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Are
Links Hurting Search Relevance?
According to conventional SEO wisdom, link building is the key to a successful
search engine ranking. The rationale is simple; with more links pointing to your
site...
Relationship
Between PageRank and Number of Backlinks
On the forums or by email I am often asked the following sort of question: "How
many Backlinks do I need to get in order to have PR5?". The answer is simple and
always the same one:
Gauging
Reactions To MSN Search
Last Thursday, MSN announced the official beta launch of their search engine.
Although a preview had been available on their sandbox site, the launch marked
the official unveiling of the company’s proprietary search technology to the general
public.
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Optimizing For MSN Search
Inevitably, with the launch of a new search engine, especially one the size of
MSN Search, there is an outcry of people wanting to know how to improve their
result position. Questions like "How do I optimize my site to rank well?" and
"Does this engine base more relevance on in-bound links or on-page content?" are
quite common.
What steps are necessary to optimize your site for MSN Search? Do they favor
on-page content or off-page links? Discuss at WebProWorld.
Anticipating this reaction, MSN Search did what most major search engines do:
feature a number of help
pages designed to assist site owners in these matters. MSN's Site Owner Help
pages have also stimulated an interesting conversation
on WebProWorld. The point of contention was whether or not MSN Search encouraged
W3C validation.
Although their help pages did say validated HTML was required, they did say "Use
only well-formed HTML
code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links function
properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index
your site effectively, and people may not be able to reach all of your pages."
Therefore, validated HTML will not hurt, and may actually help your ranking in
MSN Search. This is also true with most, if not all, search engines.
 However,
many still wonder what factors does MSN Search consider to determine relevance.
Some think MSN gives weight to on-page content, which seems to be true. The MSN
Search blog says another factor they consider is "the text of links that point
to a page." This supports a theory that Hardwood Guy had on WebmasterWorld: "Internal
link text seems to be a key ingredient by the looks of the new MSN
search."
This point is expanded even further by another blog
entry made by MSN Search Program Manager, Eytan Seidman. Concerning link structure,
Eytan offers these thoughts: "URL's with many (definitely more than 5) query parameters
have a very low chance of ever being crawled. Another thing to consider is whether
we can find your page. If we need to traverse through eight pages on your site
before finding leaf pages that nobody but yourself points to, MSNBot might choose
not to go that far. This is why many people recommend creating a site map and
we would as well."
SEOChat moderator Dazzlindonna
had this logical approach to optimizing for MSN, "No, its not about Meta tags
(I have some sites that have no Meta tags and rank well in it). No, it's not just
about content. No, it's not just about links. Like all major search engines, its
about a number of factors, with varying weight amongst those factors."
Donna's all-in theory is probably a logical approach to MSN or any search engine.
MSN supports her approach, saying, "The MSN Search
ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as page contents, the number and quality
of sites that link to your pages, and the relevance of your site's content to
keywords." This method of ranking is not unique to MSN either. They deal with
relevancy the way the majority of the search engines do: by weighing a number
of contributing factors.
Armed with this knowledge, there are some questions that still linger about MSN
Search and what they value. Some believe that MSN gives more weight to on-page
content, much like Yahoo. This differs from the method that Google favors, which
seems to give credence based on the amount of relevant links that point to a site.
 Randfish
supports this point on SEOChat by saying, "My recent research
into MSN suggests that much like Yahoo!, on-page content is 'slightly' more
important than it is to Google. However, this may also be caused by the fact that
Google's index is (larger than) MSN's, so they have fewer links to rely on in
general."
If, in fact, MSN Search does favor on-page content, then ensuring your web text
is keyword rich would only help. Of course, looking at past discussions concerning
keywords,
having them populate your text isn't going to damage your ranking in any site,
unless of course you overdo it. Pages that are seen as keyword-stuffed or existing
only to promote certain keywords are considered spam and are punished appropriately.
MSN also spells out what it considers to be unscrupulous SEO
practices. To get yourself banned from their index, just perform any of these
techniques:
Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword
density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible
to users.
Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page,
such as link farms.
Again, these "rules" are in-line with the rest of the search engine industry.
If you stick to guidelines mentioned throughout the article and don't violate
any of the practices listed above, your site should enjoy success within MSN's
index.
Comment on this
article in WebProWorld.
Chris Richardson
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Contributing
Authors: 2,309 |
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Florida
Update Plus One - The Year Google Grew Up
 By
Jim
Hedger
 It
has been a full year since the infamous Florida Update rewrote Google's rankings
with a massive pre-Christmas purge of previously well placed sites.
The update, which caught virtually everyone by surprise is assumed by most to
be the introduction of semantic contextualization software added to a variation
of the Hilltop Expert
Document Algorithm. It took Google about six to eight weeks to re-establish
stable listings and they took a savage beating in the SEO press during that period.
For a short time it looked like the shift was a failure with spammy sites and
"big-box" stores dominating the Top listings but after a while Google's listings
began to make sense again.
The inclusion of Hilltop added great weight to certain types of links and as Mike
Banks Valentine pointed
out, radically cut the value of reciprocal links. Incoming links were the
meat and potatoes of PageRank but five years of commercialization had turned them
into junk food. Googlebot needed a better diet and direct one way reference links
from "credible" and relevant sites is considered much healthier spider-food than
the junk peddled by fast-link dealers or cooked up in kitchen-sink sites between
friends.
 Read
the Full Article
About the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth
Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the
result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts,
and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement
and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/
Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198 |
Is the Directory Listing Hurting Your Ranking?
Our post today comes from JonOSteen.
JonOSteen has recently launched four sites and at first they did really
well as far as Yahoo's search rankings. All four of the sites were similar
to each other but none of them used duplicate
content. Everything was fine until they submitted two of the four sites to
Yahoo's directory, and from this point it all went
down hill. Now the two sites that were submitted to Yahoo's directory dropped
drastically in their rankings in the search index. JonOSteen has no idea why
this has happened and needs your help.
Think you can help JonOSteen out? Tell us your
thoughts at WebProWorld.
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Does
Listing in Yahoo Directory Hurt Yahoo Ranking?
 By
JonOSteen
I am noticing an interesting phenomenon with Yahoo and I wanted to see if others
are experiencing the same problem. I launched four new sites in early October
for four different clients. Although the subject matter of each site was similar,
there were no other similarities to the sites (they didn't link to each other,
did not share content, etc.).
All four of the sites were submitted to the PositionTech SiteMatch. The sites
all did extremely well in Yahoo for relevant searches. I then submitted two of
those sites (that already were listed in SiteMatch) to Yahoo Directory. Those
two sites were both added. Almost immediately after the sites were added to the
directory, their rankings on Yahoo dropped significantly. The other two sites
were unaffected.
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