If you are new to all the website hype & jargon, the following articles may help you to decide on your next move to get your website up there on Google Page 1.

Web Search Industry News

Page one presence essential in search results:

With only 2.5% of searchers going beyond page 1 of Google results, you'd better be on Page 1.

Appearing high in organic search results - as opposed to in paid ad listings - is critical to brand success on the web, and appearing on page one of the search results is vital. According to new data from internet marketing company iCrossing, at least 95 percent of traffic from each of the three big search engines - Google, Yahoo and Bing - originates from the first page of search results. Less than 3.5 percent of search-referred traffic came from users who went to page two of search results, and less 2 percent of traffic came from internet searchers who went beyond the second page. The study shows that online marketers recognise the importance of investment in search optimisation due to the huge portion of clicks that come from the top hits in search results...

For more visit:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007521

Calling all search engines

Search engines tend to send surfers to particular pages within a site rather than the homepage, for example, the online store. However, if you have a small site your homepage is still an important entry point for web users.

"You tend to find that the search engines will land people on deep pages rather than homepages. They like to get people where they want to go without having to go through an intermediary page," says Richard Hearne, owner of search engine optimisation (SEO) company Red Cardinal.

Whatever the size of your site, SEO is a key part of how you design your homepage. An informative paragraph or two is essential, as photographs and graphics don't contribute a huge amount to SEO. In addition, the text on your homepage should use suitable keywords that are relevant to your business.

"If you have two plumbers in Kilkenny and they both have websites, the one whose homepage is more Google-friendly is likely to appear higher up in the results," says Redmond.

McGuire adds: "Be as descriptive as you can. Sum up the business in a paragraph and make that your key piece of text. I would include the list of services that I provide."

The title of your pages - that is, the text that appears at the very top of your browser - is one of the best areas you can optimise for search engines.

"You only have to do a search and see what is returned. You will probably find that with any sort of competitive search, nearly all ten results will have the keyword you searched for in the page title," says Hearne.

If you want to be in that top ten it's a good idea to have a homepage title with a few words about what you sell and where you're based, rather than just relying on the business's name. And you have to do all this in around 70 characters, or Google will truncate the title.

"Page titles are really important for search engines like Google," says Redmond. "If you call your homepage 'Home', Google thinks you are selling homes. Name your homepage after your primary keyword or key phrase. For example, if you are selling garden sheds in Kilkenny your final key phrases would be 'Garden Sheds - Kilkenny' and you would call your home page that...

"A lot of people will search for the branding - that is why it is important to have it in your title. If you are trying to get found by generic, non-brand-type terms, you are probably better off saying what you do rather than your company name," says Hearne.

Bigger Picture Web will get your website found

Finally, Redmond and McGuire offered some Dos and Don'ts for those who want to create an effective homepage:

Do

1 Do consider hiring an outside web developer to develop a homepage for you. Redmond estimates that web developers have reduced their prices by up to 50 percent due to the recession.

2 Do make sure your homepage reflects company branding and is consistent with the other pages on your site.

Don't

1 Don't have a welcome page prior to the homepage, e.g. 'To enter our site click here'. This is an antiquated practice that drives web surfers away.

2 Don't use lots of Flash animations. Web users may be accessing your homepage on a mobile device which may not be able to load these. Plus they can be annoying.

3 Don't Use loud or garish colour schemes such as red text on a dark background

source: http://www.ebusinesslive.ie/newsletter/Story/4/1457/ob.html/242

All Bigger Picture Web websites fulfill these criteria: excellent photography, Google-friendly keywording and sensible, user-friendly design. We also offer set-fee Google-friendly optimisation for existing websites. Contact Bigger Picture Web today for a value-for-money package or website overhaul and put the web to work for your business:

James Burke
Bigger Picture Photography & Web Design for Google
Doninga, Goresbridge, Co, Kilkenny, Ireland
Tel +353 (0)59 97 26024
Mob +353 (0)86 8197455

Following these steps will ensure good Google Page Ranking:

A. How does Google rank pages?

1. The basics

Google's order of results is automatically determined by more than 100 factors, including our PageRank algorithm.

Few Important Factors :

1. Link Popoularity.
2. Unique Content.
3. Text navigation.
4. Clean Html Design.
5. Page size and load time.
6. Error free websites. ( Java script error, broken links )
7. Spam free websites. ( Hidden text, Keyword stuffing, Link farms )
8. Important incoming links ( From Yahoo, Dmoz, About, Inktomi, Altavista etc. )
9. Website Optimization.

How to improve my rankings on Google - Search Engine Submission 101

Google is a fully automated search engine, which employs robots known as 'spiders' to crawl the web frequently and find sites for inclusion in the Google database or index. Google also allows for manual submission, but generally is not required. Google will normally find your website and index your website. The question is how does Google determine what website gets to be ranked #1 out of a zillion other web pages in terms of keyword or key phrase search.

Google uses a method called PageRank to rank websites. Like most major search engines, one of the most determining factors in ranking websites is the title. Google also looks at other several factors including links, keyword frequency and keyword density to rank web pages. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. 

Despite Google emphasizing link popularity, it also base ranking by the content of the page. It requires ALL the words in a query to be physically on the page to consider it a match. Therefore, be sure to use your Keywords or Key phrases on the page. Improving your ranking on Google will also depend on the text on your web pages. Google and most search engine spiders can't read images. In order to increase your ranking on Google, you need to add text to your pages. 

What is link popularity? Google says the best way to ensure that pages in your site are indexed is to build links to them. The more links that point at your pages, the more likely the page will be crawled or sometimes rank higher. Google emphasizes link popularity in ranking websites. Reciprocal links are text or banner links pointing to a web site, where in return that web site carries a similar text or banner link pointing to your web site. Improving your link popularity will also help improve your ranking on Google and other search engines.

The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites. Google's robots jump from page to page on the Web via hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to you, the more likely it is that we'll find you quickly...the better your chance of improving your ranking on Google.

Title Page - The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is arguably the most important HTML tag or element.  All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. Improving your rankings on Google also involves placing emphasis on the <title> tag. Therefore, if you were to create one page with a keyword in the title tag, and another page with the same keyword in the body tag, the one with the keyword in the title will rank higher in most engines. A good web title should contain no more than 6 to seven words. Click here to learn more on how to write an effective page title.

How to write effective  Page TITLES

QUICK TIPS:

· Always use your primary keywords in the title tag at least one or more times.
· Try to place your primary keywords at the start of the tag.
· Avoid listing the same word multiple times in a row since some engines may penalize for this. Instead, use the keyword multiple times, but separate them by other words in your text.
· Use the longer form and the plural form of a keyword when possible. For example, if you use marketing in your Title tag, a search on marketing or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact "substring" of companies. In these cases you'll want to try and use both forms of the word.

· Use Upper/Lower case lettering for keywords in general. Example: Blue Widgets are sold here!
· Longer titles are generally better than shorter ones. However, shorter ones can be used if you need to better emphasize a keyword that is not ranking.
· Make your title interesting and "compelling" to the reader to convince them why they should click there.

The <TITLE> of your Web site is arguably the most important HTML tag or element of your Web site. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. In other words, you could create one page with a keyword in the title tag and another page with the same keyword in the body tag. The one with the keyword in the title will rank higher in most engines than one with the keyword only in the body.

Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your site in the search results that appear to the user. What this means to you is that this HTML tag must not only work to your advantage for keyword scoring, but also must be compelling to the reader. 

There are two elements to every Web site listing in the search engines: 

1. The site title, which will be blue and an activated link to the site.
2. The site summary description. 

Of course both must be compelling, but the <TITLE> tag has a special relevance if only because so many search engines use it exactly as it appears on your page. The site description you offer in the META description tag will be used by some search engines but not by others. For this reason, the <TITLE> of the site is simply more important than the site META description.

Here are the important principles to remember when writing site titles:

A. Longer <TITLE>s are often more effective because more words allow you to build a more compelling reason to visit a Web site.

B. People don't "read" text, they "recognize" words.

Point "A" is that longer <TITLE>s work better because it takes a certain number of words to persuade someone to take action – remember, in a direct response approach it's difficult to offer the key elements of time, money and value in just 2 words. People often scan headlines in brochures and magazines, even when they don't read the article itself. Since the title is usually a hyper link, it's a different color and is generally bolded and easier to read. When it's longer, there are more words with which you can "hook" a reader. Chances are people's eyes will scroll down a list of site titles and if something catches their eye, they will hopefully read the site description. If you've done your work, they will be hooked. 

Point "B" is that people don't read after about the time they turn 12 or 13 years old – they recognize words. Educators know that people glance at words and recognize the words by the shape they see defined by the tops of the words. Don't believe it? Take a sentence in any newspaper or book and cover the bottom half of the words. You can still read the words with relative ease. Now cover the top of a different sentence. You'll find that the words are harder to read because there is not much difference in the shape or line of the words. This is because the bottoms of all words reach the bottom of the page along the line they're written on. 

You see, you recognize words by the tops of those words, by the differences in the height of the different letters. You think to yourself, "interesting, but how does this apply to me and my marketing efforts?"

If people recognize words by looking at the tops of the words, and that this is accomplished because the tops of words vary in height and appearance, then sentences that start with just one capital letter and then lowercase letters will be easier to recognize and will get read first. Every little advantage helps you!

WORDS IN ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!!! PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO READ THEM AND DON'T READ THEM AS EASILY. RECOGNIZING THE WORDS IN THE SENTENCES IS TEDIOUS AND THESE LISTINGS ARE FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED.

To further illustrate the "tops of words" principle, look at how difficult it is to read this sentence:

SeNtEnCeS ThAT VaRy CaPs AnD LoWErCaSe LeTtErS ArE mAdDEnInG AnD EvEn HarDeR To ReAd. 

See what a difference the tops of words can make? For this reason, construct your <TITLE> tags and site title submissions with one capital letter to start the tag, and then use lower case letters for the rest of the site title. This little technique is just one more advantage that you can realize over your Web site's competitors and others who would compete with your site's listing in the search results.

How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

It's been some time since the last article on Google appeared in thesitewizard.com's newsletter, giving tips on how you can improve your search engine rank on Google. This article updates the Google search engine promotion tips given in that issue and extends it with new Google search engine positioning tips.

Background: Google's Page Ranking Algorithm

As many of you are probably already aware, Google ranks a page according to the number and quality of links leading to that page. For example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it, it will rank higher than another page that has only 20 links pointing at it. Quality links come from pages that are themselves "important" (Google's own terminology).

Note that this is not a secret. Google actually publishes information about their ranking algorithm on their website. You can read it for yourself at http://www.google.com/technology/.

Improving Your Page Rank on Google

There are numerous tips floating around in webmaster circles about how to improve your ranking in search engine results on Google.

1. Get Those Inbound Links

Since Google ranks your pages according to the number of links pointing at your page, it stands to reason that you should try to get as many links pointing at your pages as possible. This is so obvious that I'm only mentioning it for completeness sake.

2. Your Title Tag

Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the HTML <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like "New Page", remember to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature.

3. Content-Laden Pages (Keyword Density)

It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. You can read more about keyword density and how you can improve it on your pages from my other article, Improving Your Keyword Density for Search Engine Positioning, at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/keyworddensity.shtml

4. Keyword-laden Links?

According to a paper published by one of Google's founders, if the links pointing to your page has the relevant keyword text in them, it will cause your page to be ranked higher in search engine results. For example, a link with the text "Cheap Shoe Store" pointing at your site will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "cheap shoe store" than if the link simply said "click here". You can find a copy of the paper online at http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/com1921.htm.

Other Google Tips

1. Will Disabling Caching of Your Page Affect Your Page Rank?

Some time ago, it was claimed that Google would penalise pages that forbade it from caching their pages. As you know, Google caches the pages it indexes unless otherwise instructed. To avoid problems with people who feel that this is a copyright infringement (and other reasons), they allow sites to instruct the Google spider not to cache those pages using various means. One such method is outlined in my article on using META tags to manage the search engine spiders and listings, athttp://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/metatags.shtml

Google has apparently publicly denied that disabling caching would affect the page's ranking in any way. I tend to believe their claim.

2. Dynamic Pages and Google

Unlike some other search engines, Google is able to index dynamically generated pages, so long as a link exist to those pages somewhere. For example, a page like "http://yoursite.com/showstuff.php?id=stockprices" can be indexed by Google.

So if you have a dynamically generated page that you think should be indexed, make sure you put a link to it somewhere on your site.

3. ALT tags on Images

If you have been placing images on your website without bothering to place ALT tags, now is a good time to add ALT tags. Google apparently indexes the text given in the ALT tags of images.

4. META Keywords Tag is Ignored

Google ignores the META keywords tag, so, optimising of this tag is not going to help you any with Google.

The Google Toolbar

If you use Internet Explorer, you can get an idea of what Google thinks of how important your site is in general, by downloading the Google Toolbar. The latter is an ActiveX control that installs into IE, and shows the Page Rank of any page that you visit. The toolbar can be obtained fromhttp://toolbar.google.com/

Unfortunately, to obtain the page rank of the pages you visit, the toolbar actually transmits information about the pages you visit to Google. Thus if you are worried about people tracking your Internet activity, you might want to restrict its use to times when you check your site's ranking.

Copyright 2001-2003 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, fromhttp://www.thesitewizard.com/ or subscribe to the FREE newsletter by sending an email tosubscribe@thesitewizard.com.

This article can be found at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/google.shtml

Improve Google ranking and PageRank

In this article, you will find information about:

· Google PageRank explained : how to improve yours
· Search engines & keyword significance
· Googlebots and freshbots
· Optimizing your pages
· Content updates: 'a page a day will send Google your way'

At the moment, Google is by far the most popular internet search engine in the world. As of 2004, Yahoo is second largest, having taken over a majority of remaining smaller engines (Inktomi.com, Altavista.com, fastsearch.com, alltheweb.com, etc.) through it's acquisition of Overture. MSN is the 3rd player, and reported to be developing their own search engine that will produce independent results.

The Google engine and indexes are used by numerous big players like Yahoo, Hotbot, AOL, and Netscape.

Google has a unique way of determining where to place sites in result listings, from top to bottom. They use a technology called PageRank:

Google PageRank

PageRank is a system for ranking web pages

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using it's 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."

Links from any page (internal or external) to your site (primarily your homepage) are called backlinks.

Additionally, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or backlinks, 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'.

Thus, "important, high-quality sites with lots of backlinks have a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important, and relevant to your search."

"Google goes far beyond the number of times a search term appears on a page and examines numerous aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it), to determine if it's a good match for your query. "

To find out what your site's PageRank is, you have to download theGoogle toolbar. The toolbar also gives you an easy way to check your backlinks. Finding backlinks can also be done manually on Google, by typing 'link:www.yoursite.com' (without the ' marks) in the search box.

Additional background information on PageRank can be found at:
http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

How to improve your site listings in Google

Getting Started

Check if your site is in the Google database.
If your site is new or you are still building the site, add your site as soon as possible. You can add your site manually to Google, or link from a site that has a pagerank. It can take up to a month to see your site turn up in Google. This is a rough estimate, as the time period is steadily decreasing. You will turn up much quicker if your site is linked to from another site which is frequently 'spidered' by Googlebots; robot-scripts that scan / index the internet page-by-page. These robots, which search engines send out, are variously called 'spiders', 'bots', 'crawlers', etc.

Google spiders in particular are called Googlebots. There are different types of bots. A freshbot, for example, visits you on a regular basis if you make frequent updates. The advantage of being visited by freshbots is that your updates can appear in Google on a daily basis: something of a positive version of catch-22. The more content you add, the more often you are visited. This leads to the importance of adding content. This is discussed in detail below.

If you have a link from a site that is often visited by a googlebot, then you can appear in Google within 24 hours.

To determine if your site has recently been visited by a freshbot, do a search on Google for your site (site:mydomain.com). Freshtags, which indicate the recent passage of a freshbot, will appear in the search results as a recent date (shown just below the single line of site description). Some days you will see numerous freshtags, and some days none, a bit like clouds.

Find link-exchange partners and check their PageRank, a link from a site with a high PageRank is better than one with an low PageRank. The case has been made that linking to a site that has no PageRank will keep your rank down. This is called linking to a 'bad neighborhood'.

Tip: If you have have found other sites that are willing to link to you, make sure they create an 'Anchor' link to your site, as opposed to just a graphic logo-link. A anchor-link is a textlink that includes your most important keyword. They have become increasingly important.

Optimizing your pages for Google

If you have established one or more links from other indexed sites to your own, your site will be visited by Googlebots.

Googlebots scan the content of your pages mainly by looking at the following items:

· Page title
· Meta description
· All text on your page(s)
· Links to other pages

All these items are significant because they should contain your important search keywords. This is a fundamental concept. The entire internet revolves around the choice of individual words. This process is constantly being refined. It is essential that you are Spartan and accurate whenever choosing your descriptive terminology: words. Try and put yourself in the minds of the people who will be looking for your site. What are the one or two words that they will focus on?

Page title
Make sure your title contains your most important search keywords. Do not make your titles longer than 80 characters (more can be considered as spamming).

Meta description
Google does not index your meta 'keywords' tag but it does index your meta 'description' tag. Make sure your description contains your most important search keywords.

All text on your page(s)
Make sure your text contains your most important search keywords. More importantly, the pages should focus on your subject, service, product, or area of interest. Put your most important keywords once in your headers, a couple of times in your paragraphs, once in bold once in italic, in your image alt tags, your image names, your url's, etc.

Links to your other pages
Make sure the Googlebot can find its way through your site. One thing Googlebots find hard to follow is framesets. So if you use frames, make sure you have a <noframes> or hidden section where your text and links are located. Adding a sitemap can do wonders for letting Google index your entire site.

Content: update your content as frequently as possible.

The more often you update your content, the more often you will be visited by freshbots. Try to add a page a day if possible. The content you generate should be of high quality. Try to find every angle from which you can discuss or describe the subject your site is about. The point is not to generate poor quality or duplicate material. Duplicate pages will lead to penalization. The point is that Google, for example, loves content. It is a question of scale. Think of the old adage 'an apple a day will keep the doctor away'. In this case it can be revised: 'a page a day will send Google your way'. More content, more spider visits, more human visitors, more readers, more pages, etc.

 source: Infoweb

Contact the Google Page Ranking experts:

James Burke
Bigger Picture Photography & Web Design for Google
Doninga, Goresbridge, Co, Kilkenny, Ireland
Tel +353 (0)59 97 26024
Mob +353 (0)86 8197455