STOP Words

Stop words are common words that are ignored by search engines at the time of searching a key phrase. This is done in order to save space on their server, and also to accelerate the search process.

When a search is conducted in a search engine, it will exclude the stop words from the search query, and will use the query by replacing all the stop words with a marker.

A marker is a symbol that is substituted with the stop words. The intention is to save space. This way, the search engines are able to save more web pages in that extra space, as well as retain the relevancy of the search query.

Besides, omitting a few words also speeds up the search process. For instance, if a query consists of three words, the Search Engine would generally make three runs for each of the words and display the listings.

However, if one of the words is such that omitting it does not make a difference to search results, it can be excluded from the query and consequently the search process becomes faster.

Some commonly excluded "stop words" are:

after, also, an, and, as, at, be, because, before, between, but, before, for, however, from, if, in, into, of, or, other, out, since, such, than, that, the, these, there, this, those, to, under, upon, when, where, whether, which, with, within, without

Image Alt Tag Descriptions

Search engines are unable to view graphics or distinguish text that might be contained within them. For this reason, most engines will read the content of the image ALT tags to determine the purpose of a graphic.

By taking the time to craft relevant, yet keyword rich ALT tags for the images on your web site, you increase the keyword density of your site.

Although many search engines read and index the text contained within ALT tags, it's important NOT to go overboard in using these tags as part of your SEO campaign.

Most engines will not give this text any more weight than the text within the body of your site.

Invisible & Tiny Text

Invisible text is content on a web site that is coded in a manner that makes it invisible to human visitors, but readable by search engine spiders.

This is done in order to artificially inflate the keyword density of a web site without affecting the visual appearance of it.

Hidden text is a recognized spam tactic and nearly all of the major search engines recognize and penalize sites that use this tactic.

This is the technique of placing text on a page in a small font size. Pages that are predominantly heavy in tiny text may be dismissed as spam. Or, the tiny text may not be indexed.

As a general guideline, try to avoid pages where the font size is predominantly smaller than normal. Make sure that you're not spamming the engine by using keyword after keyword in a very small font size.

Your tiny text may be a copyright notice at the very bottom of the page, or even your contact information. If so, that's fine.

Keyword Stuffing & Spamming

Important keywords and descriptions should be used in your content in visible Meta tags and you should choose the words carefully and position them near the top and have proper frequency for such words.

However it is very important to adopt moderation in this. Keyword stuffing or spamming is a No-No today. Most search engine algorithms can spot this, bypass the spam and some may even penalize it.

Dynamic URLs

Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have? or & sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not.

One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site. Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server.

 The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion.

Re-Direct Pages

Sometimes pages have a Meta refresh tag that redirects any visitor automatically to another page. Some search engines refuse to index a page that has a high refresh rate. The meta refresh tag however does not affect Google.

Image Maps Without ALT Text

Avoid image maps without text or with links. Image maps should have alt text (as also required under the American Disabilities Act, for public websites) and the home page should not have images as links.

Instead HTML links should be used. This is because search engines would not read image links and the linked pages may not get crawled.

Frames

There are some engines whose spiders won’t work with frames on your site. A web page that is built using frames is actually a combination of content from separate “pages” that have been blended into a single page through a ‘frameset’ instruction page.

The frameset page does not have any content or links that would have promoted spidering. The frameset page could block the spider’s movement.

The workaround is by placing a summary of the page content and relevant description in the frameset page and also by placing a link to the home page on it.

Tables

When you use tables on the key pages and if some columns have descriptions while others have numbers, it is possible that this may push your keywords down the page.

Search engines break up the table and read them for the content the columns have. The first column is read first, then the next and so on.

Thus if the first column had numbers, and the next one had useful descriptions, the positioning of these descriptions will suffer. The strategy is to avoid using such tables near the top of the key pages.

Large sections of Java scripts also will have the same effect on the search engines. The HTML part will be pushed down. Thus again, place your long Javascripts lower down on key pages.

Link Spamming

Realizing the importance of links and link analysis in search engine results, several link farms and Free for All sites have appeared that offer to provide links to your site. This is also referred to as link spamming.

Most search engines are smarter to this obvious tactic and know how to spot this. Such FFA sites, as they are known, do not provide link quality or link context, two factors that are important in link analysis.

Thus the correct strategy is to avoid link spamming and not get carried away by what seems to be too simple a solution.
 
Conclusion

If you’re looking for some simple things that you can do to increase the position of your sites rank in the search engines or directories, this section will give you some hard hitting and simple tips that you can put into action right away.

What Should You Do Now?

It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.
 
• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.

• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.

• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.

• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.

• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.

• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.

• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.

• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

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