Conversation With A Search Engine Expert
Conversation With A Search Engine Expert
by Jim Daniels
Bizweb Gazette
Dave has been a "search engine guy"
since the early days of the Internet and knows
how to help websites rank better in the major
search engines. In fact, Dave's small 'adjustments'
here and there to my websites have boosted my
rankings to the very top of some busy engines.
Here is what Dave had to say about two of the
very best (and busiest) searching sites on the
web, Google and Yahoo!...
Hi Jim,
As you probably realize, the biggest news on the
search engine front is the news that Yahoo has
renewed with Google. I don't have to tell you
that Yahoo and Google are the busiest and most
important search engines on the Internet, and
understanding how they can help your website traffic
is extremely important.
Yahoo just announced their long awaited decision
regarding their choice of provider for third party
search listings, and that choice once again is
Google, ending speculation that they may go with
Fast or Inktomi.
But perhaps the biggest news to come out of this
announcement is the major change in the way Yahoo
is displaying Google listings. Where previously,
Google listings were displayed under the web page
results, they are now mixed in with the main Yahoo
listings and are called web matches. These main
results now are supposed to be a combination of
results from Yahoo and Google, but they are essentially
'pure Google' right now.
Essentially the bottom line is this... This will
be a HUGE boost for sites that rank well in Google.
And I'll get to that in a minute. First let me
talk a little about Yahoo! On the face of it,
this change may hurt people who had good Yahoo
listings in categories with very few competing
pages, as they will no longer be competing against
just a few sites, but against the entire Google
database. So now a Yahoo strategy must be looked
at very differently.
Obtaining a good Yahoo listing is going to be
significantly less important. Before this change
the key to doing well in Yahoo was to find search
terms with a limited number of competing pages.
But Yahoo has essentially reversed the way their
directory previously worked. You now have to click
to see Yahoo's web directory results, which is
exactly the opposite of the way they were previously
displaying results. And while this can still deliver
some traffic, it becomes far less significant
than it was just a few days ago.
If your site is just being launched, a Yahoo listing
may still be important but much less so than before
this change. But the real important point here
is that your site that is listed in Yahoo, needs
to also be doing well in Google.
If you own a site that is ranked well in Google
you will probably be very pleased with these changes,
and sites previously not ranking as high in Yahoo
but doing well in Google may now see a huge jump
in referrals from Yahoo especially if Yahoo continues
to display Google results like they are now.
Like any change, some people are going to be thrilled
about this and reap a huge boost, others are going
to take a big hit.
What we are also seeing here is Google taking
over web searches. With their market share approaching
35% on it's own, and now factoring heavily in
Yahoo’s main results, with Yahoo's approximate
35% market share, right there we have nearly 75%
market share, and that’s not counting Google’s
affiliation with AOL, Netscape and many others.
Right now the potential exists for about 70-80%
of all web searches coming from a direct or indirect
result of a Google listing.
Need I stress any further how important it is
to get a great listing in Google? I cannot emphasize
enough that how important it is to do well in
Google.
OK, so here is what I recommend to you to help
your Google rankings.
For starters, I would ask if you have to free
Google toolbar installed into Internet Explorer
browser? If not you can download it free at http://toolbar.google.com/
- it shows you your current page rank.
Jim, your http://www.make-a-living-online.com
site has a PR of 6 and 240 links pointing to the
site. A PR of six is very good but the only way
you are going to get a higher page rank is to
get other PR 6 and above sites linking to you.
At this point with your current high page rank
you want to be very careful whom you link to.
You do not want to add any outgoing links on your
site to sites of lesser quality than yours. In
my opinion, Google tends to penalize for this.
The key right now in my opinion is not to go out
and secure as many links as possible, Google is
far more concerned with the quality of links that
point to your site.. And what the linkable text
in those links say. For example, if I had a link
on my site to your main page which is geared towards
internet marketing, the way to ask the other site
to display the link would be by using the words
internet marketing in the linkable text. This
is one thing Google looks for. And they make a
direct correlation to the info on your page, especially
the title tag.
And if these links come from a site with a high
Google page rank, it really can give you a boost,
so I think the key for you is to try and find
sites that have a PR 6 and above and get them
to link to you. It doesn't take a ton of these
links to give your site a boost, a handful of
links with good anchor text from a high PR site
are far superior to a site with 1000 links from
low PR sites.
This is why you can often find sites with lower
link popularity outranking a site with more links..
it's the quality of those links.
The problem most folks have is obtaining those
great links. There are lots of ways to do it,
you just have to use your imagination. One technique
you might consider is checking customers' URLs
when they order. If any customers have high page
rank you could offer them some type of discount
on your products if they agree to put a link to
your site. There are a lot of high PR sites and
some of the site owners don't even know. Links
from a few good sites would likely offset any
lost income many times over.
[Note
from Jim Daniels: One last thing to remember...
it is quality that matters to top search
sites like Google and Yahoo. A quality site with
solid content will always do better than sites
trying to "trick" their way to good
ranking. That's why these search sites have such
a huge market share -- they provide quality search
results. So make sure your website qualifies as
such and it will move up the ranks.]
I hope this helps or gives you a few ideas..
In closing... be sure to tell your subscribers
that if they are looking to gain search engine
traffic, get into Google! And before they pay
a SE specialist big bucks for better ranking in
any search engine, try the simple and
effective strategies I share at my Search Engine GoldMine site.
Article
used with permission from Jim Daniels. Jim's free
guide to website marketing and his website promotion
help site show you how to get low-cost website
traffic and make money online.
Return
to FREE articles index
|
Visit Our Sponsor! WebPosition
Gold