Mastering Search Engine Optimization: A Comprehensive Guide

Jan 2
04:04

2024

David Gikandi

David Gikandi

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In the realm of website management, there are several misconceptions. One such fallacy is the belief that merely submitting your website to a multitude of search engines will boost your site's traffic. Another is the assumption that the mere inclusion of META tags in your web pages will also enhance your traffic. Both of these notions are fundamentally flawed. So, what's the real deal? The answer lies in search engine positioning, which is by far the most effective and cost-efficient strategy.

The Power of Search Engine Positioning

Consider these facts: Over 95% of web users find what they're looking for by visiting the top six search engines. Yahoo alone processed over 55 million searches and page views in December 1997. Many of these searches are for the products and services that you offer,Mastering Search Engine Optimization: A Comprehensive Guide Articles guaranteed! It's common knowledge that even a few good positions on one or two crucial keywords or phrases can drive thousands or even hundreds of thousands of quality visitor traffic to a website per day.

Research has shown that people rarely go past the top 30 search results for any one search. The top 10 results receive 78% more traffic than those in positions 11 to 30. The top 30 results garner over 90% of the search traffic. This alone explains why some sites perform exceptionally well and others disappointingly, and why it's so critical to secure a high ranking.

The Magic of Doorway Pages

So, how do you secure a top position in search engine results? The answer lies in the use of doorway pages. Doorway pages, also known as entry or bridge pages, are web pages specifically designed to rank highly on the unique ranking algorithms of each search engine. The two best things about using doorway pages are that they cost far less than other promotional tools such as banner ads, and they work better when properly designed.

There are two ways to create doorways. You can either do it yourself or hire a professional. If you decide to do it yourself, be prepared to invest a significant amount of time on them - outsmarting the search engine algorithms is no easy task! You should also be prepared to create a number of doorway pages. You must create one doorway page per keyword or keyword phrase that you want to rank well in.

For optimal results, depending on your site’s subject matter, you should target 10 to 50 keywords and keyword phrases. Usually, a page that ranks well on one engine may not rank well on other engines. Assuming that you want to ensure that you are ranked highly on the top five engines (AltaVista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and Excite – Yahoo does not accept doorway pages), you have to create five versions of each doorway page, each optimized for a specific engine.

The Art of Creating Effective Doorway Pages

Understanding what it takes to create effective doorway pages is not difficult – there are numerous excellent publications that now tell you exactly what the search engines are looking for in a page that will rank highly. One of the best guides to this is "Secrets to Achieving a Top 10 Position", a free 118-page manual that comes free with WebPosition software. The challenging part is in actually creating these doorways!

Here's what it would involve:

  • Understanding that ranking criteria vary from search engine to search engine. Most evaluate the placement of keywords or keyword phrases on various parts of your pages based simultaneously on all these criteria:
    • Prominence of the keyword searched – how early in a page a keyword appears.
    • Frequency of the keyword searched – number of times the keyword appears. Be careful about this. Simply repeating the keyword will not work because grammatical structure and keyword weight also play a role.
    • Site Popularity – a few search engines consider how popular your site is when ranking.
    • "Weight" of the keywords – that is the ratio of keywords to all other words. Each search engine has a threshold. If your page crosses that threshold, the engine labels it as spam and ignores it.
    • Proximity of keywords – how close together the keywords are to each other, especially when the item searched for is a phrase.
    • Keyword Placement – these are the locations where an engine will look for the keyword, e.g. in the body, title, META tags, etc.
    • Grammatical structure – some engines consider grammar in their calculations. They do this to make it harder for spammers to do their thing.
    • Synonyms – some engines look for words similar in meaning to the keyword.

As you can see, the ranking criteria is highly dynamic, using a complex algorithm that integrates all the above factors in various proportions and with various maximum and minimum values. An important criteria to delve deeper into is the keyword placement criteria. These are the various places that engines look for keywords:

  • Keywords in the <title> tag(s)
  • Keywords in the <meta> tags
  • Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags
  • Keywords in the link tags
  • Keywords in the body copy
  • Keywords in ALT tags
  • Keywords in <img> tags