Web Page Areas Defined
Since most engines assign varying degrees of importance to the location of
your keywords on the page, the Page Critic breaks out statistics such as frequency, total
words, weight,
and prominence by 'Area.' These areas can only be seen when you view the HTML source
code for a page. The area will have a begin tag such as <TITLE>, and an
ending tag such as </TITLE>. The ending or closing tag will always have
the added slash character in it.
To view the HTML coding for the page you're analyzing, click on the Page
Editor tab on the Page Critic form, or load the page into your favorite HTML
editor. With some editors, like Microsoft FrontPage, you'll need to click on the
HTML tab to view the actual tags behind the WYSIWYG screen.
IMPORTANT TIP: Use the Page Critic suggestions table first to improve
your rankings. For additional help, study the statistics in the Page Analysis
table. Your goal is to try and make your page have similar statistics to those
pages that already rank well. You can do this by comparing your page to specific
page, a group of TOP ranking pages, or to the TOP Averages for that engine. The
comparison options may be set on the second tab of the Page Critic screen.
Making your numbers 'higher' than your competitors is not always going
to help. Most engines rank pages well that appear within acceptable ranges. If
you exceed their limits, you can actually hurt your ranking rather than helping
it.
Head
This is the area at the top of the page where the Title and META tags reside.
Example:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Page Title Here</TITLE>
<META name='keywords' content='blue widgets'>
<META name='description' content='My description
here.'>
</HEAD>
Title
The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is arguably the most important HTML
tag or element. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and
generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system.
Therefore, if you were to create one page with a keyword in the title tag, and
another page with the same keyword in the body tag, the one with the keyword in
the title will rank higher in most engines.
Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page
in the search results that appear to the user. What this means to you is that
this HTML tag must not only work to your advantage for keyword scoring, but also
must be compelling to the reader.
There are two elements to every Web page listing in the search engines:
- Page title, which will be blue and an activated link to the site
- Page summary description.
Of course both must be compelling, but the <TITLE> tag has a special
relevance if only because so many search engines use it exactly as it appears on
your page. The page description you offer in the META description tag will be
used by some search engines but not by others. For this reason, the
<TITLE> of the page is simply more important than the META description.
Here are the important principles to remember when writing page titles:
A. Longer <TITLE>s are often more effective because more words allow
you to build a more compelling reason to visit a page.
B. People don't 'read' text, they 'recognize' words.
Point 'A' is that longer <TITLE>s work better because it
takes a certain number of words to persuade someone to take action remember, in
a direct response approach its difficult to offer the key elements of time, money and value in just 2 words. People often scan headlines in
brochures and magazines, even when they don't read the article itself. Since the
title is usually a hyper link, it's a different color and is generally bolded
and easier to read. When it's longer, there are more words with which you can
'hook' a reader. Chances are people's eyes will scroll down a list of
page titles and if something catches their eye, they will hopefully read the
site description, and if you've done your work, they will be hooked.
Point 'B' is that people don't read after about the time they turn
12 or 13 years old they recognize words. Educators know that people glance at
words and recognize the words by the shape they see defined by the tops of the
words. Don't believe it? Take a sentence in any newspaper or book and cover the
bottom half of the words. You can still read the words with relative ease. Now
cover the top of a different sentence. You'll find that the words are harder to
read because there is not much difference in the shape or line of the words.
This is because the bottoms of all words reach the bottom of the page along the
line they're written on.
You see, you recognize words by the tops of those words, by the differences
in the height of the different letters. You think to yourself,
'interesting, but how does this apply to me and my marketing efforts?'
If people recognize words by looking at the tops of the words, and that this
is accomplished because the tops of words vary in height and appearance, then
sentences that start with just one capital letter and then lowercase letters
will be easier to recognize and will get read first. Every little
advantage helps you!
WORDS IN ALL CAPS ARE HARDER TO READ!!! PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TO READ THEM AND
DON'T READ THEM AS EASILY. RECOGNIZING THE WORDS IN THE SENTENCES IS TEDIOUS AND
THESE LINES ARE FREQUENTLY OVERLOOKED.
To further illustrate the 'tops of words' principle, look at how
difficult it is to read this sentence:
SeNtEnCeS ThAT VaRy CaPs AnD LoWErCaSe LeTtErS ArE mAdDEnInG AnD EvEn HarDeR
To ReAd.
See what a difference the tops of words can make? For this reason, construct
your <TITLE> tags and site title submissions with one capital letter to
start the tag, and then use lower case letters for the rest of the site title.
This little technique is just one more advantage that you can have over your Web
site's competitors and others who would compete with your site's listing in the
search results.
Example of a title tag:
Example:
<TITLE>Blue Widgets Sold Here</TITLE>
The Title tag should always be within the <HEAD> area and should be the
first line within that area.
Quick Tips:
- Always use your primary keywords in the title tag at least one or more
times.
- Try to place your primary keywords at the start of the tag.
- Avoid listing the same word multiple times in a row since some engines may
penalize for this. Instead, use the keyword multiple times, but separate them by
other words in your text.
- Use the longer form and the plural form of a keyword when possible. For
example, if you use marketing in your Title tag, a search on marketing or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact
'substring' of companies. In these cases you'll want to try and use
both forms of the word.
- Use Upper/Lower case lettering for keywords in general. Example: Blue
Widgets are sold here!
- Longer titles are generally better than shorter ones. However, shorter
ones can be used if you need to better emphasize a keyword that you're having
trouble ranking well with, or if that engine appears to favor pages with shorter
titles.
- Make your title interesting and 'compelling' to the reader to
convince them why they should click there.
META
Keyword
The purpose of this tag is to define what keywords apply to your page.
However, only some search engines will read this tag, and those that do often do
not place as great importance on it as keywords found in other areas of the
page. Still, you should generally include a META keyword tag on your page within
the <HEAD> area.
Example of a META keyword tag:
<META name='keywords' content='blue widgets,green
widgets,red widgets, Jerry's Widget Emporium'>
Commas should separate each keywords or phrases. In general, list keywords in
lower case. Avoid repeating keywords more than 3 to 7 times, and never list the
same keyword twice in a row.
META
Description
The text found in the META Description tag will be displayed to the user in
the search results for many engines. Therefore, it pays to craft a good
description so that you not only rank well, but so people will actually click on
your link once they see it.
Example of a META Description tag:
<META name='description' content='Place paragraph text
here.'>
The above tag would appear within the <HEAD> area.
How to Write a Compelling Description:
The following title and description may get you a high ranking for a keyword
search on the word 'mortgage':
! AAA Mortgage banking, the Mortgage money lenders - Mortgage,
lenders, money, mortgages, mortgage money, mortgage loans, home equity loans,
mortgage money,
What it says, however, is unappealing. Instead, look at another site
description, that would also be ranked high, and see which site you would be
more likely to visit:
Mortgage Applications Approved Overnight!! - Mortgages and mortgage
financing techniques that the larger banks just can't offer. Learn the 8
important things to include on your application so that your mortgage can be
approved in 24 hours, even if you have poor credit.
The listing above has the word 'mortgage' as the first word of the
title, the first word of the description and repeats the word
'mortgage' 4 times. The difference is that this description is
compelling, solves a problem and offers '8 important things' or pieces
of information that could be valuable to consumers who visit the site.
The direct response business, you know, those companies that make
infomercials and run classified ads in papers across the country, have studied
and mastered the art of writing headlines. What they learned is that headlines
are most effective when they accomplish 4 things:
- Solve a problem
- Solve that problem quickly
- Solve that problem for what appears to be a small or reasonable amount of
money
- Make the reader curious to learn more...
With that in mind, the following headline is acceptable, but not as effective
as it could be:
'I can help you to get out of debt and get a good credit rating - I've
done it for others I can do it for you!'
A better approach, and, a headline that usually draws more inquiries reads:
'Correct your bad credit in under a week for less than $49!'
It solves a problem, does so quickly and shows how much money is involved.
People relate to this appeal because it has a fundamental basis. Remember the
many adages about goal setting, 'A goal without a deadline is a wish!'
Or, how about what they teach you in business school about proposal writing,
'Never offer a plan that does not include both time and money.'
The direct response model is effective because it addresses these things,
especially time and money. Think about this when writing your page description
and title before you submit them to the search engines. Ask yourself:
- Is my headline compelling?
- Is it interesting?
- Will it make someone curious to learn more?
- Would I read it and want to visit the site?
- Does it include time and money?
- Does it solve a problem?
- Does it suggest that it solves that problem quickly?
- Does it show a price? (only emphasize the price if yours if very
attractive)
Be careful, you don't want to offend anyone's intelligence and many direct
marketers write headlines that underestimate readers. Read it yourself and make
a determination if you would find the title interesting if you don't, others
won't.
This direct response model does not apply universally in its purist form as
many web sites are not selling things directly or are informational in nature or
support what ad execs would call image advertising. However, do not overlook the
fundamental truth:
Being first in the search engines is great!
Being first and compelling is better.
Your listing in the search engine should be compelling. If the description of
the site right below yours is more compelling, you lose that prospect just
passed over your site.
Our Summary reports show each position along with your page's
summary description. Many people only concern themselves with their position
number. Remember, that is only half the battle!
Heading
Headings are generally the larger print on a page used to emphasize or
introduce new topics. Headings come in various sizes represented by tags like
<H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. Some of the search engines give extra
relevance to keywords that appear within a heading tag.
Example of a heading tag:
<H1>Blue and Green Widgets</H1>
Link
Text
A page's relevance to a given search can be improved by taking advantage of
another scoring technique highly favored by some engines. The text within a LINK
is sometimes weighed more heavily than words found in the regular body text.
Example of a link tag:
<A HREF='blue-widgets.htm'>Blue Widgets</A>
Example of a page which emphasizes the keyword Widgets in the Link Text:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Widgets and More!</TITLE>
<META name='description' content='Widgets by Jerry's Widget
Emporium are the best widgets money can buy.'>
<META name='keywords' content='blue widgets,green widgets,red
widgets, Jerry's Widget Emporium'>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Widgets Explained:</H1>
<P>Widgets by Jerry's Widget Emporium are the best widgets money can
buy.</P>
To learn about our widgets, choose one of the following: <BR>
<A HREF='blue-widgets.htm'>Blue Widgets</A> <BR>
<A HREF='red-widgets.htm'>Red Widgets</A> <BR>
<A HREF='green-widgets.htm'>Green Widgets</A> <BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>
The above example again emphasizes the keyword 'widget' but also
includes other PHRASES people might search on such as blue widget, green widget,
and so forth. Statistically, most people search on two or more words to narrow
the scope of their search, so always include related keywords together whenever
possible.
The VISIBLE text of the links above are where you primarily want to include
your keywords. It's also a good idea to create your page names based on your
best keywords. That way you score a few more keyword points for the occasional
search engine that indexes the page name portion of the link tag as well.
Link Text Tips:
- Always use your primary keywords in the visible link tag area of at least
one or more links on the page.
- Try to place your primary keywords at the start of the link when
possible.
- If generating or creating a 'doorway' page, always link to
another page on your site which includes more detail about the keyword topic.
- Avoid listing the same word multiple times in a row since some engines may
penalize for this. Instead, use the keyword multiple times, but separate them by
other words in your text.
- Use the longer form and the plural form of a keyword when possible. For
example, if you use marketing in your Title tag, a search on marketing or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact
'substring' of companies. In these cases you'll want to try and use
both forms of the word.
- Use Upper/Lower case lettering for keywords in general. Example: Blue
Widgets are sold here!
URL
Keywords within the URL itself can be given extra relevancy by some search
engines. Therefore, it pays to create pages on your Web site that include
keywords within the name of the page itself.
Example:
<A HREF='my-url-keyword-here.htm'>My Link Text Here</A>
<BR>
Separate keywords in URLs by dashes or underscores.
Quick Tips:
- If generating or creating a 'doorway' page, always create one or
more hyper links to another page found on your site that includes more detail
about the keyword topic.
- Creating page names which include your keyword such as blue-widgets.htm can help increase relevance on some engines. Most generally do not care what
you name a page, but naming them based on the keyword you are targeting won't
hurt.
- Avoid numbering your doorway pages as index1.html, index2.html, etc. This
can 'red flag' you to the search engines or your competitors, and
implies you are making lots of copies of your home page even if the content of
each page is entirely different. It's again better to name the page based on the
keyword and maybe a couple letters to remind yourself what engine you're
targeting, like 'av' for AltaVista.
- The visible text portion of a link should always include your keywords
when possible.
Advanced Formatting/Linking Tip: Infoseek recently started
discouraging the practice of creating a 'bridge' page whose sole
purpose is to link to another page. In reality, nearly all pages on the Web link
to other pages. Therefore, this little known policy is very ambiguous and
subject to much interpretation.
If you wish to 'cover your bases' when creating pages designed to
rank well, we recommend creating 'doorway' pages using the rules we've
defined in this help file and the advice of the Page Critic. In addition, try to
use a similar visual style to other pages on your site when you have the extra
time to do so. That way the page will look less like a generic
'doorway' or 'bridge' to your home page, and more like an
integrated part of your Web site. When the page contributes content to a site,
it cannot possibly be discounted simply as a bridge page that does not add any
value to a search engine's database.
One way to accomplish this goal is to use the same or similar menu structure
used on the rest of your site and provide links to other areas besides just your
home page. Provide real and useful content on your doorway page, not just
advertising 'fluff.' Use similar company logos, graphics, and colors
on the doorway page that you use elsewhere on your Web site. Also try to link to your doorway pages from at least one other page on your site that the search
engine is sure to come across.
In addition, avoid the practice of making many mirror copies of your home
page and then simply changing some of the keywords and meta tags. Search engines
dislike pages that are extremely similar in content, particularly if a single
search brings up 5 copies of basically the same content. That can red flag you
to the engine as a 'spammer' even if you do it unintentionally. In
addition, avoid numbering your pages such as index1.html, index2.html, etc.
It's difficult for search engines to 'automatically' detect most of
these things and most do not even attempt to. However, if a competitor of yours
complains to a search engine that you are abusing the system and the search
engine actually follows up with the complaint (generally a rare event), then
structuring the look of your pages properly will defuse any argument they might
make. There is certainly nothing wrong with making your pages 'search
engine friendly', so long as you are honest about the keywords you use to
describe the content of your site, and play within the 'rules'.
ALT
The ALT tag defines the text to display for a graphic if the user has
graphics turned off, or if they put the cursor over it in MS Explorer. Some
search engines will look for keywords in the ALT tags.
<IMG SRC='myimage.gif' ALT='Blue Widgets, Red Widgets, and
Green Widgets'>
Comment
You can insert hidden 'comments' into your page that are not
visible to the user. A couple of engines will read this text, so you may wish to
include keywords in these tags.
Example:
<!-- Blue Widgets, Red Widgets, and Green Widgets -->
Body
The BODY area is where the bulk of the text on a page generally resides. The
ALT, COMMENT, AND LINK tags all can appear within the body area. When they do,
they are counted as part of that particular area, rather than the BODY area, on
the Page Critic report. The only words counted in the body are those that do not
fall in some other more specific area.
Example of a complete page which includes the BODY area and tags within it:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Widgets and More!</TITLE>
<META name='description' content='Widgets by Jerry's Widget
Emporium are the best widgets money can buy.'>
<META name='keywords' content='blue widgets,green widgets,red
widgets, Jerry's Widget Emporium'>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>Widgets by Jerry's Widget Emporium are the best widgets money can
buy.</P>
To learn about our widgets, choose one of the following: <BR>
<A HREF='blue-widgets.htm'>Blue Widgets</A> <BR>
<A HREF='red-widgets.htm'>Red Widgets</A> <BR>
<A HREF='green-widgets.htm'>Green Widgets</A> <BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Quick Tips:
- Always use your primary keywords in the body tag area at least one or more
times.
- Try to place your primary keywords at the start of the tag.
- Try to repeat the keyword near the end of each paragraph in the body and
near the end of the body area itself. Some search engines such as Lycos are
claiming that they look for themes on a page and will rank pages higher
that use the keyword throughout the page, rather than only at the top of the
page.
- Avoid listing the same word multiple times in a row since some engines may
penalize for this. Instead, use the keyword multiple times, but separate them by
other words in your text.
- Use the longer form and the plural form of a keyword when possible. For
example, if you use marketing in your Title tag, a search on marketing or market will yield a match on most engines. However, words like companies will not always yield a match on company since company is not an exact
'substring' of companies. In these cases you'll want to try and use
both forms of the word.
Overall
Main Page
On the Page Critic report this area refers to the averages for the entire
page.
Main
Page
Area rows on the Page Analysis table that begin with 'Main' contain
statistics for the main page you selected on the first tab of the Page Critic
window.
Compare
Page
Area rows on the Page Analysis table that begin with 'Compare'
contain statistics for the optional comparison page you selected on the second
tab of the page critic window. If you don't select a compare page, then these
lines will not appear.
This is useful in figuring out what makes one particular page
'better' than yours. Keep in mind a page can do better than yours even
though it may have fewer keywords or lower scores. More or higher is not always
better!
Be wary of comparing to pages that just don't 'make sense'.
Sometimes you'll run across pages that rank well for a variety
of reasons even though the content does not appear to justify the ranking.
That's why averages of top ranking pages can sometimes be more useful.
Top Averages
Area rows on the Page Analysis table that begin with 'Top Averages'
contain statistics for the average scores of top ranking pages for the selected
search engine. These averages are re-computed periodically by the staff at
FirstPlace Software and incorporated into Page Critic Knowledge Base updates.
The averages are based on the analysis of hundreds of top ranking pages across
dozens of different keyword searches.
Although these scores are not guaranteed to get you to the top for your
keyword, they will definitely give you valuable help on what the averages are
for top ranking pages.
For these lines to appear, you must select the option on the second tab of
the Page Critic screen.
AVERAGES WILL VARY: You will also notice that these averages will VARY
depending on whether you are doing an exact match keyword analysis, a non-exact
match analysis, or an analysis of a single keyword (rather than a multi-word
phrase). Since the search engines often return a different set of statistics
depending on the type of search conducted, we've incorporated three different
sets of 'averages' within the knowledge base to more closely match the
type of search you are optimizing for. In other words, the top averages for the
phrase 'blue widgets' will not normally match the averages displayed
for just 'widgets.'
When doing a non-exact match on a multi-word phrase, the frequency counts
will often be much higher since it will count the occurrence of ANY keyword
within the phrase, rather than just matches on the entire phrase. In turn, your
own pages should return frequency counts that are generally higher when
optimizing on multi-word phrases if you wish to score well.
Warning about averages: Averages can be very helpful in many cases to
determine trends. Generally you'll want to try and make your own page statistics
come close to the averages for top ranking pages, or identify which averages are
'significant.' However, they can also be deceiving in other cases. For
example, if a search engine scored pages highly that either had the keyword at
the beginning of the title, OR at the end of the title, then we might
report an average keyword
prominence of 50%. However, in reality, most of the top ranking pages may
have had 100% or 0% prominence scores. Putting your keyword in the middle of the
title to match the 'average' in this scenario would not help you.
Another potential pitfall of blindly following averages rests in the fact
that there are MANY variables that a search engine ranks a page on, so you
should be cautious before drawing any conclusions. For example, you might assume
that since a majority of the pages on average had one or more keywords in their
meta keyword tag, that the search engine supports keyword tags. However, since
many Web masters use meta keyword tags regardless of whether the search engine
supports them, this conclusion would be wrong for about half the major search
engines that declare they do not support that tag.
TIP: For some competitive keywords, averages for many keywords may not give
you statistics that are useful. You may wish to try the TOP
X averages feature to see how the top ranking pages for YOUR keyword average
for each statistic.
Top X Pages
Area rows on the Page Analysis table that begin with 'Top X' contain
the average statistics for the top 'X' number of pages for a given
keyword search. For these lines to appear, you must enter how many pages you
wish to analyze on the second tab of the Page Critic window. The Critic will
only be able to do this if you ran a Reporter mission earlier for the same
keyword you're now trying to analyze. That's because the reporter retrieves and
stores the URLs for the top ranking pages so the Critic will know which pages to
analyze.
The advantage to this option is the scores that do well on one keyword or
phrase may not do well on another keyword that is more competitive. For highly
competitive keywords, it pays to not only try using 'top averages' to
gain an upper hand, but also averages for the specific keyword you're working
on. In this way you can improve your odds of including exactly the elements that
a search engine is looking for.
Warning about averages: Averages can be very helpful in many cases to
determine trends. Generally you'll want to try and make your own page statistics
come close to the averages for top ranking pages, or identify which averages are
'significant.' However, they can also be deceiving in other cases. For
example, if a search engine scored pages highly that either had the keyword at
the beginning of the title, OR at the end of the title, then we might
report an average keyword
prominence of 50%. However, in reality, most of the top ranking pages may
have had 100% or 0% prominence scores. Putting your keyword in the middle of the
title to match the 'average' in this scenario would not help you.
Another potential pitfall of blindly following averages rests in the fact
that there are MANY variables that a search engine ranks a page on, so you
should be cautious before drawing any conclusions. For example, you might assume
that since a majority of the pages on average had one or more keywords in their
meta keyword tag, that the search engine supports keyword tags. However, since
many Web masters use meta keyword tags regardless of whether the search engine
supports them, this conclusion would be wrong for about half the major search
engines that declare they do not support that tag.
Note: The information presented here adapted, under license agreement, from FirstPlace Software. |
