Website Referencing Bis

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Referencing of Website


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Summary

I. Introduction

II. Methodology

III. Finding information on the Web

IV. Positionning a website on search tools

V. Methodology for the positioning of a website

VI. Methodology for optimizing of a web page

VII. How to miss the referencing your website

VIII. Meta tags: work and implementation

IX. Popularity index

X. Reference a website design in flash


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The ranking of a website is a set of techniques to promote understanding of thetheme and content of one or all pages of a website by search engines. Thesetechniques are therefore designed to provide maximum information about thecontents of a web page to crawlers of search engines.

The aim of this process is to guide the positioning of a web page in searchengines results on keywords relevant to the main themes of the site. It isgenerally considered that the positioning of a site is good when it is positioned(ranked) in one of the first ten or twenty responses of a search on keywordsprecisely matching its theme.

I. Introduction

The understanding of how work search engines and directories is essential fora good optimization.


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II. Methodology

The methodology to be considered in chronological order and according torefine the experience, is in 12 points! ...

1. Understanding how search engines and directories work.

2. Having a look at the listings in Romanian, French and English directories

and search engines and do a manual submission.

3. Optimize the web pages of your site by following a methodology, based oncriteria of relevance of the engines and ensure that no blocking factor hinderthe future ranking of your site.

4. Test your pages on an HTML code audit system that will allow you to betterrefine this work by giving you many indications on how to best define all areasof your pages according to the criteria of relevance of search engines .


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5. You can then use the interface of checking and manual submission to rankyour site on major search tools. On these directories and search engines, still

prefer a manual process, far more effective than all the software of the world.

6. If some major portals like Free, Orange, SFR, ..., seem vast relative toyour target, check who provides them with their engine or directory andsubmit your site to them (for example dmoz).

7. Identify engines and directories which are specific to your business (e-commerce, water sports, health, food ...) and also submit them on your site.To find these search thematic tools, use websites that list them. If your sitehas an important regional character, also submit it on regional search tools(Romanian, English, ).

8. Every 3 to 4 weeks, you should check the presence of your site with themanual interface, because submitting a site is unfortunately not, synonymouswith a registration in a database of the search tools.


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9. During the phases of your optimization and referencing, always follow thecharter of quality and ethics enacted by IPEA-SMA (Internet Positionning

European Association Search engine Markting Association) and validatedat the time by the French major engines and directories. It remains generallyvalid today.

10. Search engines are also increasingly sensitive to the link popularity ofsites (the number of links from your pages to the Web and their "quality", i.e.

the popularity of the pages that contain them). Calculate your own andincrease them by a broad campaign to exchange links with friendly sites(complementary but not competing).

11. Once your site has been installed everywhere, do, every quarter or everysix months, a "revision" of SEO: Make sure your site is present everywhere,

and if not, repeat a submission phase through the manual interface.12. Finally, in this methodology, we have only spoken of referencing, thepresence of your pages in the index directory and engines. You can also gofaster by proceeding to the referencing of your site on certain keywords orterms.


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III. Finding information on the Web

1. What is a directory?A directory is a search tool that identifies a number of sites through listingsincluding, in general, title, address (URL) and a brief description of 15 to 25words or less. Each site is placed in one or more category (s) - also referred toas section (s) -. These tools can thus be seen as the yellow pages of the Web.

When a keyword is entered in the proposed form, the directory searches onthe occurrences of the term in their listing site, and not in the content of thepages in question. This is the most notable difference with search engines.The most popular directories worldwide are Yahoo! International, Looksmartand Open Directory. As a francophone, the most used are Yahoo! France,

Nomade, le Guide de Voil, the Lycos Directory France and French OpenDirectory, Yahoo!France. But there are many others.


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2. What is a search engine?

The search engine operates on a system radically different from thedirectory. Software robots (called crawlers or spiders) scan the Web, goingfrom page to page (actually from link to link) and back up the text content ofthe encountered pages, thus constituting an "index" , i.e. a greater or lessercollection of Web pages. Most of the time, the "index" of global searchengines contain hundreds of millions of web pages.

The software robot returns more or less frequently on the pages it hasindexed in advance to save a newer version. We say that it "refreshes itsdatabase (orindex).

When the user enters a keyword in the proposed form, the engine will seek

out the score in its index, that is to say in the text content of Web pagesstored in advance. Once the set of pages that contains the requested termhas been identified, the engine ranks the pages in order of relevance, in anorder and an algorithm (based on some sort of criteria) that is specific to it.


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The search engine conducts its research on Web pages, while the searchdirectory suggests sites. There is a difference which is why it is absolutelyimpossible to compare results from both types of tools.

The best known search engines are AltaVista, Google, AllTheWeb, MSNSearch (Bing) and Yahoo Search. At the French level, Google France, Voiland Exalead are some of the most effective.

3. Is a meta engine better than an engine?

Meta-search engines are tools that, for a same query, interrogate severalengines simultaneously, repatriate the results, summarize and offer asummary of responses. The idea is attractive ...

However on these services, it is not permitted to use the advancedfeatures of search engines, simply because they vary greatly depending onthe tools surveyed. It is obvious that the implementation of these featuresas part of a simultaneous search of multiple engines is far from easy orsimply impossible.


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On the other hand, meta-engines synthesize the results from several differentengines, ranking each of their results in different ways, without using thesame criteria of relevance.

Summarizing the classified documents using disparate ways, is it so simpleto do, and most importantly, is it more relevant? Can we compare the resultgiven by Yahoo! or by Google for the same keyword? The question remains...

Using this type of meta-engines creates another problem: almost all search

engines on which they rely, are financed through advertisements (banners,sponsored links) they display. However, proponents of this additionalsoftware layer that are meta-search engines do not always use these ads,sometimes even preferring to offer their own ads.

The use of these meta-engines substantially reduces the number ofaccesses to the traditional search engine, which compromises its advertisingrevenues and may eventually sign its death warrant.


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On the other hand, there is an ethical problem: Is it fair to use for its ownbenefit the technologies and investments implemented by other companies,without payment?

If the concept of meta-search engines is interesting at first, it can be quitesure that the use of a single engine, using all its advanced features,following effective methodologies, is more fruitful.

4. When to use a directory and when to use a search

engine?In general, we can say that we shall use a directory like Yahoo Directory orthe Open Directory to find a general site on a given topic.

However, we shall use a search engine like Google or Yahoo Search tosearch for a much more precise topic.

To give a simple example (even simplistic), we shall research the companyswebsite on a directory, but we shall research the information on its products(research therefore within sites) on the search engines.


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IV. Positioning a website on

search toolsPeople ask many questions about the positioning of a page or a site onsearch engines and directories. Many specifications or bidding, request aclause of "positioning" in their referencing requests.

To try to see things more clearly in this field, here are some items related to

positioning. However, they can be questioned if indexing techniqueschange.

1. What is positioning?

In the field of SEO, positioning is to ensure that a website, or pages thatconstitute it, are well ranked in the results of research tools (directory,engine) for a word or expression.


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Example: you sell shoes. The positioning of your site will be to ensure that apage of your site appears in the top results of major search engines, asclose as possible to the first place, when the user types, for example,

queries: sale shoes, luxury shoes, shoes bottom price, shoe shopping, etc.The aim is to appear in the first thirty results, i.e. in the first three pages ofresults (many search tools offering 10 results per page). The best, of course,is to be on the first page (the first 10 links) and, better yet, in the first place!

2. Position a site on the first two pages of the majorsearch engines

"Being on the first X pages of search tools" means nothing in itself. Thispositioning should be absolutely compared to keywords or sentences (like"new york", "train ticket sales," "buying a washing machine, etc.) which are

given at first.


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It is therefore very important when you are looking for a position, to saywhat words, terms or sentences you wish.

Warning: every word, every letter is important. If you optimize a page of asite for the expression "sale of air tickets" and get a good ranking on a givenengine for this sentence, the page may be ranked much worse if someoneenters "sale ticket" or "Sale of tickets" on the same engine. Do you see thedifference between the three queries?

3. The positioning is done on keywordsThe positioning is often done on keywords. But the question is how tochoose them?

You just know one thing: the more the word is generally considered, themore it is typed by the customers of search engines, the more thepositioning is complex. The more the chosen word is rare, the more thepositioning is possible, but least the word is entered on the search engines.It is, for example, absolutely impossible now, to make a good manualpositioning (excluding advertising positioning) on words like car, books, CDs,computers, industry, commerce, MP3, Star Wars, Literature, etc.


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So, the more the specific term will be required of your business, the betterthe position will be, if your pages are optimized according to the sortcriteria of search engines. But on the other hand, there will be few peoplewho will type it on engines. A site like Keyword Search Engine can help youwith this choice of keywords by making an "audit" of keywords that youimagined at first.

You have to ensure that the scale does not collapse on one side or theother. But the positioning is not (no longer?) a very effective way to quantify

the quality of a good optimization. It is much better to check the overalltraffic from search tools in characterizing the "referrer url (sites whereusers come to your site) with statistical tools (most tools of this type allowto access to a "referral traffic") to measure overall traffic from major searchengines, all keywords combined.The Excel tables, showing the positioning of the site for a particularkeyword on a particular engine or directory, still exist. This is no longeruseless! In any case, used alone, they are only a part of the truth.


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In fact, regarding the positioning, the question to ask is not only "in whichposition is my site on the engine engine1 for keyword key1?" But "What is thetraffic generated by the position of my site on the engine engine1 for keywordkey1? ". Is it usefull to be prime for a given expression on Google, if it doesnot generate any traffic?

In this, a statistical analysis tool has become indispensable for quantifyingthe quality of an optimization.

4. I'm misclassified on the directory Yahoo! France

for the word: "Machin"

First, we must be very clear on one point: if someone working in the field ofSEO guarantees (excluding advertising positioning) a position in a directory

like Yahoo! France, the Open Directory or other LookSmart, you can sayyou've just met a crook! ...Positioning is a technique that applies only to search engines, not todirectories!


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To convince ourselves, look at the process referencing on such tools: thefirst time you see the category(ies) of interest, then you fill out a form

describing the site: title, address, summary, chosen category(ies). A fewdays later, a directory Netsurfer see your site and decides if he accepts it ornot. If his decision is positive, he very often changes the available title andabstract.

You dont control the final description that will be displayed on the directory(and only if the site is accepted!).

If the word Machin" appeared in the summary, you have proposed, thedirectory netsurfer may well have to remove it. He has the right (he takes itanyway!).

Now it is quite possible to request the amendment of a title or a summary toa directory. A form is also often available for this task. However, it is

necessary that the request be justified. If it is for other purpose than trying tobe ranked (and directories netsurfeurs have some experience with it), theapplication has no chance of being accepted. It may instead, make you lookbad ...


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5. Do I need a big budget on SEO and only SEO topromote my site?

This can be a big mistake. SEO is a necessary phase but absolutely notsufficient in the larger process of promoting your website.

To promote your site you should absolutely spend a good SEO, of course,but also a policy of links exchange, buying banner ads, sponsorship,

creation of quizzes, sending press releases, etc.And dont forget that the main generator of traffic to your site in the mediumterm, is the good match between the target you're aiming in the interest ofusers and the content, you offer! Do not try to ask for referencing more than itcan do, you will be disappointed!


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6. The website is not found when doing a search bykeyword.

a. Case for a search engine

This is possible if the keyword is found neither in title nor in the visible text, inshort, although present anywhere in the meta tags. It should be noted thatthese are hardly taken into account by most search engines. These can not

find your site on that keyword.

b. Case for a search directory

Be carefull: Many people think that when submitting a site, including searchengines, it provides a number of words that serve as reference in future

research to users. It is not nothing! Directories (Yahoo Directory, OpenDirectory, Le Guide de Voil) conduct the research in the listings of sites (title,abstract, address, item name) and not in a list of keywords.


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Engines (Google, AltaVista, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, Here ...) conducttheir researches in the HTML of your pages: title, visible text, etc.

In any case, the keywords that you give to the referrer (which are mostoften requested by it) dont go directly aposteriori to the researches onthe tool.Some directories require keywords, but its rather to get an idea of the

content of the site, to help netsurfers to evaluate your site. But no more.Once the site is accepted or rejected, these keywords are trashed (virtualy,OK). However, some directories, like Nomade and Le Guide de Voil takeinto account the provided keywords, select or modify them and keep themas search criteria.


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V. Methodology for the

positioning of a Website


Referencing (inserting) a site on a search tool is one thing, positioning it, isanother. Positioning a site means that for a given keyword or sentence (asequence of words) which is important to your business, you try to place a

page of your site in the X first results of research tools. Knowing that "X" isideally in the 10 first responses, and at worst the top 30. Here is amethodology that will help you, at least we hope, to make this type ofoperation.


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Before starting, it is necessary to understand that a positioning strategyis only possible on search engines. For the directories (Yahoo Directory,

Nomade, Open Directory, ...) defining themselves the fields on whichfurther research will focus (title, abstract, field names), it is impossible toestablish a real methodology of positioning. And if someone says he hassuccessfully positioned on site on 1st position for one keyword on the"directory" part of Yahoo, it is simply, and in 99% of cases ... that he gotlucky!

Second point, we only speak here about the position in the organicresults of the engines, i.e. coming from their index. We wont speak aboutthe positioning through sponsored links, which involve more criteria suchas ... the thickness of the wallet.

After these two points are set (and they are important!), we can begin thedescription of the methodology itself.


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The first crucial point is to choose the right keywords. Indeed, it is uselessto attempt positioning on keywords (or sequences of keywords) that

nobody ever types on a search engine, since it doesnt generate any traffic!If your site has already been in operation for several months andreferenced on a number of engines and directories, see your statistics onthe "referrers" and identify the keywords previously entered by users to findthe site. This will give you an initial idea. Otherwise, use a keywordgenerator to help you to make your choice. Sites like Keyword Search

Engine or Google AdWords can also give you valuable assistance.

To determine if a positioning is possible, go, for example, on Google. If asingle term interests you, type it as is. If it is rather a combination ofkeywords on which you want to execute the positioning, type it in quotes:"electronic commerce", "sale appliances", Airbus A380", etc. Then look at

the number of responses indicated by Google. Below 20 000 results,positioning is possible. Beyond 200 000, there are too many answers andpositioning becomes very complex. Between these two numbers, you willneed to paddle", but there are some possibilities.


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However, if you get 2 million hits, immediately drop and change keywords... Again, the site Keyword Search Engine can help you.

You've chosen your keywords? You are sure that a user can potentially typethem in an engine? They are not too specific? You can then move to thenext phase ...

The best thing to do is to optimize the REAL home page of your site. Andalso all the other pages ...

Once the pages have been optimized, you can submit them to the engines.

When these pages are listed in the indexes of the engines, you need tocheck their positioning on the major engines. You can do this by hand orusing a specific application that allows you to make this work automatically,

like those from the list below.


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Application Name Corresponding URL

Agent Web Ranking http://www.agentwebranking.com/

Promoteur http://www.trellian.com/fr/swolf/

Search Engine Commando http://www.searchenginecommando.com/

SeeYourRank http://www.yooda.com/

SeoWebRanking http://www.seowebranking.com/

This list is not exhaustive of course!


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If your pages are wrongly classified, you must repeat the entire procedure:further optimization, rechecking, etc. The engines updating their indexes

often enough, it is not required to re-submit the address of a page that hasalready been referenced.

When you get a good ranking on an engine for one term or a series ofkeywords, the work is not finished. You must now check that this workgenerates traffic.

Indeed, the aim of positioning is not to be in the top ten results of anengine, but that this work generates traffic on your site. Analyze yourstatistics with statistical tools (Weborama, eStat, Stats-Reports, XiTi, etc.)and see the indications of "referrers" (from which sites come the users who"land" on your pages and which keywords they have typed for that?).

If you find that the keyword on which you are first, had in fact been typedby almost anyone, you have worked for nothing and you can go back tothe first item of this methodology to redefine new terms ...


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Finally, if you are well positioned on a keyword and if it generates traffic,you have won. Now do a follow-up work of this position and check every

month, to see that you remain well positioned. React otherwise.

To conclude, we can say that the aim of positioning is to find the right matchbetween the keyword on which we will attempt to position and the traffic itwill generate. If you find the term(s) on which the positioning is (are) stillpossible and that generate(s) some traffic, then you win. Not so simple ...

Especially since, on many of the current search engines, the results aretotally changed, for the same keyword, an hour to the next ... This explainswhy it is absolutely impossible for a company that specializes in this type ofbenefit, to guarantee any outcome in terms of positioning for a particularkeyword and a given engine.


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VI. Methodology for optimizing

a web pageEach search engine has a specific ranking algorithm to present results. Thisalgorithm takes into account a number of criteria of relevance. You must striveto consider these criteria when creating your pages. These "hot zones"

(presented here in order of decreasing importance) must absolutely containthe most important keywords to your business:

Title ( ...): often the most critical area in the ranking ofyour documents.

Here are some tips to optimize the titles of your pages:


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1. Place as high as possible in your HTML code.

2. A web page title is primarily descriptive of the contents of the page.Avoid titles like "Welcome to our website" ...

3. Insert the most possible determining and characteristics keywords ofyour business.

4. Do not exceed 10 words per title (excluding "stop words" like "the",

etc.).

5. No way bilingual or trilingual title, etc.

6. The title should perfectly sum up the contents of the page.

7. The title of a homepage is inherently generic and evolves over the

tree.8. Each page of your site should have a title of its own (which must be

optimized).

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Body text of the page: the first hundred words in the body of your page(the "visible text") are paramount. These first paragraphs should containimportant words to define the content of the page, if possible highlighted

(bold, clickable).Here are some tips to optimize the visible text of your pages:

1. Take great care of the content of the first paragraph of your pages (thefirst 2 or 3 sentences).

2. Create shorter pages, with only one theme, and one language, but still

containing at least 100 words.3. Put forward the important keywords for your business: bold, h1 tag, text

links (avoid the links like "to learn more" or "click here"), etc.

4. Consider the different forms of the words: feminine / masculine, singular/ plural, etc.

5. Consider the proximity of words between them and their order.6. Do not necessarily look to "cram" your pages with identical keywords, it

will have little effect on the "weight" of your pages.

7. Remember that each page of your site can be optimized for a keywordor sentence. Do not bet everything on one page.


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Link popularity (PageRank appointed at Google): a first approach: thenumber of Web pages that have established links to your site. It is essentialto achieve a successful campaign to exchange links with "cousin sites"(additional sites, but not competing). This will greatly improve your pageranking on most engines. Links quality" is also important. A single linkfrom a page with high PageRank is much better than several links frompages with low PageRank (which, themselves, however, are not

disadvantageous) ... Internal links to your site are also important andconsidered by search engines.

Here are some tips to optimize your link pages:

1. The optimization of a link is important both for the page that it contains(original page) and for the page to which it points (target page).

2. Your links should be as simple as possible so that engine robots canfollow them to index the other documents of your site.


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3 Choose text links and avoid maximum image, JavaScript, forms orFlash links.

4 Consider creating a page "site map" that is "compatible" with the

constraints of engines and their crawlers.

5 The link text is important for the "development relevance" of the targetpages. A page pointed to by a link that contains the word "insurance"will see its relevance strengthened by this term.

The domain name of the site and the URLs of pages: it may havesome significance. If you do mechanical engineering in Cluj, buy thedomain "mechanical-engineering-cluj.com", which contains three primarykeywords. Separate words with a dash.The domain "mechanicalengineeringcluj.com" is invalid because theengines do not know how to separate two concatenated words. Having

said this, it is also recommended, on the off-line advertising in particular,to consider the spelling "mechanicalengineeringcluj.com" but to performSEO on "mechanical-engineering-cluj.com".

Here are some tips to optimize the URLs of your pages:


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1. Buy a domain name (.com, .ro, .net, ...), without redirection system.

2. Insert one or two words important to your business in the Domain

Name: your name, your business, etc.

3. Try to establish a network of "small sites" rather than a big gate if youcan.

4. Separate keywords with dashes in the statements of your domainnames.

5. Also use a dash (-) to separate words in the url of pages and nounderscore (_).

6. Create sub-domains (keyword.yoursite.com) for the convenience of theNetsurfers and increase your visibility in search engine results.

7. Insert, if possible, intelligible and important keywords in the full title ofyour URLs (www.yoursite.com/groceries/condiments/salt.html).

8. The most important: always act with fairness and avoid spam, neverpaying for the short, medium or long time on engines!


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META Tags, Keywords and Description: If the engine takes them intoaccount, these tags will most often have a little importance. If it doesnt

index them, it does not penalize in any way your documents. The currenttrend (Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search (Bing)) would rather not indexthese data fields as they result in too many "spamdexing" (fraud researchtools to better position the pages which are not necessarily very relevant ).Exclude more info on these areas to get good positioning on searchengines!

Here are some tips to maximize the "meta tag" of your pages:

1. Tags are important to better control howthe engines display summaries of your pages.

2. A "good" tag develops the title of the

page and summarizes the text content. A "medium" size is 150 to 200characters.3. Ideally, each page must provide a tag of

its own.


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4. Meta tags allow us to indicate severalforms of important words (plural / singular, masculine / feminine, and

possibly case-sensitive and accent) to engines that take into accounttheir content.

5. Remember any typos and spelling errors which it is always interestingto add in the tags .The indication of some thirty or fifty keywords is mostly sufficient.

6. Warning: the tags are now notconsidered by almost any major search engine.

7. Beside the tag , the other meta tags ("revisit-after" and consors) have no impact in the context of a referrencing.

Other criteria:

We can also turn our attention to other criteria, which may, at one time oranother, have a relative importance:


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VII. How to miss the referencing

of your website?


1. The "hidden areas" of HTML code: the ALT attribute of IMG tags willoften add relevant keywords.

2. Comments (


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1. Directories: everything to the content

When you want to submit your site to directories (Yahoo, AOL.fr, MSN.fr

(Bing) or .en, Open Directory, Guide de Voil), there are mistakes that weshould not make. Here is a list (it needs not to be totally exhaustive, but itincludes, however, the main obstacles to a good SEO):

Referencing a hollowsite, without content

The directories are more restrictive and focus first the contents which aremost important, most interesting, in one word, the best. Directories assumethat the sites they identify, must answer questions from visitors. A "hollow"site does not answer any question! Sites such as "wafer" (coordinates, typesof products sold by the company, word of the President) have only very littlechance of being integrated into the major directories.


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We must therefore focus on quality with the launch of the site and provideinteresting content to users (and thereby directories): thematic issues,

news, feature articles, press releases, information often updated andrenewed, FAQ, directory of interesting sites, links, etc.

In short, we must invest in content. Customers will thank you first and thenthe directories by including you quickly in their database (the speed ofacceptance of a site in a directory like Yahoo or Nomade is often a good

indicator of the quality of its content! ).

A content a bit offbeat, original, or even marginal, may also accelerate areferral. Indeed, say you that a directorys netsurfer evaluates an averageof 50 to 100 sites per day and can reject at least one third, when it is notmuch more. Make sure it is yours on which he stops and ranks it withpleasure.

Surprise them!


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Referencing a site under construction

No major directory will accept a site submitted to them that is not complete

or, worse yet, not online. Its the same thing if your site is only accessiblewith a password.

Wait until your site is complete and totally uploaded before beginning yourranking. Do not submit your information areas as "under construction".Prefer to not be present at all, even to incorporate a new area of

information later, rather than display logos such as "Russia 50s" (thebeautiful yellow and black signs with a "Men at Work" ... ) or those referringto the words "construction zone". If you have a site accessible only bypassword and wish to be listed in a directory, add a content areaaccessible to all.


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The look

Make sure your site has a good look. A professional look is always better

than a "personal page" look which shows images in the format "animatedgif" in not knowing what to do with, the "clip art" from CD-roms to 15 eurosor that can be found everywhere on the Web, funds of pages with imagesand textures (the type of site you created in 1995), a counter ("You are the20th visitor since January 1, 1998!" ) etc. This type of site is no longeraccepted on the major directories for so long!

Keep abreast of "trends" on the web. Today, there are major directionsfollowed by all the major sites: a white ground, dropping frames, usingcertain fonts, shape "round" of graphical interfaces, etc. Go see the sitesthat make the most of hearing in the World and Europe and take goodideas from these sources of information. Remember, however, to be

original!


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Website outdated

If, on the home page of your site, the "Last Updated: July 25, 1997"

appears, no problem, your site will never be listed on the directory! Keep itup! ... It is the same if the pages are not dated but if the informationpresented therein is notoriously out of date".

Suggest only updated information and "up to date". When this is not

necessary (the presentation of the business of a company for example), donot specify the date of last update, it adds nothing to the user who visitsthe page.


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Language

Global directories (Yahoo!, Open Directory World ...) index only English

websites. Francophone directories (Yahoo! France, Guide de Voil, ...) onlytake into account the sites in French. Ditto for Italian directories with theItalian language, etc. So dont submit a site only in French to Yahoo.com, itwill be refused. Dont waste time!

Submit your site only on "possible directories, thus relating to thelanguage(s) present(s) in your pages.


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Gadgets and technology

Flash Machin, Real Truc, and Quicktime Bidule as homepage can block a

referral. Imagine the directorys netsurfeur does not have the neededplug-in (in the "going well version) installed on their browser to view yourhome page. Hop, your site goes directly in garbage can in a minute!

Test your site with a "classical" configuration, a computer "from the

factory", having inhibition Java and Javascript on the browser to see whatis going on display. In expectation, do not use "new technology" like Flash- in recent versions too - and no action or animation technique "outsidethe box" before being placed on the directories. There will be time to seelater, within the constraints of the search engines.


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The display time

The netsurfeurs directories see many many sites every day, as indicated

above. The time spent evaluating each of them is counted. If they need aminute just to view your homepage, your site is clearly in a "bad beginning"from the outset.

By counting the file size of your HTML homepage and all imagescontained therein, limit its total weight to 70 or 100 kb, at worst. Themaximum time display of your main pages, with a connection through the"classic" telephone network, must be 10 to 15 seconds, never more.

The absence of their own domain name

Directories filter more entries, given the large number of requests. A sitethat has its own domain name (www.mywebsite.com) will always have asmall advantage over a "personal website"(www.multimania.com/meandmydog/), although this is not a registrationsguarantee , far away.

Buy your domain name with .com, .net or .ro termination or any othertermination. It's not so expensive!


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Spam and the Law

Several techniques can be considered as spam (fraud) by directories: A

site name such as "123-Doe" or "ABC Widget" to appear first inalphabetical lists, referencing the same site in several different domainnames, etc. The netsurfeurs directories know ALL the tricks, do not takethem for fools! ! Additionally, if your site is the SANPH (Sect of AnonymousNeo-Nazi Pedophiles Hackers), you'll be unlikely registered. Do not eventry!

Do not attempt too visible initiatives or lost in advance to be in the toppositions in alphabetical order and dont offer illicit sites. Do not put suchsites online, it will save time and energy to everyone.


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The attempted bribery and the rants

If you submit your site at noon, do not call netsurfers the same afternoonto inform them that it is a scandal that your site is not yet online even ifyou have purchased advertising on their pages . Worse: do not offermoney under the table to accelerate the procedure. Finally, you do as youwish!

No budget "corruption" or rants. Smile and life will be more beautiful! Butit's not over. It remains to watch the constraints of the search engines!

Here for the best ways to miss the ranking of your site on directories. It

should be noted that blocking factors are perhaps even more important,even more for search engines, which may not take into account eitheryour site if certain technological options are taken into the HTML of yourpages.


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2. Engine: constraints are numerous!

Some technical options are partially or totally unacceptable for a goodSEO of a site on search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, ...). You mustknow them before starting the technical creation of your pages. They aresummarized here without being, once more, totally comprehensive. Toavoid seeing your site disappear on engine indexes (or simply neverappear on it), here are the technical options not to consider or to take into

account with the appropriate patches and parades:

Frames

Many search engines take into account the poorly made pages withframes.

No longer use frames, it's really the current trend. If you absolutely want to

keep them, use the tags ... and put amaximum of text links so that the engine can follow links and indexes yoursite more easily. Also use the meta tags and title that can sometimes evenreverse the problems and make your site better referenced than a sitewithout frames.


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The establishment of a CGI script to your homepage

Detecting a Flash plug-in, the type of browser or the operating system

used, the machine name, etc. All these tests - and many others - madethrough CGI (computer programs launched before displaying the HTMLpage) can block some "spiders" who can not go further.

This means avoiding as much as possible CGI scripts that trigger beforethe display of the homepage!

Pages too graphic

If your page is too graphic, no text (that is actually available as text, i.e.,selectable with the mouse and not the text in an image as a graph), yoursite can sometimes - not always - be referenced but will be always

misclassified.


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Insert visible text at least 100 words in your homepage. And not white onwhite, of course ... A page with no visible text, entirely graphics, will always

be poorly considered and will always be poorly ranked in the engines for agiven query. Look at the U.S. sites that have an audience: experience leadsthem to abandon the too graphic charters to return to much more textualcontent.

Flash

The text present in a Flash animation is rarely taken into account by a"spider". Even if the situation improves month by month, it is far fromperfect.

Use Meta tags, title tag and as you used the tag for sites with frames. Try, if possible, to make a copy of thesite without Flash and with more textual content that may be better takeninto account by search engines.


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Javascript, pop-ups and roll-overs, without having to repeat the

graphic links to a simple textual version

Most spiders do not know how to follow the links provided in the form ofroll-overs or simply by JavaScript.

If you have graphic links, static or in the form of "roll-overs", ALWAYSdouble them by the text links. Moreover, as the words that compose the

text inside a link (the text is presented in color and underlined) has aheavier weight for the engines, you kill two birds with one stone! Howeverthere is nothing to be done to the windows style pop-up!


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The "exotic URL proposing characters such as ?, & or % in their

statement

These pages are not always taken into account by some engines.

Example: http://www.votresite.com/query=?!yu6Gh.qu&pg=web/ $qwerty

There are a number of possible remedies, not "hacks" complex, but still

possible. It depends on your technical configuration, most of the time. Atbest, do not use this type of URL if possible. Otherwise, create static pageswith "clean addresses, copies of actual pages and reference them. You canalso use techniques of "URL Rewriting" if your server allows. However, thepages to ASP format, CFM or PHP that are not displayed with "exoticaddresses dont pose a real problem of referencing on search engines.


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Tag or redirects made to the DNS level

Tag (automatic redirection from one page to

another) with a very short delay (from 0 to a few seconds) can be consideredas spam by search engines and penalized. Equivalent in Javascript can beused. URL redirects are also not taken into account, even if they are notconsidered to be fraud.

Example: Entering the address http://www.yoursite.com/ that automaticallyredirects to http://www.yoursite.fr/english/ (with the address that becomessuddenly visible in the address bar of your browser) orhttp://www.yoursite.com/ which redirects to the "real" addresshttp://www.yourhost.com/yoursite/. In this case, the initial address(www.yoursite.com) may never be referenced.


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Make sure, when creating the domain name yoursite.com, it is not asimple redirection (look at this issue with people who will technically

manage the domain name for you). When the user will type the addresshttp://www.yoursite.com/ on the address bar of his browser, he should stayon this address, to go for example, according to his navigation to theaddress:

http://www.yoursite.com/products/printer/inkjet.html.

Spamdexing, of course, but it was obvious

No stubborn repetition of keywords, text in white on white background,etc. All these techniques are known by the engines. You're just wastingtheir time and your pages will be penalized (denied, downgraded or put in"black list").

Do not do spamdexing, of course ...


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Of course, it will always be possible to circumvent these obstacles bycreating alias pages or satellites that do not contain "defects". Remember

that an alias page is a page whose body and appearance are the same asthe homepage but the title and meta tags are different, while a satellitepage is a page specifically optimized for a specific keyword and / or aparticular engine and has a link to the homepage. Also referred to page"pre-entry" for satellite pages (such as "To go to the website Doe, clickhere") or "ghost page".

But alias pages are often complex to implement and maintain. Satellitepages work, for their part, less well and are eliminated as indexes. On theother hand, many drivers prefer more and more, in their results, thehomepages of sites that are proposed or do clustering (that is, they no

longer show that one page per site, and often its homepage, making itinvisible satellite pages). The trend is clearly to sites optimized for theengines and not the satellite pages or alias that sometimes act as "patches,that may be of little use in a short term!


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VIII. Meta tags: work and

implementation


Always remember: the directories are built by humans and engines bysoftware. Respect their constraints and you have earned a good presence

in their midst.

To get a good ranking on search engines, it is still sometimes necessary tolearn what is called the META tags of your web pages. Warning: this ishowever less and less true.

In the HTML language, META tags can indicate to search engines a certainamount of information on the contents of a page. The term Meta meansMetadata. These tags indicate therefore the information on information.


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Note to begin and to be very clear, that the META tags have only an effect onsearch engines (Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, ...), at least those whotake them into account. Directories (Yahoo, Nomade, Open Directory, ...) donot take any account as they are constructed by human persons who willnever look at the HTML code of your pages, instead of "spiders" (or robots orcrawlers) engines that are "suck" to copy this code on their records and makea search index thereafter. Some search engines (Google, Yahoo Search, MSNSearch, ...) did not however take them into account either.

1. General description of the META tags

Imagine that you build a site on behalf of your company, named Stela, andwhose business is to sell shoes. In the HTML of the homepage, you willindicate, for example, the following terms:


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META NAME="description" CONTENT="Stela, specialty retailer of sportshoes based in Paris, France">

Both META tags ("description" and "keywords") must be placed after the tag

... and before the end of the header ().If your HTML editor places them before the tag , put it in first position,as we have seen, because this field is more important than META tags as acriterion of relevance.

"clean" HTML code compared to search engines, always begins:


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Page Title

If other accessory lines (including other META tags that are automatically

added by your editor) come and parasitize your HTML code, position themafter the tag .

META tags can add a description of the page displayed to the attention ofengines and also specific keywords seamlessly. They are however not anabsolute guarantee that the pages containing them will get a better ranking

than others. These tags are useful, but the best guarantee of a good rankingis the presence of relevant keywords in the title of the page and in the visibletext, as close as possible to the top of the page (to be precise, the nearestpossible below the BODY tag of your HTML code).


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Some search engines (Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search) do not take intoaccount all of the META tags in their algorithms of relevance. But they candisplay them in their results (for the tag


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Thus, in the absence of META tag NAME="description">, a search enginemay for example display (first words of the text of the page):

1. Sport shoes StelaSite optimized for Firefox 3.6.2 and Explorer 7.Download the software totake full advantage of your pages.http://www.stela.com/ - size 5K - 20-Dec-09

We can not say that the line summary really tells us about the content of thepage. If a tag exists and is indicated in theHTML form:

The engine will display the following summary:

1. Sport shoes StelaStela, specialty retailer of sport shoes, based in Paris, France.http://www.stela.com/ - size 5K - 20-Dec-09


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The contents of the tag is fully incorporated.

Limit the contents of the tag to 150 or 200

characters including spaces. In fact, most search engines limit the sizeallocated to abstracts (and taking into account the proposed text in theirrelevance ranking). If your description is longer, make sure that, reduced tothe first 150 characters, the sentence still has meaning. In your account,please consider a letter from accented character, although itsrepresentation in HTML is longer. In this case, its the sentence displayed

which accounts (it will be otherwise for the tag ).

Of course, make sure that the proposed descriptive sentence contains themost representative keywords of your business. One solution is to copy theproposed title () and develop it. Indeed, a "good" (as defined in the

optimization with respect to search engines) tag typically contains7 to 10 words. These can be resumed and completed to offer a tag quite convenient if you stay within the limits of150 to 200 characters.


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Of course, to be totally effective in connection with engines that take theminto account, each page of your site must contain a tag different and accurately describing the contents of thesaid page!

3. The tag


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In the case of our company Stela, a manufacturer of sports shoes, a tag could be:

It is customary that the tag contain up to 100keywords or 1000 characters. Beyond that, you can be considered as a

"spammer" (fraud) and your page may be penalized by search engines. Itwill be logically identical if several words are repeated. That said, atpresent, a twenty of keywords is more than enough ...

In your counting 1000 characters maximum, attention to count the numberof characters of accented letters once coded in HTML. For example, the

letter "", in HTML count for 8 characters (since this is accordingto this size, that the engine takes them into account).


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The tag is also used to propose to searchengines various spellings of your keywords (plural, case sensitive,feminine, accented spelling mistakes, if any, etc.).

The tag is therefore important to provide toengines a number of keywords that characterize your business and thatbest describe the content of the page in which they are present. These tagswill also be used to supplement the content of pages that do not containimportant keywords in the visible text, in particular those which contain anumber of options or shares in a graphical format with no text equivalent.

As for the tags , each page of your site mustoffer specific tags . If you did not planned at thebeginning, it can be a lot of work in perspective.


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Caution: If you had the idea to include in the tags of your pages, all the names of your competitors, sothat your pages are found even if the user is interested primarily in your

rivals on the Web, be aware that several American companies have alreadysued other companies guilty of such fraud. Moreover, your competitors,when they see it, not happy to sue you, will be the first to denounce thesepractices from search engines. Some lawyers have even specialized in thepast, in the hunt for "fraudulent" META tags. Avoid any such practice, yourisk important reprisals.

It will also be better that the keywords you insert into your documents alsohave a sense for the contents of the site. It's the same for the title and textof the page. So, unless you are a former "Playmate of the Year" (this is atrue case which has been held in 1998 in the United States for a certainTerri Welles), do not repeat a hundred times the word "Playboy" in yourMETA tags. Ditto for "sex" and "mp3" (roughly the two keywords most oftenrequested by users on the search engines today).


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4. The other meta tags

Many other META tags are available and sometimes visible in the HTML Web

pages encountered during your travels on the Web: "revisit-after","classification", "distribution", "rating", "identify-URL","copyright", etc. Youshould know that they are not taken into account by any major search engine.Their presence is superfluous in your pages, if for no other purposes thanindexing.

Only one will interest us here: the tag .It is never used as a criterion of relevance to the engines, but it helps to showthem how they should index the page. A specific tag may actually beused - in each HTML document - to allow or deny the access to enginespiders. It comes in the form:

where the fields ATTRIBUTE1 and ATTRIBUTE2 can take the following values:


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ATTRIBUTE1:

index: page to be indexed by the spidernoindex: prohibition to index page

ATTRIBUTE2:

follow: the spider can follow the links contained in the page to indexthe other documents

nofollow: the spider can not follow the links in the page.

Indications index, noindex, follow and nofollow can either be entered in

lowercase and uppercase. Here are the different possibilities offered by thistag:

Such META tags as those presented earlier, should be in the header of theHTML document, between the and tag and after the tag. They should be in all the documents youwant to filter the access, unlike the robots.txt file that takes into account theentire tree of a site.


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Final Points: The first example given above ("index, follow") has no practical application.Indeed, the tag reads the same options as if it did not exist.

The following syntaxes are equivalent:andand

Most of the robots take this META tag into account.

5. The META Tag Generator

Creating META tags on your pages is not complex. All HTML editors have thiscapability. You can also do "by hand" directly in the code, very easy. Warning:

some software "pollute" slightly (or strongly) the HTML generated code byinserting the tags that are useless to optimize your code (which does notmean they are of no use at all). You must therefore, mandatorily rework "byhand" the code of your pages if you want to better optimize it and get a code"clean" as was stated earlier in this course.


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If you do not really want to look at the subject of the technical integration ofthese tags in your pages, a number of websites (or software) can alsoautomatically generate META tags. You give them some information

(keywords, sentence description, etc.). And you get on the Web or e-mail,these tags. Most of these services add a comment line to indicate that thetags have been created through a utility. For example:

This line can, of course, be removed in the final code.

6. The Robots.txt file

We try to explain how to ensure that your pages are better indexed by robot(spiders) search engines. But some of your pages may be confidential, or at

least that your goal is to not widely disseminate them on the search engines.A site or a page under construction, for example, doesnt need to be thetarget of such an aspiration. Then it is necessary to prevent certain spidersto consider it.


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This is done through a text file called robots.txt on your server. This file will

provide some guidance to engine spider on what it can do and what not to doon the site. Once the spider engine arrives at a site (for example,http://www.mysite.com/), it will scan the document present athttp://www.mysite.com/robots.txt before making any "aspirational document." Ifthis file exists, it reads it and follows the instructions contained therein. If hedoes not, it begins its work of reading and saving the HTML page which it

came to visit, considering that a priori nothing is forbidden.

There can only be one robots.txt file on a site, and it should be at the root level,as shown in the address example above. The name of the file (robots.txt) mustalways be created in lowercase. The structure of a robots.txt file is:


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User-agent: *Disallow: /cgi-bin/Disallow: /tempo/Disallow: /perso/Disallow: /underconstruction/Disallow: /subscribers/price.html

In this example:User-agent: * means that the access is granted to all agents (all spiders),what they are.The robot will not explore the directories /cgi-bin/, /tempo/, /perso/ and /underconstruction/ on the server or file /subscribers/price.html.

The directory /tempo/, for example, corresponds to the address

http://www.mysite.com/tempo/. Each directory to exclude from the spidersaspiration must be in a specific line Disallow:. The order Disallow: used toindicate that "everything that begins with" the specified expression must notbe indexed.


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Disallow: /perso do not allow the index of:http://www.mysite.com/perso/index.html,

or:

http://www.mysite.com/perso.html

Disallow: /perso/ will not index

http://www.mysite.com/perso/index.html,

but will not apply at the adress

http://www.mysite.com/perso.html

On the other hand, the robots.txt file does not contain any blank lines(white).

The star (*) is accepted in the User-agent field.

It cant serve as joker (or truncation operator) as in the example:Disallow: /underconstruction/*.


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There is no field for the permission, like Allow:.

Finally, the description field (User-Agent and Disallow) can be either entered

in lowercase or uppercase.Lines that begin with a sharp sign (#), or more exactly everything that is onthe right of that sign on a line, is considered as a comment.

IX. Popularity indexTo calculate the index of popularity of a site is to measure the number of pagesthat have set up a link to your website. This data is taken into account by somesearch engines (Google especially) in their relevance rankings.


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Three engines allow you to perform this calculation: Google, Yahoo Searchand MSN Search. Here are the requests to take on these three tools to

determine your popularity index (here for the site: iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr):

Google : link: iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr-site: iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr

Yahoo! Search : linkdomain: iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr-site: iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr

MSN Search : link:www.iutvichy.univ-bpclermont.fr

The queries link: and linkdomain: can get pages containing a link to theSRC Vichy website. The queries -site: allow to remove from this result theSRC websites inner pages.

As the three search engines do not operate on the same pages index, youmust perform the operation on the three tools to get an idea of your index.

X Reference a site designed


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X. Reference a site designed

in FlashFlash technology allows, quite simply, to insert animated images and realvector animated short cartoons in your web pages. Of course, these eventshave an impact on the referencing of your website.

Firstly, let us see how a Flash file is structured. When you create an

animation, you get a file named, for example, anim.fla (the .fla is thecharacteristic of the Flash format). To view this file in a web page, it isnecessary to export it in the Shockwave Flash format (.swf extension). This is,once exported, this file that you will use for your website.


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If the finished animation contains text, it will not be taken into account by thesearch engine which does not specifically take into account this format. Onepage (or even an entire website!) entirely made in Flash will therefore be

almost unnoticed by search engines, which dont index, for the most part, thetextual content in HTML format.

But the HTML file that "throws" the Flash himself is taken into account.

In this case, you do not have much choice: you must use in the mostoptimized way possible the tag (certainly the largest), tag(although the meta tag "Keywords" are almost no more taken into account, butthe meta tag "description" still has some importance) and, in our case, the tag (in the same way used the tag for a sitedesigned with frames). In the tag, try to insert the most possibletext (without spamming, i.e., without undue repetition of keywords), so that it is"sucked by the engine spiders. Another possible field: the ALT attribute in the tag for the images, if your HTML file contains some one.


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If the whole site is concerned, you can play on the only (rare?) HTML pagespresented to optimize the content, until all the search engines will read theFlash animations.

In any case, it is highly advisable to provide an online HTML version of yoursite with a link to the HTML homepage... which is not included in the Flashanimation!

Finally, there is another way to position a Flash site on search engines: go

through the offers of advertising positioning from Espotting, Google andOverture for exemple, to be sure to be on the top of the list. The majordrawback is: you must pay! (there is a test version which is free, butmimited to 15 days!)


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In any event, always remember one key point: a spider (i.e. a search engine)can only read HTML! The contents of a Flash animation is banned (except,

again, for engines that can read the Flash). Maybe one day all the searchengines will read the Flash "in the text". For now, it's not yet the case.

Documents

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