Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

META tags are hidden code read only by search engine webcrawlers (also called spiders). They live within the HEAD section of a web page. There are actually 2 very important META tags you need to worry about: description and keywords.
1. description
2. keywords
Sequencing of these tags may be extremely important. I say “may” because SEO is mostly hypothesis due to the changing algorithms of the search engines. Even though the W3C states that tag attributes do not have to be in any particular sequence, I’ve noticed a significant difference when I have the tags and attributes in the order described here. The only deviation from the list above is that the Title tag should come before the META description.

The description META tag is the text that will be displayed under your title on the results page. See the OC Internet Advertising example above. There’s also a lot of controversy about the number of characters you should have in this tag. I’ve seen sites with a paragraph in their description listed in the top results, so I don’t think the number of characters here plays any kind of role with the search engines.

<meta name=”description” content=”your_keywords_here followed by a statement about your product service or organization.” />

The last important META tag is the keywords META tag, which some time ago lost a lot of points in Google’s search engine algorithm. Along with being valuable to this top 10 SEO tips list, this tag is still important to many other search engines and should not be ignored. Based on my experience with this tag, you can have approximately 800 characters in this tag (including spaces).

I don’t think it’s about philosophy. It’s about getting people what they need, and about getting the results to be as accurate and fast as possible. We’re innovating, and concentrating just on the relevancy of results. Last year we made over 450 improvements to the algorithm.

A lot of SEO’s, web developers / web designers are questioning what is happening with their new web sites and why they aren’t showing up in the SERP’s in and around the first 3 pages of Google. The SERP’s on MSN and Yahoo are providing them with good placement in their normal amount of time, so what gives?

The “Sandbox Effect” means that Google is somehow not returning new sites near the top of the SERP’s until the site has been fathered in if you will. Then the next question that remains to be answered is when is a site considered fathered in? From what anyone can tell at this time the answer is anywhere from 3 to 8 months.

So in closing it appears that Google made some type of change to their algorithm sometime in mid to late 2004 that checks a sites age in the index. So all SEO’s out there can stop tweaking and messing with their code over and over thinking it’s them because that most definitely is not the case!

The only alternative that I have been able to come up with as a short term remedy to the problem is to do some Pay Per Click advertising with Overture and Google. MSN also has a new Pay Per Click solution that it will be introducing shortly, so stay tuned for that. The good thing about starting with pay per click is you will be able to play with different keywords and see what type of positive results you get with different keywords and keyphrases.

As if we didn’t already know that the secrets of Google were being exposed, this week Google applied for a patent that pretty much details some of their algorithmic patterns. There is a mountain range of ranking analysis techniques. One would assume that if they are important enough to patent then they must be part of their algorithm.

I’m just glad to see that the theory that there is a sandbox, or a holding bin if you will of web sites that are held for a period of time is true. After launching numerous web sites and pulling our hairs out wondering why our listings were taking so long this is much welcomed news!

Reading Google’s patent filing it appears that they rely heavily on web site links and anchor text in their algorithm. The items below were some of the items the patent said they look for:

* Tracking of the appearance and disappearance of links over specific times
* Tracking of growth rates of links in other web sits
* Tracking of anchor text and dates established and how they change over time
* Older established links get a higher rating than newer less established links
* Fresh pages might be considered more important
* New web sites don’t normally have a lot of links, but if they come from established web sites they will be tolerated
* Older pages that don’t change very often but have incoming links growth over time can be considered fresh
* Burst link growth may indicate spamming of the index
* Anchor text should vary and not be the same from all incoming sources
* Web site link growth should be consistent and slow

November 2003 might go down in history as the month that Google shook a lot of smug webmasters and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists from the apple tree. But more than likely, it was just a precursor of the BIG shakeup to come.

Google touts highly its secret PageRank algorithm. Although PageRank is just one factor in choosing what sites appear on a specific search, it is the main way that Google determines the “importance” of a website.

In recent months, SEO specialists have become expert at manipulating PageRank, particularly through link exchanges.

There is nothing wrong with links. They make the Web a web rather than a series of isolated islands. However, PageRank relies on the naturally “democratic” nature of the web, whereby webmasters link to sites they feel are important for their visitors. Google rightly sees link exchanges designed to boost PageRank as stuffing the ballot box.

I was not surprised to see Google try to counter all the SEO efforts. In fact, I have been arguing the case with many non-believing SEO specialists over the past couple months. But I was surprised to see the clumsy way in which Google chose to do it.

Google targeted specific search terms, including many of the most competitive and commercial terms. Many websites lost top positions in five or six terms, but maintain their positions in several others. This had never happened before. Give credit to Barry Lloyd of SearchEngineGuide.com for cleverly uncovering the process.

For Google, this shakeup is just a temporary fix. It will have to make much bigger changes if it is serious about harnessing the “democratic” nature of the Web and neutralizing the artificial results of so many link exchanges.

Here are a few techniques Google might use (remember to think like a search engine):

1. Google might start valuing inbound links within paragraphs much higher than links that stand on their own. (For all we know, Google is already doing this.) Such links are much less likely to be the product of a link exchange, and therefore more likely to be genuine “democratic” votes.

2. Google might look at the concentration of inbound links across a website. If most inbound links point to the home page, that is another possible indicator of a link exchange, or at least that the site’s content is not important enough to draw inbound links (and it is content that Google wants to deliver to its searchers).

3. Google might take a sample of inbound links to a domain, and check to see how many are reciprocated back to the linking domains. If a high percentage are reciprocated, Google might reduce the site’s PageRank accordingly. Or it might set a cut-point, dropping from its index any website with too many of its inbound links reciprocated.

4. Google might start valuing outbound links more highly. Two pages with 100 inbound links are, in theory, valued equally, even if one has 20 outbound links and the other has none. But why should Google send its searchers down a dead-end street, when the information highway is paved just as smoothly on a major thoroughfare?

5. Google might weigh a website’s outbound link concentration. A website with most outbound links concentrated on just a few pages is more likely to be a “link-exchanger” than a site with links spread out across its pages.

Google might use a combination of these techniques and ones not mentioned here. We cannot predict the exact algorithm, nor can we assume that it will remain constant. What we can do is to prepare our websites to look and act like a website would on a “democratic” Web as Google would see it.

For Google to hold its own against upstart search engines, it must deliver on its PageRank promise. Its results reflect the “democratic” nature of the Web. Its algorithm must prod webmasters to give links on their own merit. That won’t be easy or even completely possible. And people will always find ways to turn Google’s algorithm to their advantage. But the techniques above can send the Internet a long way back to where Google promises it will be.

I decided to take a crack at Yahoo’s Overture PPC program today and stumbled across this page that talks about paid inclusion in Yahoo!’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Now this doesn’t seem like bribery at first, but…

After searching some more (actually just read through my subscriptions) I found a post that gave me the information I was looking for - SERoundTable was talking about a different aspect of Yahoo!’s paid search inclusion program.

Originally he had his website banned from Yahoo! Search, and tried to get into their organic results by the regular inclusion, but they were refused. This user then decided to take a stab at the paid inclusion and Yahoo! took them back into their SERPs.

Now I’m not trying to say that this isn’t a good thing for that member, but this really diminishes Yahoo!’s credibility as a search engine if they are going to include websites (which their algorithm originaly banned) when they receive payment. This could mean two things:

* Either their algorithm has a flaw and bans good websites
* or they are willing to look the other way and manually include bad websites if they receive cash payment?

Do you ever wonder who the smartest search gurus are? Udi is one of them, and the article from Popular Mechanics covers some great strategic issues on Google and it’s search strategy. What makes Google different, and powerful? To read the full article, you can always go to the link above, below are some quesitons I found interesting:

What makes Google philosophically different from all the other search engines? What is Google searching for that others aren’t?
I don’t think it’s about philosophy. It’s about getting people what they need, and about getting the results to be as accurate and fast as possible. We’re innovating, and concentrating just on the relevancy of results. Last year we made over 450 improvements to the algorithm.

There have been a lot of fads in search of late, such as Human Assisted Search and contextual search. Do those get folded into search as a whole? What are real trends in search and what are fluff?
So let me first tell you about Google. At Google we do not manually change results. For example, if we find for a particular query that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We made that decision not to put that capability in the algorithm—we have to go and actually change the algorithm. That is, we have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it’s better, and then launch a general solution. That makes the process slower, but it puts a lot more discipline on us and makes it more unbiased.

Whether it’s at Google or not, is there a market for human-assisted search, or is that something different?
I think that the general issue is, how do you get more input from people? How do you get people to contribute more information, more content? Search is about getting lots of signals and putting them all together. The art of ranking is, how do you collect lots of signals then put them together? Signals from people are the best signals. We have several tools—and we’re going to launch many more—that will encourage people to contribute more. This does not necessarily mean one should then create the search results manually.

I’ll give you an example of something that came last week. We were evaluating a certain algorithm that adds diversity to the result. We did live experiments, which means we launched the algorithm to a very small percentage of users and then see how that compares to the result without the algorithm. One of the queries that made a difference: The query was, New York Times address. And you would think you’d understand the query, and the first result right there on the snippet gives you The New York Times. It turns out that’s not what the user was looking for. They were looking for an address given out by a New York Times reporter the day before. And because of this diversity and because of our emphasis on freshness and highlighting fresh results, that particular address appeared somewhere in the results, and that’s what the user wanted—that’s what they went to and got the result. That was something that surprised even us. You don’t think that when someone searches for New York Times address that they’re not looking for the address. Language is like that. Intention can be ambiguous.

Putting privacy aside, to what extent does finding a profile of somebody help search?
Currently, if you allow us to keep your Web history, we will improve your search. By the way, if you do this, you can always go back and remove what you want to remove or remove the whole thing or revoke that permission. But it improves search in two ways. One is, we will tune the result for you slightly. We’re not going to change the whole page—we might change position 5 to position 3 here and there, but we’ll use whatever we can from your previous searches to adapt the current search to you. The second is, we allow you to search within your Web history, which can also be very useful. You may remember something you did three months ago and you don’t remember exactly how you did it.

Could that theoretically extend back forever in time? Is there a limit to how far back something like that could extend arbitrarily, or is there a useful limit?
When we look at the personal search algorithm, obviously time gets into it. As far as you’re concerned, if you want us to keep this, it’s up to you.

Is there a literally a slider of some sort where you say, 1 month, 3 months, etc.?
I don’t believe we do that, but that’s something we can consider if that’s a big issue. I don’t think it’s a big issue. I think it’s better to keep because you might need something from two years ago.

While we’re talking on the subject of personalization, a colleague of mine said that search as you know it is falling to the wayside and changing dramatically as social networking comes into play—trending toward this MySpace-Facebook model where people look to their friends or their community as the take-off point. Do you see that as a bona fide trend? And, if so, does search become less important?
Search has always been about people. It’s not an abstract thing. It’s not a formula. It’s about getting people what they need. The art of ranking is one of taking lots of signals and putting them together. Signals from your friends are better signals, stronger signals. On the other hand, many searches are long-tail kinds of searches. If you’re looking for what movies to see tonight, your friend can probably give you the best information. If you’re looking for the address of the business, the Web as a whole can give you better information. If you’re looking for something obscure about anything, again the web can give you much better information. It depends on the type of search you do—and how to take all those signals and put them together.

SEO Tip #10 is use keywords in your blogs title. We wrote about being news worthy a few days ago. Make sure your Keywords are in your blogs title, as that is what will be mixed in to the Google Search results. Google has been doing that in a few months, but now the news sections are getting even higher. Have you noticed my handle on our blogging and social networking area? It’s “News”, and you should always try to be newsworth, make sure you read that blog I wrote a few weeks ago.

# “PageRank is [only] one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.” [PageRank Explained Correctly]

# “Google uses many factors in ranking. Of these, the PageRank algorithm might be the best known. PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites. With PageRank, five or six high-quality links from websites such as www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com would be valued much more highly than twice as many links from less reputable or established sites.” [Google Librarian Central]

# “PageRank has only ever been an approximation of the quality of a web page and has never had anything to do with the measuring of the topical relevance of a web page. Topical relevance is measured with link context and on-page factors such as keyword density, title tag, and everything else.”

PhraseRank

From the very beginning, Google’s distinctive feature was the hyperlink induced popularity ranking. Algorithms using text content to evaluate relevancy of web documents played much lesser role. The reasons to this disparity are purely pragmatical: authors of web documents have total control over their content and are at liberty to modify it to deceive ranking algorithms and get higher positions in search results. Hyperlinks however are much less influenced by webmasters and provide a more reliable measure of authority (link weight) and relevance (link anchor).