Welcome to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Page
Now that the World Wide Web seems like something that will be around for awhile, being able to be found on the web is becoming ever so important. Whether you have information to share with the world or products to sell, traffic to your web site is very important. Since search engines are one of the most common ways people find the sites they are looking for, ranking on a search is paramount to helping others find you.
Google is probably the most recognized search engine and uses a special formula to determine site ranking per a particular search. What is this formula and how does one make their web site more Google friendly? Well, that seems to be one of the biggest questions for all the web designers and Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) out there.
In April of 2005, the http://zenstoves.net/ experiment was launched. It incorporates a unique and easy to remember trademark on a subject popular to a small special interest group. The basic concepts found on Eric Wolfram's Writing, How To Score Higher in Google Search Engine (and why Google is saving the web.) were tested in various and quite random stages. Basically, Eric Wolfram points out that text linking to pages has the greatest influence on search ranking and that the origin of those links don't matter (they can be from your own domain).
Findings-
Text linking is where it's at - look at a Google search for Miserable Failure. Most likely, the page Biography of President George W. Bush will come up first. Neither words from this search are found on this page, but since there are so many text links to it with these key words in it, it comes up first on a search. This is know as a Google Bomb, which has its own entertainment value, but is more importantly a prime example of what text linking can do for ranking. The text link Zen Backpacking Stoves is added to the bottom of each page found on the http://zenstoves.net/ site to help with ranking. As of mid 2005, a Google search for Backpacking Stoves ranks http://zenstoves.net/ in the top 10 (usually #2).
Page rank is determined by how many links point to a page and how many leave. The more pages that link to yours, the higher the page rank. These pages can be on your own site with the same base URL or from other URLs. Page rank is not as important as text linking as many sites that rank higher on certain searches may have very low page ranking.
NOFOLLOW - there is a lot of concern about what the tag "NOFOLLOW" will do for a site. Many fear that "abuse" of the NOFOLLOW tag will cause a site to be banned from Google. To disprove this, NOFOLLOW tags were used on all links pointing out of http://zenstoves.net/ for several months and pages from this site can be found on many searches. These tags were removed from the links exchange page since one of the exchangers became very upset with this practice.
Hidden links - text links numbering in the hundreds were used and didn't show any noticeable benefit in a quick trial. Links can be hidden by placing them in at a negative position on the left margin, colored the same color as the page background, placed behind images, in tiny font and other ways. Hidden links and hidden text can possibly cause a site or page to become banned by Google. Although this has not happened in my experience with this an other sites - the punishment for violating Google's Terms makes it just too risky for most sites to attempt this strategy. If Google doesn't find your hidden link, a competitor may and can report you to Google for Spamming. See SEO Logic - hidden text for a nice discussion on this.
Image linking - this is also registered by Google, as are links embedded in PDF files. It is unknown what significance/importance these have for search ranking. However - adding key words to the Alt portion of images is thought to boost ranking.
Key words in URL and/or file name - It appears that Google is still recognizing and rewarding this.
Key words in the Page Title, top of the page in large font and in the file name helps.
Converting all text style to H1 does not seem to have any effect on ranking.
Adding links to Adobe files - they seem to be counted by Google - for at least page ranking purposes.
Overall - Eric Wolfram was right in that the best way to gain ranking is to put information on the web that people can use. In this experiment to manipulate Google, the most significant contribution to ranking via text linking from within the site itself. The second biggest influence is from outside links from people who visited the site. And the third most influential factor to ranking is from key word placement in large font at the top of each page and in each page's title.
Quick Experiment:
To test this, On 17 March 2006 - the Delta Arthroplasty Page was set up to see if and how long it would take to rank in the top ten for a search for "delta arthroplasty" on Google.
This hit # 1 on 29March 2006
Quick Experiment #2:
30 Mar 2006 - Delta Shoulder Page is launched to see if we can rank on the top ten for "delta shoulder" on Google.
Google searches in the top 10 or 20 for http://zenstoves.net/:
How to Choose a Backpacking Stove
Google Images:
Top 20 of 5952 Total Search Strings Webalizer February 2006 1 graph paper 2 wood burning stoves 3 alcohol stove 4 zen stoves 5 alcohol stoves 6 zen stove 7 backpacking stoves 8 isopropanol 9 wood burning stove 10 isopropyl alcohol 11 wood stoves 12 wood burners 13 2-propanol 14 carbon monoxide 15 stoves 16 sterno 17 solar stove 18 everclear alcohol 19 grid paper 20 homemade wood stove
Top 30 of 105 Total Countries # Hits Files KBytes Country 1 933896 43.06% 760673 43.36% 9667066 42.56% Network 2 483688 22.30% 394903 22.51% 5218053 22.97% US Commercial 3 321805 14.84% 260456 14.85% 3365551 14.82% Unresolved/Unknown 4 106860 4.93% 93135 5.31% 817562 3.60% US Educational 5 53310 2.46% 45898 2.62% 475261 2.09% United Kingdom 6 51015 2.35% 38609 2.20% 486803 2.14% Canada 7 20193 0.93% 16533 0.94% 243621 1.07% Australia 8 19456 0.90% 16237 0.93% 170573 0.75% Non-Profit Organization 9 19242 0.89% 16519 0.94% 166672 0.73% United States 10 16843 0.78% 11271 0.64% 204548 0.90% Japan 11 15596 0.72% 12787 0.73% 173394 0.76% US Military 12 14364 0.66% 8075 0.46% 155913 0.69% France 13 11338 0.52% 8705 0.50% 147350 0.65% US Government 14 11022 0.51% 6614 0.38% 144495 0.64% Italy 15 10779 0.50% 8276 0.47% 160366 0.71% Germany 16 9130 0.42% 7196 0.41% 140673 0.62% Netherlands 17 4808 0.22% 3509 0.20% 66095 0.29% Belgium 18 4633 0.21% 3555 0.20% 70838 0.31% Brazil 19 4218 0.19% 3150 0.18% 60207 0.27% Denmark 20 4210 0.19% 3642 0.21% 57226 0.25% New Zealand (Aotearoa) 21 4014 0.19% 2966 0.17% 35789 0.16% Singapore 22 3463 0.16% 2859 0.16% 62277 0.27% Russian Federation 23 3175 0.15% 2384 0.14% 52426 0.23% Finland 24 2808 0.13% 2175 0.12% 44213 0.19% Philippines 25 2484 0.11% 2046 0.12% 40637 0.18% Czech Republic 26 2236 0.10% 999 0.06% 20786 0.09% Spain 27 1930 0.09% 1596 0.09% 20866 0.09% Thailand 28 1927 0.09% 1612 0.09% 27870 0.12% Mexico 29 1912 0.09% 1381 0.08% 23114 0.10% Switzerland 30 1864 0.09% 1469 0.08% 24375 0.11% Poland
