Ten Steps to Creating Top-Ranking Pages : Ten Steps To Top Ranking
Pages In Google & other search engines.
So many people requested this section that we feel obligated to
include it. However, even though this section will give you a quick
overview of the process of creating better ranking pages, it's no
substitute for reading the entire report and gaining all of its
insights.
Still, here are the generic steps to undertake in optimizing pages
for search engine submission. Not all of these steps should be used
in optimizing pages for all search engines. This is because each
search engine ranks Web pages by different criteria. Refer to the
"engine by engine analysis" in the second half of this guide and
the other discussion topics for further details.
Here are the steps in order of importance:
Step 1: Create Doorway Pages. Create short, focused summary
pages about a particular topic that emphasizes a keyword, phrase
or select group of keywords. Give each file a unique name and avoid
numbering your pages like index1. htm, index2. htm, index3.htm,
etc.
A sample naming convention might be:
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ singing-telegram. htm (page optimized
for "singing telegram")
http:// www. yourcompany. com/ magician. htm (page optimized for
"magician") http:// www. yourcompany. com/ clowns. htm (page optimized
for "clowns")
You will probably want to create some variations of these pages
to target the preferences of specific search engines. However, avoid
submitting more than two to three pages to the same engine that
are very similar and discuss the same topic. Instead, submit a couple
of your best designs based on the tips in this report and your own
observations, and then follow up. If you didn't score as well as
you would have liked on each keyword, try some other designs and
submit them again reusing the same page name.
Step 2: Begin Optimizing the Pages With the <TITLE>
tag. The <TITLE> tag is arguably the
most important piece of HTML code you will write to gain a top ranking.
Make sure this tag immediately follows the <HEAD> tag and
is not placed after other META tags.
As we discuss later, some HTML editors place <TITLE> tags
arbitrarily within the head tag. It is important that the <TITLE>
is placed immediately after the <HEAD> tag in your HTML code:
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</ TITLE>
You should repeat this and all following steps for each different
doorway page so each page targets a different engine and keyword.
Some page designs will often work well on multiple engines, but
rarely on all of them.
Extra trick: Some search engines rank pages higher when the pages
include multiple <TITLE> tags as follows:
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</ TITLE>
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</ TITLE>
<TITLE> Increase Traffic with iProspect. com!</ TITLE>
Step 3: Add META tags. There are two META tags with which you
should concern yourself:
T the META description and the META keyword tag. The stated goal
of these tags is to provide the search engine's spiders with a description
of your site and the keywords that you think are relevant to the
content of your site. Without these tags, search engines will randomly
select 25 words from the body copy of your Web site and use it to
describe the content of your site. Often, search engines select
irrelevant words, and then nobody visits your site. Here is how
you use these META tags:
<META NAME=" DESCRIPTION" CONTENT=" This is my site description
that I would like the search engine to use.">
<META NAME=" KEYWORDS" CONTENT=" keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,
keyword4">
Step 4: Add keywords to a comment tag. A comment tag describes
something within your HTML code that is not viewed by people visiting
your Web site. Typically it describes the function of a section
of code or the name of the site's designer. For your marketing purposes
it can include important keywords:
<!--Here is a sentence that includes a lot of my keywords. I
place this keyword-rich sentence in the header of the HTML document
because it is always important to include keywords high on the page
-->
Step 5: Add keywords in a header tag. Keywords in the <H1>
through <H6> tags are assigned more relevancy points by many
of the search engines. For this reason, at the very top of my page,
often as the first text appearing on the page, it is wise to include
a sentence or list of keywords between the header tags. Remember
that the larger the number, the smaller the size of the font:
<H2> Keywords are important here, and this is a keyword-rich
sentence that you may notice started with a "keyword" and includes
another keyword and another keyword.</ H2>
Step 6: Add a <NO FRAMES> tag for sites with frames. If
your page uses frames, you should use the <NO FRAMES> tag
to include links to your other pages and a sentence or two describing
your Web site. This is because many search engines can't index Web
sites which use frames:
<NO FRAMES> Keyword-rich text describing my site is important
here and again my first word was a keyword</ NO FRAMES>
Step 7: Make the first 25 words on the page keyword rich. Since
some search engines use the first 25 words of copy on your page
as the site's description in their index and to determine which
keywords to rank your site under, carefully construct the beginning
of your paragraphs.
Below we use the <FONT SIZE> tag just so you recognize
that we are talking about viewable copy:
<FONT SIZE="+ 1"> Keyword1, Keyword2, and Keyword3, are important
keywords to this Web site so make sure that Keyword1 and Keyword2
and even Keyword 3 appear several times in the first 25 words on
your Web page.</ FONT>
Step 8: Make hyperlinks to your other pages flush with keywords.
Several search engines assign extra relevance to keywords found
in hyperlinks. Since it is likely that your home page will include
links to other sections of your site, take time to include keywords
in these:
<A HREF=" http:// www. yourcompany. com/ clients. htm">
Keyword1 and keyword2 will provide information about our clients</
A>
Step 9: Add keywords to your ALT tags. ALT tags describe graphics
that haven't completely loaded or that won't be seen if the visitor
to your site is browsing the Web with their graphics turned off.
Some search engines will consider keywords found in ALT tags for
your site's relevancy toward a ranking under that keyword, or they
will use the text contained in the ALT tag to describe your site
in their index. Either way, it's important to fill up these tags
with keyword-rich text as follows:
<img src=" picture. gif" ALT=" Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,
and anything else you would like to say about your keywords.">
If you don't have graphics on your page, you can still benefit
from this technique. You can employ the "single pixel gif" technique
by creating a gif file that is simply one pixel - hardly visible.
Open your favorite graphic editor and create an image that consists
of just a single dot (one pixel) the same color as your background
(you can even define it as a transparent gif if you want to be extra
stealthy). Insert that tiny graphic into your page, preferably near
the top for the best effect:
<img src=" tinyimage. gif" HEIGHT= 1 WIDTH= 1 BORDER= 0 ALT="
keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword1">
This allows you to include important keywords near the top of your
page even if you don't have any graphics on your main page.
Step 10: Calculate and then optimize your page's keyword
frequency (total occurrences) and
keyword weight (percentage of the total words that make up the
page). Since the search engines will consider these when determining
your site's relevance toward particular keyword searches, you should
control these variables. Simply copy the viewable text into your
word processor or text editor and perform a "word count."
Write this number down in a safe place and then select the "replace"
feature from the "edit" menu (in most word processors). Replace
the particular keyword you are looking to count, with itself. The
word processor will then search and replace your keyword with itself
and then tell you how many replacements were performed. Take this
number, and divide it by the total number of words.
If you have 100 total words and three of them were one particular
keyword, you have a keyword weight of 3 percent. Work to keep your
keyword weight between 3 and 8 percent, though some engines respond
better to higher keyword weight. Remember to review the pages that
ranked in the top 10 for your keyword searches and determine the
keyword weight they employed.
These are the basic steps for optimizing your Web pages for search
engines. This is, of course, a very oversimplified example. When
you actually optimize your pages, you will be optimizing your pages
based on each search engine's ranking criteria. This means you will
not use all of these steps for each engine, and some search engines
will require extra, advanced steps not described here.
Once you have optimized your pages, you will submit each set to
their respective search engines. Remember, don't submit all the
pages to all the search engines. What you will have done to gain
a top ranking in HotBot could actually hurt you in AltaVista and
so on.
After all of the pages are optimized check your rankings and make
sure that each search engine added your pages. After you submit
the pages, it's up to you to check your rankings and tweak your
page designs to get your pages into those top positions. | 
