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Search Engine Optimalisation
About the Author: http://www.geocities.com/searchengineoptimalisation/
Page size matters because search engines limit size of a cached page. For example, Google will only cache a full page if the size of its HTML is less than 101 Kb (images and external scripts are not included). Yahoo! caches text of up to 500 Kb per page. This means if your HTML page is too large, search engines will not cache the full page, and only the top part of the text will be searchable.
Last modified
This attribute shows how old the document is. It is taken from the server response to HTTP request. You can see if your page has been updated lately.
Same color text and background
If the color of the text on a page is close to the background color, the text becomes almost invisible. As a rule, this technique is employed to populate a page with keywords without damaging its design. Since it is considered as spam by most search engines, we suggest that you do not try it.
Tiny text
If a page uses Cascading Style Sheets and there are fonts smaller than 4 pixels, they are reported as tiny texts. Most search engines consider tiny texts as an abusive practice - this is why you should avoid using them.
Immediate keyword repeats
The same keyword repeated one after the other a few times, for example air tickets on-line, air tickets, air tickets, air tickets, air tickets in Hong Kong is a questionable trick. For this example, there will be three repetitions reported, because the keyword was placed three times in a row after it was used first. Such repetitions are considered as spam by most search engines.
Controls
If the page has HTML tags (HTML only, not other scripts) that create controls, it will be mentioned in the report. Try to avoid too many controls on your page, especially in the top area, since it may decrease your keyword prominence and result in low rankings.
Frames
Frames use is reported here. Not all search engines support frames, i.e. can follow from a frameset page to content frames and index texts. If your Web site consists of frames, and you cannot redesign it, you can solve this problem by putting the content of an optimized page with links to other pages into a HTML tag.
External and Internal JavaScript
If there is a Script tag with a link to a JavaScript external file on the page, it will be mentioned under 'External JavaScript'.
Embedded (internal) JavaScript representing the full content of the SCRIPT tag will be reported here as internal JavaScript use. Do not use too many embedded scripts on the page, because your keyword prominence will be reduced, and thus your page will be ranked lower on search engines. We advise putting the script in an external file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as possible.
External and Internal VBScript
If an external VB Script file is referenced from the page, it will be mentioned under 'External VBScript'.
Detected internal VBScript within the SCRIPT tag will be reported as Internal VBScript use. Please note that excessive use of scripts in the top area of the page dilute keyword prominence and therefore affect your rankings. Put the script in an external file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as possible.
File robots.txt allows spidering
Robots.txt is a text file placed in the root directory of a web site to tell robots on how to spider the website. Only robots that comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will read and obey the commands in this file. Robots.txt is often used to prevent robots from visiting some pages and subdirectories not intended for public use. However, if you want search engine robots to spider your site, there should not be disallowing commands included within this file for all or particular search engine robots.
area
Each HTML document should have a HEAD tag at the beginning of each document. The information contained inside the head tag (...) describes the document, but it doesn't show up on the page returned to the browser. The Title tag and meta tags are found inside the Head tag.
tag
Syntax: Web Page Title
An HTML tag within the Head tag is used to define the title of a Web page. The content of the Title tag is displayed by browsers on the Title bar located at the top of the browser window. Search engines use the Title tag to provide a link to the site matching the user's query. The text in the Title tag is one of the most important factors influencing search engine ranking algorithms. By populating your most important keywords in the Title tag, you dramatically increase the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.
Stop Words
To save space and speed up searching, some search engines exclude common words from their index, therefore these words are ignored when searches are carried out.
'The', 'or', 'in', 'it' are examples of such words. These words are known as "stop words." To make your pages search engine-friendly, you should avoid using stop words in the most important areas of your page like title, meta tags, headings, alternative image attributes, anchor names, etc.
Besides, stop words have no contextual meaning - using them in short areas such as a title, headings, and anchor texts will reduce weight, prominence and the frequency of keywords.
Keyword frequency
Frequency is the number of times your keyword is used in the analyzed area of the page.
Example: If the page's first heading is 'Get the best XYZ services provided by XYZ Company', frequency of keyword 'XYZ' in the heading will be two. Frequency relates only to the exact matches of a keyword. Therefore, frequency of key phrase 'XYZ services' will be one, because as exact match, this keyword is used only once.
Search engines use frequency as a measure of keyword importance.
Search engines rate pages with more keywords as more relevant results, and score them higher. However, you should not use too many keywords, since most search engines will penalize you for this practice for being seen as an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.
Keyword weight
Keyword weight is a measure of how often a keyword is found in a specific area of the Web page like a title, heading, anchor name, visible text, etc. Unlike keyword frequency, which is just a count, keyword weight is a ratio.
Keyword weight will depend on the type of keyword, that is if the keyword is a single word or phrase. If the keyword includes two or more words, for example, 'XYZ services', every word in the key phrase (i.e. both 'XYZ' and 'services') contributes to the weight ratio in the weight formula, and not as one keyword ('XYZ services').
Keyword weight is calculated as the number of words in the key phrase multiplied by frequency and divided by the total number of words (including the keyword).
Example: The title of a Web page is 'Get Best XYZ Services'. Keyword weight for 'XYZ services' is 2*1/4*100%=50%. If you reduce the number of words in the title by removing the word 'get', so the title becomes 'Best XYZ Services', than the keyword weight will be larger: 2*1/3*100%=67%. Finally, if you only keep 'XYZ Services' in the title, the keyword weight will become 100% -- 2*1/2*100%.
So, to increase the keyword weight, you should either add some more keywords or reduce the number of words in the page area. The proportion of the keywords to all words will become larger, so will the keyword weight.
Many search engines calculate keyword weight when they rank pages for a particular keyword. Normally, high keyword weight tell search engines that the keyword is extremely important in the text; however, a weight that is too high can make search engines suspect you of spamming and they will penalize your Web site's rankings.
Keyword Prominence
Prominence is another measure of keyword importance that relates to the proximity of a keyword to the beginning of the analyzed page area. Being the keyword that is used at the beginning of the Title, Heading, or on top of the visible text of the page is considered more important than other words. Prominence is a ratio that is calculated separately for each important page area such as a title, headings, visible text, anchor tags, etc.
HTML pages are written in a document-like fashion. The most important items of a document's visible text are placed at the top, and their importance is gradually reduced towards the bottom. This idea can be also applied to keyword prominence. Normally, the closer a keyword to the top of a page and to the beginning of a sentence, the higher its prominence is. However, search engines also check if the keyword is present in the middle and at the bottom of the page, so you should place some keywords there too.
The prominence formula takes the following factors into account:
1) Keyword positions in the area,
2) Number of words in the keyword, and
3) Total number of words in the area.
100% prominence is given to a keyword or keyphrase that appears at the beginning of the analyzed page area.
Example 1: Let's take the page title 'Daily horoscopes on your desktop' and analyze prominence of keyphrase 'daily horoscopes'. The title word order will be: 'Keyword1, keyword2, word3, word4, word5'. Prominence will be 100% here as the keyphrase is present at the beginning of the sentence.
The keyword/keyphrase in the middle of the analyzed area will have 50% prominence.
Example 2: The anchor name is 'Find here the daily horoscope for your sign'. The keyword prominence of the phrase 'daily horoscope' in this case will be 50% as the keyphrase is located in the middle of the sentence -- 'Word1, word2, word3, keyword4, keyword5, word6, word7, word8'.
As a keyword appears farther back in the area, its prominence will be counted from zero and it will depend on how close to the end it is. If the keyword appears at the end of the area, its prominence will be close to 0%. If the keyword appears at the beginning of the area and then is repeated in the middle or at the end, its prominence will be 100% because prominence of the fist used keyword prevails over the repeated keywords.