Search Engine Ranking Information

Q: How do Bing and Google determine how to rank my website?

A: Bing and Google website ranking is completely automated. The ranking algorithm analyzes many factors, including but not limited to: the quality and quantity of indexable webpage content, the number, relevance, and authoritative quality of websites that link to your webpages, and the relevance of your website’s content to keywords. The algorithm is complex and is never human-mediated. While the factors are secret, the goal is clearly to present searchers with the content they are most likely looking for.

You can't pay to boost your website’s relevance ranking. Bing and Google do offer paid advertising options for website owners but participating in search advertising does not affect a site’s ranking in organic search.

Q: Why does my website ranking on Bing and Google change periodically?

A: Each time the index is updated, previous relevance rankings are revised. Therefore, you might notice a shift in your website’s ranking as new websites are added, others are changed, and still others become obsolete and are removed from the index.

Q: Can website design help my ranking?

A: Although you can't directly change your website’s ranking, you can optimize its design and technical implementation to enable appropriate ranking by most search engines. Using website designers who follow the recommendations outlined in the various guidelines published by Bing and Google are your best bet. Here are two excellent resources.

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Bing Webmaster Center FAQs

Technical Considerations - Here are some useful techniques to ensure your website is technically optimized for search engine web crawlers:

• Use only well-formed, HTML code in your webpages. Make sure that all paired tags are closed, and that all links open the correct webpage. For information on validating your HTML code, see W3C Markup Validation Service or use a comparable tool.
• If your website contains broken links, search engine web crawlers might not be able to index your website effectively, thus preventing people from reaching all of your webpages. Utilize tools for finding broken links on your website.
• If you move a webpage, set up the webpage's original URL to redirect people to the new webpage. Indicate whether the move is permanent or temporary.
• Make sure search engine web crawlers are allowed to crawl your website and isn't on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your website.
• Keep your URLs simple and static. URLs that are complicated or that change frequently are difficult to index as link destinations. For example, the URL www.example.com/mywebpage is easier for search engine web crawlers to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn't change is easy for people to remember and bookmark. That makes your webpage a more likely link destination from other websites.

• In the visible webpage text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your website.
• Limit all webpages to a reasonable size. Bing and Google recommend covering one topic per webpage. An HTML webpage with no images should be under 150 KB.
• Make sure that each webpage is accessible by at least one static text link.
• Don't put the text that you want indexed within images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it isn't displayed only inside an image of your company logo.
• Add a Sitemap, which helps the web crawlers find all of your webpages. Links that are embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements aren't accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your Sitemap. Be sure you have a valid Sitemap.
• Keep your website hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each webpage should only be from one to three clicks away from the default webpage.

Dont't Get Penalized - The following techniques aren't appropriate in terms of attempting to gain higher ranking with the Bing and Google index. Use of these techniques might actually adversely affect how your website is ranked, and might even cause your website to be removed from the index.

• Attempting to increase a webpage's keyword density by add lots of irrelevant words. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
• Using hidden text or links. Only use text and links that are visible to users.
• Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your webpage.

 Q: Why isn’t my site ranking well for my keywords?

A: In order to rank well for certain words, the words on your pages must match the keyword phrases people are searching for (although that is not the only consideration used for ranking). However, don’t rely on using the Keyword <meta> tag as very few search engines use it anymore for gauging relevancy due to keyword stuffing and other abuse in the past.p>Some additional tips on improving ranking:

•  Target only a few keywords or key phrases per page
•  Use unique <title> tags on each page
•  Use unique <meta> description tags on each page
•  Use one <H1> heading tag on each page (and if appropriate for the content, one or more lesser heading tags, such as <H2>, <H3>, and so on)
•  Use descriptive text in navigation links
•  Create content for your human visitors, not the Bing and Google web crawlers
•  Incorporate keywords into URL strings

Q: How important are inbound links? Are all inbound link equal?

A: Inbound links (aka backlinks) are crucial to your site’s success in ranking. However, it is important to remember that when it comes to inbound links, Bing and Google  prefer quality over quantity. Backlinks should be relevant to the page being linked to or relevant to your domain if being linked to the homepage. Inbound links from sites considered to be authoritative in their field are of higher value than those from junk sites.

Q: How do I get more high quality inbound links?

A: Some Ideas for generating high-quality inbound links include:

•  Start a blog. Write content that will give people a reason to link to your website.
•  Join a reputable industry association. Oftentimes they will list their members and provide links to their websites. Examples could be a local Rotary Club or a professional association like the American Medical Association.
•  Get involved with your community. Participating with your community through blogs, forums, and other online resources may give you legitimate reasons to provide links to your site.
•  Talk to a reporter. Is there a potential story around your website? Or do you have helpful tips about your business that people might be interested in? Pitch your story to a reporter, and they might link to your site in an online story.
•  Press releases. If your company has scheduled a significant public event, consider publishing an online press release.
•  Suppliers and partners. Ask your business partners if they would add a section to their websites describing your partnership with a link to your website. Or, if your suppliers have a website, perhaps they have a page where they recommend local distributers of their products.
•  Evangelize your site in the real world. Promote your website with business cards, magnets, USB keys, and other fun collectables.

Q: Do inbound links from low-quality sites adversely affect Bing and Google ranking?

A: While they won’t hurt your site, they really won’t help much, either. Bing and Google value quality over quantity. Please review the question above to get some ideas for generating high-quality backlinks.

Q: Why has my site’s rank for a keyword recently dropped?

A: Bing and Google website ranking is completely automated. The Bing ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as webpage content, the number and quality of websites that link to your pages, and the relevance of your website’s content to keywords. Site rankings change as Bing and Google continuously review the factors that make up the ranking. Although you can't directly change your website’s ranking, you can optimize its design and technical implementation to enable appropriate ranking by most search engines.

Q: Will paid links or link exchanges get my site the top ranking as advertised?

A: Nope. While you can buy search ads from Microsoft and Google, neither the presence nor the absence of those pay-per-click advertisements have any influence in where your site ranks in the search engine results pages. Link Exchange can hurt you. Paying for or participating in non-relevant link exchange schemes will not improve your page rank, and in fact, it could very well hurt it. What will ultimately improve your page rank is creating great content, earning inbound links from relevant, authoritative websites, and performing legitimate SEO on your site. If you build your site with a focus on helping people find great information, you'll be on the right track for earning the highest rank your site deserves.

Q: Do the optimization recommendations you give affect my ranking performance with all the search engines?

A: Yes. They improve it! If you are actively performing legitimate, white-hat search engine optimization (SEO) activities for other search engines, it'll help you with all search engines. If you perform solid, reputable SEO on your website, which entails a good deal of hard work, creating unique and valuable content, earning authoritative inbound links, and the like, you'll see benefits in all top-tier search engines.

But remember: SEO efforts ultimately only optimize the rank position that your site's design, linking, and content deserves. It removes the technical obstacles that can impede it from getting the best rank it should. However, it won't get you anything more than that. The most important part of SEO is doing the hard work of building value necessary to make your site stand out from the competing crowd of other websites for searchers.

One other thing to remember: there is a long tail in search. After the few obvious keywords used in a particular field, there are many, many more keywords used to a lesser degree that still drive a lot of traffic to various niches of that field. Instead of always trying to be number one in a highly competitive field for the obvious keywords and faltering, consider doing the work of finding a less competitive keyword niche in that same field and then do the hard work necessary to earn solid ranking there.

WizardsWebs Design LLC knows how to construct your website so that it ranks well on popular searches. We go further to educate you on techniques to improve page ranking. We explain the complexities of the web including keyword development, backlinks, sitemaps, blogs, viral marketing, pagerank, and more. We validate each page we design to confirm to W3C standards. This assures proper display in the different browsers as well as provide positive responses from the search engines. Beside MS Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari, we can even verify your website displays properly on iPhone and iPod Touch.