Who-Iz.com

Does A Great Website Page Rank Really Matter?
By Dianne Rees

Search engine optimization (SEO) seems to be the holy grail of website building these days. You’re told that you want it and that you can’t be competitive without it. Freelance job boards are chock-full of demands for 500 word SEO articles to seed content across the internet. If that many people want it, you must need it, right?

How important SEO content is to you depends upon your business model. Who are the decision-makers who will actually trigger sales of your products or services? Do these people really make decisions based on a Google or Yahoo! search? Is your business going to succeed by mass marketing (maybe it will if you sell a commodity) or by niche marketing? The amount of effort and money you spend on SEO strategies should be guided by your answers to these questions.

Page Ranking Basics

Of course you look at your page rank. We all do. It’s oddly compelling once you have a website. There are two main factors that influence search engine rankings: the content of your website and the relationship of your website to other websites.

Content for Robots

To optimize content, you have to think like a search engine. A search engine doesn’t care how imaginative your headlines are. While words like “new” and “amazing” can have some impact in a traditional ad, no one searches using these terms. At best, the words are just fluff. At worst, they represent a missed opportunity to use a keyword that could drive traffic to your site. Your best position is a tough one to achieve since it requires providing content that’s creative and that entices the robots searching for and indexing web pages.

A basic rule: make all your content matter. This includes your web page titles (all your web pages, not just your home page), your META description paragraphs, internal keywords, and even the words you use for your Alt tags (the words that appear over the images on your site when your mouse scrolls over them). Even your file names should be optimized.

As an example, rather than naming a page that describes your company’s services, “About My Company,” consider using words that describe your products or services, e.g., “About My Company_Widgets for Baking” or even just, “Widgets for Baking.” Yes, you’re appalled that your company name is gone, but most people won’t be searching for your company name unless you’re well-known. It’s a question of space - if you can fit the name in (most titles are about 80 characters), creating an association with your product/service is very valuable. But if your primary goal is to get an internet searcher to find your site, consider ditching the company name if including it means sacrificing a keyword.

How Do You Identify the Important Keywords?

There are a number of free sites like Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) and Digitalpoint.com (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/), as well as commercial sites that allow you to identify the most-searched-for keywords. While you do want to use some of the most popular keywords, think about how many other webmasters are doing the exact same thing. How do you make your web page stand out? You generally want to use a combination of moderately competitive and highly competitive search terms. The “moderately competitive” ones are only less competitive in the sense that a mass audience of internet searchers may not be interested in them. The key for you is that your most likely customers should be focused on these keywords.

Now Start Optimizing

Consider the first thing your potential customers see when they find your web page using a search engine - a list of potential competitors’ sites and your own. Along with each link displayed on that initial search page, there’s also the title of the web page that the search engine found and a short description of that web page. A careful selection of keywords in that description can have an impact on page ranking. But the right content can be a powerful advertising tool. So take time to work on this text, because regardless of where you are on the page, you want your site to be the one clicked on. And getting the content right involves considering the human factor.

How do you control what a search engine displays? Some search engines recognize the META Description tag in your code and will display it on the search page. Other search engines will take text from the first paragraph of your web page. So count on both possibilities and write concise , compelling copy focussed on a few important keywords and include this kind of copy in both the META Description tag and in the first paragraph. Do this for every web page in your site. Different descriptions tailored to each web page’s central message can attract different consumers. If someone lands on an internal web page, they’re likely to check out your home page and other portions of your site as well.

Your META Description should be no more than 250 characters. That tends to be about 23 words. It should include your primary search term (the moderately competitive keyword you identified) and a secondary search term (i.e., the most popular keyword). Make sure your keywords are actually included in content on your web page or a search engine may flag you as a “bad guy.” Though writing a description may seem like a mechanical exercise, resist treating it like one. Remember you’re writing copy that needs to attract attention and engage your audience. The search engine (through your efforts) may bring people to your link on a search page, but your content will cause them to click and enter your website.

While META Description tags are often displayed on search pages, META keyword tags are a relic of another age and most search engines today don’t rely on them to index content. If you do use them, limit their number (e.g., about 15 words) since some search engines may actually penalize you for excessive use. Again, choose keywords that actually appear on your Web page. If you need
What about the text of your web page? The prevailing wisdom seems to be that a keyword density of about 2% is optimal and that more than 7% is too much. Generally focus on optimizing a few different keywords per page. For example, if you’re a widget-seller, don’t put a list of all the widgets that you sell on one page. On the other hand, focusing on only one keyword a page may flag you as a spammer by some search engines.

Where you place keyword-rich text in your source code can also give you a boost in rankings. For example, if you use CSS, text that appears at the top of the source code may be more “findable” than text that’s elsewhere in the source code.

Make your links meaningful. Rather than saying, “check out this link,” include a keyword or phrase in the link. This includes navigation links as well as a text links. You do want your website to be user-friendly though, so bear in mind that people expect certain kinds of navigation links, like “contact” links.

Appreciate what a search engine doesn’t see when you design your website. Search engines don’t recognize graphics and can’t readily index frames or Flash animation. So while it’s sometimes easier to design a web page using text that’s part of an image, try to avoid this, since all that deathless prose will be wasted.

A robot will get your customers to your website, but your customers aren’t robots, so once attracted, your web content still needs to be meaningful, benefits-oriented, and engaging enough to make viewers want to buy and keep buying.

Are You At The Fringes Of The World Wide Web Or At The Center?

The other way that search engines rank web pages is by evaluating inbound links. It’s a bit like a popularity contest - if a lot of people refer to you by linking to your site, you must be good. So being closer to the center of the Web with lots of links connecting to your site is better than being at the fringes. But a high quantity of inbound links will not be enough. Google, for example, uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the “quality” of inbound links. Some relevant factors include the relatedness of the inbound site to yours (whether it offers similar products or services) and the popularity of the linking site (based on numbers of clicks). It’s like the difference between getting a recommendation from a high-powered person who can objectively evaluate your offerings vs. from your mom or dad; the former just carries more weight.

What about links from your own site reaching out to other sites? Large numbers of outbound links may reduce your page rankings, but we’re talking about over a hundred a page. Outbound links to inform and engage your site visitors should certainly be included.

Conclusion

SEO techniques are a moving target, since search engine companies change their algorithms periodically. Much is made of the following the latest trends, as if there would be apocalyptic consequences if you were left behind. Of course you should keep up, because knowledge is power and all that, but while doing so, keep your eye on the big picture. SEO is only a part of a successful marketing strategy. In other words, don’t forget the off-line contacts you should be making to drive people who matter to your site (or to a telephone or to your office). Off-line contacts can be obtained through traditional marketing techniques, networking, direct mailings, etc., or from non-traditional marketing techniques, such as a video placed on YouTube that drives viewers to your site. Remember it’s conversion that’s the bottom line, not page rank or even click-through. And for conversion, it’s the story you tell about your business that matters.

Dianne Rees, Ph.D., J.D., is the principal of Callooh Communications, a company that offers corporate communications and copywriting services. She specializes in content for biotech, pharmaceutical and legal markets.

http://www.calloohcomm.com

http://www.calloohcomm.com/intersections_newsletter/Sept2007.html

http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/callooh

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dianne_Rees
http://EzineArticles.com/?Does-A-Great-Website-Page-Rank-Really-Matter?&id=736879