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Search Engine Optimization becomes second nature to experienced web businesses and developers. But where do the complete novices turn? This website solves that problem. "What Is Search Engine Optimization? should definitely be the first stop |
Google have created a very strong brand based on a very strong and powerful search engine, they lead the market in search by a very long way and so special consideration of SEO for Google will be given here.
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Page Rank™
The pioneering step that put Google on the path to search engine domination was Page Rank.
Google's Page Rank is a method of rating each and every webpage that it finds with a mathematical formula. The formula essentially places a quality rating on that page, this rating is then used to help determine where that page shuld appear in it's search results.
Page Rank is calculated in a very complex way, but the basic concept is that each link to a page passes a small amount of "link juice". The more links to a page mean more "link juice" is passed and a higher Page Rank for that page is achieved, in addition the quality and Page Rank of the page on which the link appears will affect how much "link juice" is passed.
Let's try to make that a little clearer with two examples:
- A page that links to you with a low quality rating, low relevance or low Page Rank will pass little or no link juice to your page, and will not boost your Page Rank.
- A page that links to you that is of high quality, is closly related to yours and is of high Page Rank itself will pass a large amount of "link juice" to your page and give a good boost in your Page Rank.
It's a somewhat circular system, and self reinforcing, but Google have made it work incredibly well, returning highly relevant and accurate results nearly all the time.
Most search engines now use a similar system, it has been that influential.
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How does this apply to my website?
Well, the basic implication is that you need to acquire links to your website from pages with high page rank. How do you know which pages have high page rank? Well, essentially they are going to be the pages that come top of a Google search for the keywords, or search terms that you are going to target.
So, if you have a recruitment website and you'd like to target the keyword "recuitment" then you need to search Google for the term "recruitment" and then get those website to link to you, using recruitment related anchor text.
Of course what you see in these result are your competitors, and why they pass you their "link juice"? Well, this essentially is the eternal challenge, but you have some options...
- Try to arrange mutually beneficial link exchanges.
- Look for sites that are willing to sell link space.
- Look for general sites within your field that contain comprehensive lists of relevant websites.
- Look for directory sites such as Yell.
- You can buy links in business directories like business.com or Yahoo.com.
- There are also free directories such as DMOZ.
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