Sites will take extraordinary steps to get every possible page into Google to enhance their page rank. In the case of the Google cache, this tactic can sometimes come back to haunt sites, particularly sites selling products
Google Cache
Google copies everything it can get its dirty little spider robot on. Google stores these copies in a cache. The cache is simply a copy of all previous web pages for the link in question. If you search for something on Google, each result returned for the search has a cached button at the end of the link. Click the cached link and you will see previous copy of the page. Often, what you see is an older version of the page.
If you sell products on your site, do you really want Google copying old pages and making them available Put another way, do you really want customers to see the old prices of the products you are selling Many sites change prices or information during the year as a reflection of selling cycles, etc. If your prices are at their high point in September, do you want customers clicking the cache link and seeing lower prices listed from July Probably not.
Dont Get Cached!
Keeping Google and other search engines from copying your pages is fairly simple. It requires a bit of meta tagging, but nothing difficult. To stop the process, simply add the following meta tag to your site:
The robots for all search engines relying on meta tags should stop copying your site. Lately, YahooSlurp has been acting odd, so make sure you keep an eye on it after it crawls your site.
To get rid of pages that have already been copied, you should just contact the search engine in question. They will usually delete the copies, but they arent particularly quick.
Adding pages to Google, Yahoo, MSN and any other search engine should be a definite goal for every site. Before storming down that road, just make sure you understand the consequences of old pages appearing in the cache.
Halstatt Pires is a search engine optimization specialist with - an Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego offering meta tag optimization services and link popularity services.
By following these steps you will see that most closely guarded secret-- the search algorithm. Remember the movie the Matrix The Matrix is there, you just cant see it. So is the search algorithm.
Its easy to pay a Search Engine Optimizer to give your pages some ranking power. Unfortunately, given the inherent time factor involved in climbing the ranks, your money may be long gone before you know if youve spent your money well.
THERE IS NO MAGIC PILL
Forget any advertisement you see for instant number one search results or automated this or that. Most are scams, and the ones that arent might get you positioned, but it will be very short lived.
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. Achieving and maintaining a high rank, especially on highly competitive keywords, requires constant maintenance. If you do find a legitimate SEO firm, it is well worth the money to pay their monthly maintenance fee and let them continue to help you after the initial project. At least for 6 months or a year as you establish yourself.
In this article well look at some of the intricate and complex tasks of optimizing a page for long term ranking power. You will learn how to read between the code and the content to find what is necessary to bring you to the top. Being number one is easy to say, but is quickly overwhelming when you stare at tens of thousands of pages you want to out rank. So how do you begin
The starting line on the road to that first page SERP (search engine results page) ranking is not as blurry as you might think. In fact, you can uncover the starting line, the route, and all the scenery along the way to the finish line without knowing the search engine algorithm.
STEP 1- YOUR KEYWORDS ARE THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF GRUELLING DAYS OF WORK
If you have investments in the stock market you know how much research and thought goes into choosing those securities. Now take that same effort and multiply it by three. Thats how much planning and revision your keywords should take.
A simple, broad key phrase like shoes could hypothetically bring you up in a countless stream of different searches. Womens shoes, baby shoes, sneakers, high heels, etc. If somehow you manage to settle into a good ranking (which would be difficult) you would have more traffic on your site than you could handle. But traffic is worthless is it doesnt get to its destination. Chances are, you werent that destination.
Your keywords must be focused and precise, specific to what you are selling. Using a key phrase like Gucci mens black leather loafer will bring a targeted lead to your site. You may not reach as many people as the more generalized keyword, but the people that do come to you have a much deeper interest in the specific product you are selling.
Therefore you have much greater chance of converting that targeted lead to a sale. Your keywords are your magic beans, your winning lotto numbers, your energizer bunnies, your sales force, whatever you want to call them. They must be perfect.
STEP 2- WANT TO BE NUMBER ONE LOOK AT WHO ALREADY IS
Competition Analysis- no SEO book can give you this information.
Now take your keyword list and type them into a search engine. Who comes up in the first ten results That company that is number one is because they have most closely matched what the search engine algorithm says should be number one. You can learn a great deal from them.
A. INTERNAL FACTORS
Take that number one page, and the other top 9 pages and study them, look at the code, break them down. You are looking at the first half of what is needed to rank in the top 10 pages for your key phrases on that particular search engine. The list of what to look for is enormous.
Studying the Internal Factors on a page is taking it apart to see how its put together. Not how it works, but statistical research into the precise construct and layout of keywords and phrases in relation to each other within the page.
Start with these areas:
URL address, Page Title, Meta description, Meta Keywords, First sentence on the page, Body copy, Bold or Emphasized Phrases, H1 or other tags, Alt Tags, Navigation system
In each of those sections, look at:
Keyword densities- the number of times your phrase and each word in your phrase appears compared to the text around it
Where and in how many times the same phrase and words appear in different sections
The word and character position of each phrase in each
The total number of characters
The total number of words
The quality and thought of the content
Beginning with these comparisons should keep you quite busy for a while. A spreadsheet is quite useful. Some commercial products are also available that can make this daunting task much more feasible. Keep looking for other patterns and differences. You want to duplicate them in your own page. NOT copy and steal. You want to mimic the patterns that are bringing that page to the position it is. Then move onto to examining the external factors of these pages.
B. EXTERNAL FACTORS
External factors of a web page deal with the links to, from and within a web page, both inside the same site, and out into the web. This analysis usually takes more time because it involves more dissection of pages beyond the one youre trying to optimize. In this analysis as with Internal Factors, you want to compare and contrast your page versus the top 10 competitors, find similarities and differences. Here is a list of criteria to get you started.
Number of internal (to the same site) on that page
Number of external links
Number of links pointing TO that page* (see below for details)
The link/anchor text- which keywords are used and where
Google Page Rank value of incoming links
Alexa Rank of incoming links
*To get a listing of the links that point to a site, type the following into Google, MSN and Yahoo searches: link:www.domainname.com. Google tends to only show a small portion of the links back, but MSN and Yahoo will give you much more pertinent data.
Now you want to compare the content on each of these pages to the one they point to. Is it of similar theme, in what context does the link back appear and where. Subject of much debate, the consensus is that Google Page Rank does not mean what it used to. However, if it is in some fashion a measure of how significant or important a site is, it is worth looking more closely at the sites that link back that are of high page rank.
EVEN A SURGEON USES TOOLS
Now, this is definitely a ton of work to do all by hand. There are software programs that can help do some of the digging and mathematical computations for you, figuring out densities and organizing information.
Tools like this are definitely ones a professional SEO will have in their arsenal. But remember, these are tools, not miracle workers. It takes a human being to evaluate and realize connections, similarities, draw conclusions and interpret the data. Then, you have to extrapolate this data.
Remember, you want to do one better than every site you just examined. To do that you have to draw some conclusions and make some educated guesses and link to even better sites.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You have access to the inner workings of every page that you want to beat. Learn from them and do one better. This process is not a one-time shot. It is ongoing. Check your key phrases every week. Do the same people still rank in the top ten
Some have probably moved. Remember too that theyre going to adapt to maintain their positions too. If you want the ranks, you have to spend the time, and not just once, or pay someone to do it for you.
Dont ever believe anyone who says they can guarantee any kind of results. And ask them how they will optimize your pages. If they explain to you something like the above, then youve probably got yourself someone experienced and honest. You money will be well spent and youll quickly recover it.
John Krycek is the owner and creative director of . Learn more about search engine optimization and internet marketing in easy, non-technical, up front English!