Many of major search engines use link popularity to gauge relevancy of your site in its search results. Plus, links are what makes web go-round. Many webmasters have notion that links are bad because they are sending visitors off of their web site. Although this is true, links to and from web sites that complement yours helps to build credibility and sets stage for making your web site an authority in your field.

Much is written about importance of getting links from directories like Yahoo!, Looksmart and Open Directory Project, because they are reviewed by human beings. If you want a link in first two, however, it will cost you money. A listing in Yahoo! and Looksmart is considered "paid inclusion." Your marketing dollars will be well spent, though, because listings here will not only generate increased traffic, it will add greatly to your web site's link popularity.

SUBMITTING TO THE SEARCH ENGINES

Once your web page is fully optimized, it is time to submit it to search engines. Although there are hundreds of search engines on Internet, only a handful are truly important. Recent statistics show top three search engines as:

#1 MSN #2 Yahoo! #3 Google

Although there are automated services that promise to get you listed on thousands of search engines, it is recommended that you manually submit your site to top search engines. Some of search engines view automated submissions as spam and will not list your site. Others put a higher priority on manual submissions. And others--such as Inktomi--required an annual fee to list your site. It can take weeks (sometimes even months!) to get listed, so again, be patient. The search engines are important to success of your web site, so treat them with respect they deserve. Most of all, do not over-submit!

For more information about search engine submissions, request a copy of my article "Web Site Promotion 101" at mailto:sitepromotion101@sendfree.com

TRAFFIC REPORTING AND ANALYSIS

Once you have allowed an appropriate amount of time to lapse (I usually wait six weeks), it is time to generate some reports to confirm success of your search engine optimization campaign. Search engine positioning reports provide a wealth of information, such as your site's position in major search engines, how you rank on your targeted keyword terms and phrases, which sites rank above and below you, where you've declined in rankings, and so on.

To automate process of generating your search engine positioning reports, download a free trial of 1stPlace Software's highly-acclaimed WebPosition Gold at http://www.webposition.com/

In addition to your search engine positioning reports, be sure to regularly check your traffic logs. Is your traffic increasing? Are people finding your site with search terms you targeted? Which of search engines are referring visitors to your site?

There are many variables that affect rankings, including:

1. Keyword density 2. Link popularity 3. Click popularity 4. Keywords in title 5. Keywords in description tag 6. Keywords in keywords tag 7. Keywords in names of linked pages and in linked words 8. Keywords in alt tags 9. Keywords in names of images 10. Paying for ranks 11. Listing in online directories

Source: Search Engine Optimization and Placement: An Internet Marketing Course for Webmasters by Renee Kennedy and Terry Kent. http://www.thewritemarket.com/seo-book.shtml

CASE STUDY OF GRIEF LOSS & RECOVERY

In October 2001, my web site, Grief Loss & Recovery (http://www.grieflossrecovery.com), was averaging 98 visitors a day and 573 page views. Reviewing my traffic logs, I noted that most popular search term for my site was "grief poems," so I decided to optimize my site for that phrase.

Since October, my traffic has steadily climbed charts.

In March 2002, my daily unique visitors averaged 325 and my page views 1962, an increase of 69 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

With regard to my rankings in search engines, they have also improved considerably. For example, for search phrase "grief poems" in Google, my site ranks number one out of 102,000 results; and for search term "grief," my site ranks 15 out of 1,690,000.

As for traffic referred by search engines, Google far exceeds all other search engines in driving traffic to my site with 2,953 referrals in March, followed by Yahoo at 1,428. (In comparison, my October 2001 numbers showed Yahoo referring 535 visitors and Google 423.)

All-in-all, I am pleased with results of my first attempt at optimizing Grief Loss & Recovery and am beginning to note similar results with some of other web sites I have recently optimized.

When playing search engine optimization game, patience is important, because results do not happen overnight.

CONCLUSION

To be competitive online, your web site needs to be search engine friendly. Search engine optimization is a function of Internet marketing and is most cost-effective means of marketing to your target audience. With an estimated 84 percent of web users turning to search engines to find information online, it is important that your site rank within top 30 results if you want to be found. A successful search engine optimization campaign will not only boost your rankings in search engines, it will bring qualified customers and prospects to your web site who are already on web searching for your products and services.

For more information about search engine optimization and positioning, visit:

Search Engine Watch http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

Search Engine World http://www.searchengineworld.com/index.htm

Academy of Web Specialists http://www.academywebspecialists.com/

Spider Food http://www.spider-food.net/

Plus be sure to subscribe to:

Adventive I-Search http://www.adventive.com/lists/isearch/summary.html

When I asked if we could show we're not trying to hide anything - - perhaps form a partnership aimed at quality control within framework of cloaking? His reply, "I agree with that. That is best option."

The rest of our dialogue went like this...

Robin: Does it have to be PartnerSite IV -- some small companies couldn't quite afford that option.

Baker: Currently, it would be through PartnerSite IV. However, we do plan to extend that offering to other PartnerSite versions in future.

Robin: Since redirects are frowned upon, what should you do if you've moved your entire site, for example, and you need to direct traffic to new domain?

Baker: It is always best to use META REFRESH tags rather than JavaScript to implement redirects if you want search engines to know about it. Most search engines do not fully parse JavaScripts to find out what they actually do. Using a META REFRESH tag tells us in a much better way what you are trying to achieve so that we can do whatever we think is most sensible with page.

How to score at top of FAST . . .

Now let's get down to nitty gritty. What does it take to achieve a top ranked page with FAST?

Here are some tips from FAST rep himself: Baker suggests,

"Good content that is unique, not general, always has 'authoritative' effect and people begin to link to that site. This achieves good scores in two areas we care most about:

1) Static Rank, which is link analysis, and 2) Dynamic Rank, which is keywords and content."

Also . . .

"Get a handful of authoritative sites linking to you. Link popularity plays a large factor in determining rank. If your site is diverse, with multiple focuses, make sure pages are well written, keywords are appropriately placed, and have a handful of authoritative sites linking to site."

Baker added, "The trick, in my experience, is to get a handful of really good sites to link to a site that is non-thematic."

How important is link popularity with FAST? As with most engines, link popularity is an extremely important factor in determining relevancy.

Baker explains as follows, "Be concerned with links in, not links out. Link score is part of relevancy calculation and has a formulaic impact on ranking. However, if a site has no link score, ranking is negatively impacted."

I asked him, "Is link popularity is based on entire site, or on individual pages? In other words, if one page has a high link popularity, will all pages of a site be boosted, or only that one page?"

His reply, "Just that one page."

So, if your site has no links pointing to it, you'll likely rank poorly but site can still be indexed provided FAST spider can find it.

Robin: Does FAST make allowances for brand new sites?

Baker: "Not currently, but we are beginning to work with some of new domains that are popping up."

Robin: Do links from pages on your own site count toward building link popularity?

Baker: "No . . . that would be too easy." ...he said with a smile.

Robin: How does FAST deal with asp and database-generated pages?

Baker: "As long as they are not forms and they are linked to, we can crawl them. Of course, PartnerSite service has ability to index dynamic pages as well."

Conclusive remarks . . .

As with most engines FAST sees spam as public enemy number one. They've identified two-thirds of servers in world as spam servers. The best way to gain entrance into FAST index is to make certain that your site does not fall into any of their spam categories.

We suggest you take a few minutes to review their spam policy.

For guaranteed indexing and respidering every 48 hours, give their paid inclusion a test. The primary benefit being that you can experiment with keyword factors that boost relevancy and see results of your tests in 48 hours or less.

Remember, paid inclusion guarantees your space in directory and provides you opportunity to experiment endlessly with relevancy factors within your page for a whole year.

Focus your attention on gaining high quality incoming links. Doing so will increase what FAST calls your "link score" (aka, link popularity). Remember also that sites with no incoming links are actually negatively impacted.

All other factors being equal, freshest (most recent) page wins by an ever-so-slight boost in relevancy. There are many ways to maintain site "freshness," such as using server side includes.

For shades of things to come, keep an eye on alltheweb.com -- we'll be watching to see how query analysis develops as a determiner of page relevancy in near future.

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.