)
Keyword
weight is a measure of how often a keyword is found in a
specific area of the Web page like a title, heading, anchor
name, visible text, etc. Unlike keyword frequency, which is just
a count, keyword weight is a ratio.
Keyword
weight will depend on the type of keyword, that is if the
keyword is a single word or phrase. If the keyword includes two
or more words, for example, 'XYZ services', every word in the
key phrase (i.e. both 'XYZ' and 'services') contributes to the
weight ratio in the weight formula, and not as one keyword ('XYZ
services').
Keyword
weight is calculated as the number of words in the key phrase
multiplied by frequency and divided by the total number of words
(including the keyword).
Example:
The title of a Web page is 'Get Best XYZ Services'. Keyword
weight for 'XYZ services' is 2*1/4*100%=50%. If you reduce the
number of words in the title by removing the word 'get', so the
title becomes 'Best XYZ Services', than the keyword weight will
be larger: 2*1/3*100%=67%. Finally, if you only keep 'XYZ
Services' in the title, the keyword weight will become 100% --
2*1/2*100%.
So, to
increase the keyword weight, you should either add some more
keywords or reduce the number of words in the page area. The
proportion of the keywords to all words will become larger, so
will the keyword weight.
Many search
engines calculate keyword weight when they rank pages for a
particular keyword. Normally, high keyword weight tell search
engines that the keyword is extremely important in the text;
however, a weight that is too high can make search engines
suspect you of spamming and they will penalize your website's
rankings.
Keyword Prominence
Prominence
is another measure of keyword importance that relates to the
proximity of a keyword to the beginning of the analyzed page
area. Being the keyword that is used at the beginning of the
Title, Heading, or on top of the visible text of the page is
considered more important than other words. Prominence is a
ratio that is calculated separately for each important page area
such as a title, headings, visible text, anchor tags, etc.
HTML pages
are written in a document-like fashion. The most important items
of a document's visible text are placed at the top, and their
importance is gradually reduced towards the bottom. This idea
can be also applied to keyword prominence. Normally, the closer
a keyword to the top of a page and to the beginning of a
sentence, the higher its prominence is. However, search engines
also check if the keyword is present in the middle and at the
bottom of the page, so you should place some keywords there too.
The
prominence formula takes the following factors into account:
1) Keyword
positions in the area,
2) Number
of words in the keyword, and
3) Total
number of words in the area.
100%
prominence is given to a keyword or key phrase that appears at
the beginning of the analyzed page area.
Example 1:
Let's take the page title 'Daily horoscopes on your desktop' and
analyze prominence of key phrase 'daily horoscopes'. The title
word order will be: 'Keyword1, keyword2, word3, word4, word5'.
Prominence will be 100% here as the key phrase is present at the
beginning of the sentence.
The
keyword/key phrase in the middle of the analyzed area will have
50% prominence.
Example 2:
The anchor name is 'Find here the daily horoscope for your
sign'. The keyword prominence of the phrase 'daily horoscope' in
this case will be 50% as the key phrase is located in the middle
of the sentence -- 'Word1, word2, word3, keyword4, keyword5,
word6, word7, word8'.
As a
keyword appears farther back in the area, its prominence will be
counted from zero and it will depend on how close to the end it
is. If the keyword appears at the end of the area, its
prominence will be close to 0%. If the keyword appears at the
beginning of the area and then is repeated in the middle or at
the end, its prominence will be 100% because prominence of the
fist used keyword prevails over the repeated keywords.
META
Description
Syntax: <
META name="Description" content="Web page description">
This is a
Meta tag that provides a brief description of a Web page. It is
important the description clearly describes the purpose of the
page. The importance of the Description tag as an element of the
ranking algorithm has decreased significantly over years, but
there are still search engines that support this tag. They log
descriptions of the indexed pages and often display them with
the Title in their results.
The length
of a displayed description varies per search engine. Therefore
you should place the most important keywords at the beginning of
the first sentence -- this will guarantee that both users and
search engines will see the most important information about
your site.
META Keywords
Syntax: <
META name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">
This is
Meta tag that lists the words or phrases about the contents of
the Web page. This tag provides some additional text for
crawler-based search engines. However because of frequent
attempts to abuse their system, most search engines ignore this
tag. Please note that none of the major crawler-based search
engines except Inktomi provide support for the Keywords Meta
tag.
Similar to
the description tag, there is a limit in the number of captured
characters in Keywords meta tag. Ensure you've chosen keywords
that are relevant to the content of your site. Avoid repetitions
as search engines can penalize your rankings. Move the most
important keywords to the beginning to increase their
prominence.
META Refresh
Syntax: <
META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://newURL.com/">
This HTML
META tag also belongs in the Head tag of your HTML page.
The META
Refresh tag is often used as a way to redirect the viewer to
another Web page or refresh the content of the viewed page after
a specified number of seconds. The META Refresh tag is also
sometimes used as a doorway page optimized for a certain search
engine, which is accessed first by users, who then are
redirected to the main website. Some search engines discourage
the use of this META tag, because it is an opportunity for
webmasters to spam search engines with similar pages that all
lead to the same page. In addition, this also clutters the
search engines databases with irrelevant and multiple versions
of the same data. Try to avoid doorways and redirects altogether
in your Web building.
META Robots
Syntax: <
META name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW">
The robots
instructions are normally placed in a robots.txt file that is
uploaded to the root directory of a domain. However, if a
webmaster does not have access to /robots.txt, then instructions
can be placed in the Robots META tag. This tag tells the search
engine robots whether a page should be indexed and included in
the search engine database and its links followed.
The content
of the robots meta tag is a comma separated list that may
contain the following commands:
ALL also
INDEX,FOLLOW -- there are no restrictions on indexing the page
or following links; NONE also NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW -- robots must
ignore the page; a combination of INDEX, FOLLOW, NOINDEX,
NOFOLLOW -- if you want a search engine robot just to index a
page but not to follow links, you should specify 'INDEX,NOFOLLOW',
if you want it to follow links without indexing the page, you
should instruct robots as 'NOINDEX,FOLLOW'.
The purpose
of the check is to ensure there are no commands
that might prevent search engine robots from indexing a page and
following links. For that reason, 'ALL' or 'INDEX, FOLLOW' are
commands expected in this tag.
<BODY> area
The body
tag identifies the beginning of the main section of your Web
page, the main content area. The whole of the Web page is
designed between the opening and closing body tag.
(<BODY>...</BODY>) including all images, links, text, headings,
paragraphs, and forms.
The
recommendations on how to use keywords in the BODY tag are the
same as in other important areas. Your primary keywords should
be placed at the top of your body tag (first paragraph) and as
close to the beginning of a sentence as possible. Do not forget
to use them again in each paragraph. Keywords should not be
repeated one after another. For search engines that check
keyword presence at the bottom of the body tag, you should use
your most important keywords within the last paragraph from the
closing body tag.
Visible text
The content
of the Body tag includes both visible and invisible text. The
term 'Visible text' refers to the portion that is displayed by
the browser. The visible text analyzed by Web CEO is all within
the Body tag but exclude HTML Comments (invisible) and ALT Tags
(partially visible).
Extra
emphasis by search engines is put on keywords when you underline
them or make them bold, thus helping higher rankings for these
keywords.
First heading on the page
(H1-H6)
Syntax:
<H1>Keyword in the Heading</H1>, < H3>Keyword in the
Heading</H3>, etc.
It is
important the keyword is present in the very first heading tag
on the page regardless of its type. If the keyword is also used
as a first word, you will raise its prominence.
All headings
There are
standard rules for the structure of HTML pages. They are written
in a document-like fashion. In a document, you start with the
title, then a major heading that usually describes the main
purpose of the section. Subheadings highlight the key points of
each subsection. Many search engines rank the words found in
headings higher than the words found in the text of the
document. Some search engines incorporate keywords by looking at
all the heading tags on a page.
Links
Syntax: <A
href="#xxx">keyword</A>
Anchor tags
on the page can also have keyword-rich text as anchor names.
This text can be important to some search engines and therefore
also for the rankings of the destination pages. Create anchored
links with keywords in them to link pages of your website.
Text in links including ALTs
Syntax: <a
href="mypage.htm"><img border="0" src="image.gif" Alt="keyword"
width="100" height="200"></a>)
Images like
buttons, banners, etc. may include Alt attributes as a text
comment describing the graphic image. If this image has been
used as a hyperlink, the Alt attribute is interpreted as a link
text by some search engines, and the destination page will have
a significant boost in rankings for the keyword in the Alt
attribute. Use graphic links with keyword-rich Alts to link
pages of your website.
ALT image attributes
Syntax: <img
src="image.gif" Alt="keyword" height=100 widths=200>
Optimization of Alt image attributes gives you another
opportunity to use keywords. It is advantageous if the page is
designed with large graphics and very little text. Include the
target keyword in at least the first three Alt attributes.
Comments
Syntax:
<!-- Comment: keyword -->
This tag
lets webmasters write notes about the page code, which is only
for their guidance and is invisible to the browser. Most search
engines do not read the content of this tag, so Comments
optimization will not be as helpful as Title optimization. The
Comment tags should be populated with keywords only if the
design of the Web page does not allow more efficient and search
engine-friendly methods.
Keyword in URL
Having
keyword in your domain name and / or folder names and file names
increases your chances to gain top positions for these keywords.
If you aren't a brand-oriented business, it is recommended that
you purchase the domain name that contains your keyword. If your
key phrase consists of more than one keyword, the best way to
separate them in the URL is with a hyphen "-":
www.my-keyphrase-here.com
If it seems
impossible to get such a domain name, or your site is already
well established over a keyword-poor domain, attempt to
compensate it by using keywords in folder and file names of your
site's file system on the server.
Link popularity
This is the
number of links from other website pages to your page that
search engines are aware of.
Each search
engine only lists links embedded on the sites that are
pre-indexed by that particular search engine. So, the presence of
certain links in Google's index will not guarantee that Inktomi
has also indexed the same sites. Therefore the number of links
shown will be different from engine to engine.
In general,
the more links that point to your page, the better your page
will rank.
However, a
large number of links is not the deciding factor that helps your
site get to the top of the results pages -- the quality of those
links is of greater importance. If a link to your site is placed
on a page having very little importance that is this page itself
is linked to only a few other pages or none, this kind of link
will not improve a page's popularity. The links to your pages
should be subject-relevant because theme-based search engines
will check the parity of content between referring and referred
pages. The closer they are, the more relevant your site page is
to the searcher's query for your keyword. Avoid reciprocal
linking with sites that have a low weight, or a questionable
reputation or are different from yours in subject matter. As a
part of their anti-spam measures, search engines can penalize
your site's rankings for ignoring these pitfalls.
Theme
For
spam-free and relevant results, search engines start evaluating
sites as one page to find the main theme covering all pages of
the site. Most major search engines have become theme-based.
Search
engines extract and analyze words on all pages of a website to
discover its theme. The more keywords found on your website that
relate to the user's query, the more points you get for the
theme. Therefore, if your Web business includes many products or
services, try to find the theme that covers them all.
To analyze
the theme of your site, the program follows links on the
analyzed page and sees if there are keywords in the Body,
titles, and descriptions of the linked pages.
Open Directory Project listing
(dmoz.org)
The ODP
(also known as DMOZ) is the largest human-edited directory on
the Web. Many major search engines use the ODP data to provide
their directory results. This works because sites put forward
for inclusion in the ODP are reviewed by real people who care
about the quality of their directory.
It is still
a good for a website to be present in the ODP. For new sites, it
is an excellent starting point, because Google regularly spiders
the ODP to update its own directory based on the ODP listings,
and if your site is included, you'll get a link that Google
believes important enough to start off crawling your site.
As well as
the weight of a link from the ODP, it would be even better if
the site were listed in the most topic-specific category to make
the link not only important, but also content-relevant.
Yahoo! Directory listing
This is
similar to the ODP -- Google relationship. The Yahoo! directory
is regularly crawled by the Yahoo! robots. A new site has a
greater chance of being included faster in the Yahoo! search
engine if there is a link to this site from the Yahoo!
directory. If you get your site is listed within the Yahoo!
category closest to your site theme, this particular link will
help your site move up.
Total number of words (Density
report)
This number
tells you how many words there are in all page areas (e.g.
TITLE, Meta Description and Meta Keywords) chosen for analysis.
The more words, the better, however you should look through the
density report and decide if the keywords and key phrases you'd
like to rank high for have enough density, i.e. they are
repeated enough times throughout this text. The bigger this
total word count, the more times your key term combination has
to be repeated across these page areas.
User agent
A user
agent is the client application used with a particular network
protocol; Web user agents range from web browsers to search
engine crawlers ("spiders"). When Internet users visit a website,
a text string is generally sent to identify the user agent to
the server. This forms part of the HTTP request, prefixed with
User-agent: or User-Agent: and typically includes information
such as the application name, version, host operating system,
and language.
Search Engine Bot
Search
engine bot is a type of web crawlers which collects web
documents to generate and maintain index for the search engines.
Rank Details
'Rank
details" shows your and your competitors' link popularity and
traffic, using Google PR and Alexa
Traffic Rank.
Google Page-Rank is the measure of a page?s importance
in Google?s opinion. PR calculations are based on how many
quality and relevant sites across the Web link to this page. The
higher the Page-Rank of the referring page, the more weight this
link has.
Alexa Traffic Rank is a combined measure of page views
and users (reach). This information is gathered with the help of
Alexa Toolbar used by millions of Web surfers. First, Alexa
calculates the reach and number of page views for all sites on
the Web on the daily basis. Then these two quantities are
averaged over time.
Back-links Theme
To
determine your site rankings, search engines take into
consideration theme relevance of those sites linking to you. If
the linking sites have something in common with yours (keywords
in the BODY, titles, descriptions of the linked pages, etc.),
your website gets better chances to gain high positions for
these keywords.
PR
Statistics for linking sites
PR
Statistics for linking sites is statistic information about the
Page Rank of the pages linking to you. Statistics are presented
both in numerical and percentage terms. The higher the PR of the
referring site, the better chances your own Web page has to get
high PR.
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