Optimizing for Google, Yahoo and Msn

Search engine optimization is a regular process, if you want your website to be a top ranker in all the major search engine results, its mandatory to update your website according to the changing algos of search engines. To gain higher rankings in the search engine results, first we have to understand the three internet giants Google, Yahoo and MSN. These are the three biggest existing search engines available. Almost all of us use any one of these three to make searches for any kind of information we want to look for on the World Wide Web.

Although these three search engines rule the internet industry but they all have a tendency to dominate another. Google has more or less succeeded doing this. Here are some facts about the three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, tweaking them can help you to rank well in the SERPs:

Let’s start with Google:

Google

1. Google consider the domain age most important as compared to other major search engines.
2. Quality links obviously can attract any search engine.
3. Active websites (updated regularly at any level) are loved by Google.
4. Get Listed in The Major Directories, helps you to climb success ladder on Google.
5. To please Google your HTML markups should be up to date as well as up to the mark.
6. Google with its advanced algorithm has started indexing websites which are based on LSI. Pages on your website should be relevant to your theme.
7. Your website should not be limited only to three to four pages to be indexed by Google.
8. Hyphens in URLs with keywords will definitely work.
9. W3C Compliancy in the source code is equally important for Google.

Yahoo

1. Keyword in Title Tag work for Yahoo.
2. Keyword Density is also an important factor.
3. Lot of Links (Site wide links work in Yahoo.)
4. Getting listed in Yahoo directory helps you to climb high on Yahoo, which is paid one.
5. Domain should not be too young in order to rank in Yahoo.

MSN

1. Keyword in Title Tag
2.Keyword Density Works
3.Freshness in content, relatively young websites can rank well in MSN.
4. Lot of Links (Site wide links work for MSN.)

Google’s Latest Update for Its Algorithm in Detail

Google has recently launched an update for its search engine’s algorithm. Nicknamed “Jagger,” this update has resulted to critical changes in the way that Google gives weight to certain factors that it looks at in coming up for PageRank. Because of this, there have been dramatic changes to Google’s search results. Google for its part has claimed that it is only out to give out more relevant search engine results that would maximize the searcher’s experience.

Over the weeks after the update was implemented, several sites that have not been placed in top spots have suddenly flew in ranking while some of those that have been ranked high previously have found their ranking fluctuating.

What is the update about? And what changes have been introduced into Google’s system?

Older Sites See Prominence in Results

One of the three affected areas is the domain age or the website history. Google has decided to place emphasis on the site’s age in calculating PageRank. One obvious effect of this is that older sites have suddenly appeared in the top spots of every search result page, outdoing the newer sites.

This change has brought about several questionable effects. If the older sites have a lot more information than the relatively newer site that has previously held the top spot, then it is good. But if they don’t, then Google has inadvertently prejudiced against newer sites with better quality. By default, older sites have outdated information that would most likely be irrelevant or lacking information to help a web searcher in his quest for information.

On a positive note, the greater weight on the older sites has resulted to suppression of a black hat technique of launching multiple domains just to gain ranks.

Google Recalculates Values for Backlinks

Google has also made changes to how it gives value to backlinks, or links that point to a site. Previously, Google simply calculates the number of links that point to your site (treating it as a vote of support along the way) in coming with up your page’s ranking. With this update, Google has now placed varying weights depending on the link’s age. Newer links have lesser values compared to links that have existed quite a long way before. Google has adjusted its algorithm in a manner that links start to gain more weight after periods of time.

This update has affected those webmasters that resort to link buying to build up their inbound links. No longer could they depend on these methods to quickly gain rank because any new link posted for the site would still take some time before it could build up some weight to materially affect the site’s ranking.

PageRank Loses Part of its Importance

The latest update has resulted to lesser importance for the PR value in the calculation of ranking. Google apparently has realized that a high PR value is not at all related to a website’s relevance and importance to a search query. PR, after all, is calculated by the number of backlinks to a site together with an importance factor that is determined by how the site being pointed to is related to the site making the referral. High-quality links carry the heaviest weight in the calculation, since these links are coming from sites that are considered relevant (and thus important) to the site being referred.

PageRank has come under various abuses by some SEO experts that use black hat techniques to artificially inflate sites’ PR values. While having high PRs serve little to the page’s actual ranking in results, artificially high PR sites can once in a while swindle a link-buying webmaster to buy links from them.

This is related to the practice of PR buying, where a webmaster buys rights from a high PR site to post a link to his site. This practice stems from the long-running belief within the SEO community that a site being linked by a high-PR site gets the PR value of that site. Hence, webmasters buy links from high-PR sites for that purpose, although with the age delay addition to the algorithm this practice has lost its effectiveness.

There has been speculation that PageRank will be replaced by TrustRank, a similar algorithm used by Google’s competitor Yahoo although this has never been proven by public statements. It is also said that Google might have decided that TrustRank is irrelevant. Since they are similar, Google could have concluded that its own PageRank algorithm is irrelevant as well, although most people find this unlikely.

Getting Your Site Ready for Google

Google is known as the search engine that is most widely used by Internet surfers and the like. Because of this, most webmasters are concerned about optimizing their websites to be able to get a high ranking in Google along with two other engines, namely Yahoo and MSN.

There are several ways that one can optimize a website to attain the best results for Google. This article will tackle that in detail.

Arranging Your Website’s Structure and Content

Your website design structure plays a vital role in SEO because of the way that search engines index it for ranking. This is related to the way that search engine spiders read content.

For example, spiders give a higher priority to codes that are found in higher positions within the main HTML code itself. For example, if you place navigation codes like headers before your main content, this results in a higher priority for your header code than for your main content. In a nutshell, parts of the code that serves little or no purpose for the optimization of the page should be placed in the bottom of the code, and those that are important should be placed higher within the HTML code.

The purpose is to let the spiders crawl and see the optimized content first, so that it will gain more priority in the indexing. The content is the part that matters, after all.

Coming up With SEO-friendly content

As you could see in the previous section, the content is intended to be given the most priority in SEO. Optimizing a site means that you come up with content that would satisfy a search engine’s criteria for a high rank, which is in your end goal for all your efforts.

The first criterion is keyword density. This is measured by the number of times that a keyword appears on your page. Optimal density is around 3% to 5% of the total number of words the content body contains. So, if you had a 1000-word article, you would have to repeat the primary keyword at least 3% and at most 5% of 1000. This is how Google looks at your page and judge its relevance to the search term. Its spiders count the occurrences of the keyword within the page being crawled.

The way that you format your content is also important to your SEO efforts. Formatted content actually receives greater weight from the search engine. Examples of formatting are keywords that are in boldface, in italics or in anchor text. This is because these formatted words serve to highlight the important part of the content for the visitor, so that they would find easily the information that they are searching for.

Last, but not the least, the pages on your site must revolve around a central theme. This is done by making individual pages centered around a specific topic, which is related to the site’s theme as a whole. This is the ultimate goal in your content SEO efforts. Like mentioned earlier, it is your content that will make or break your site’s success.

Procuring Links for your Website

Inbound links are also important for the search engines. This is because Google’s PageRank algorithms calculate the PR value for a site by counting the number of links that point to it. The whole affair is like a ballot during elections. Each inbound link is considered a vote of support for the site, and these votes are tallied to come up with the PR value.

That said, you probably now know the importance of being able to build a number of links for your site. One process is known as link baiting. You can do so using your blog. To do this you must post content about topics that you’re sure people would follow and refer others to by posting inbound links to your blog, which post a link pointing to your site.

Link building is another method of procuring votes of support for your site. One way to do this is to submit articles to article directories. These directories allow you to include a link to your site in the bottom of your articles, which counts as a vote of support when it is seen by search engine spiders.

Other ways of doing this is to post links to your blogs or website in social networking/bookmarking sites like Digg.com. These sites give your sites a chance to be viewed by many people and linked to. These sites are considered reliable and important by search engines, so any link from them carries a great value for the calculation of your final PR value.