How Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects Search Engine Rankings Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article, I explain the difference between keyword density, frequency, prominence and proximity, and how they affect search engine rankings. Keyword Density Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page. The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine. In general, I recommend using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%. You may like to use this real-time keyword analysis tool to help you optimize a web page's keyword density ratio. Keyword Frequency Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page. The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords. In general, I recommend that you ensure that the most important keyword or keyword phrase is the most frequently use keywords in a web page. But be careful not to abuse the system by repeating the same keyword or keyword phrases over and over again. Keyword Prominence Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page. The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag. Keyword Proximity Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better. For example: How Keyword Density Affects Search Engine Rankings How Keyword Density Affects Rankings In Search Engine Using the example above, if someone searched for "search engine rankings," a web page containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second. The reason is because the keywords are placed closer together. This is assuming that everything else is equal, of course. You may like to read my article, "How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching With." In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with. Case Study: Is Lycos InSite Pro Paid Inclusion Worth It? Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article I will show you the results of my test with the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion site submission program. I recently tested the Lycos InSite Pro paid inclusion system. InSite Pro offers guaranteed inclusion in the Lycos web index within 48 hours of submission, and full refresh of my web pages every 48 hours. Lycos InSite Pro offers two packages: * 1-250 Pages: $189.00/month * 251-500 Pages: $279.00/month I opted for the $279/month plan. I have about 500 pages of content across my network of sites and wanted all of them indexed in Lycos. The Results Lycos currently do not provide keyword, impression or click-through stats, although they do intend to offer them in the near future. So I checked my traffic stats according to my WebTrendsLive reports. I was shocked to find that Lycos only sent 41 visitors in the first 2 weeks of indexing my site. During the same period, Google sent me thousands of visitors. So I wrote to Lycos and asked if they could provide access to click through stats for my account. I wanted to double check, just in case my stats were wrong. They couldn't. So I also asked what I could change in my pages to get more traffic. Here's their helpful reply: Every entry in the Lycos index is created by automated software called a "spider." When a Web page is submitted to Lycos, the spider examines the full text of the page and determines relevant keywords based on its composition. The spider will pay close attention to the components of the URL, the TITLE tag, headings and subheadings, frequency of word use, location of words on the Web page, and the distance between words. If your Web page contains frames, our spider will be able to index the text in the <NOFRAMES> section only. We cannot examine the pages within your frame. Once our software has extracted this information, an abstract is created and stored in the Lycos index. Our search software ranks the search results by considering a combination of the factors listed above. Web pages with fewer than 100 words of text are less likely to be found in a Lycos search. Read that again in case you missed anything. Note that the Lycos spider pays close attention to the URL. So if you ever wondered if search engines took into account keywords in URLs, you now know the truth. Another important point is that your pages should contain 100 words or more, otherwise it's unlikely to be found in Lycos. For some unknown reason Lycos doesn't like my web pages. There's nothing new in their reply that suggests I have not optimized my web pages in the correct manner to achieve top rankings in Lycos. Thankfully, Google does like my pages, so I don't intend to change my pages just to cater to the Lycos ranking algorithm. In case you're wondering, I have canceled my Lycos InSite Pro subscription. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. ;o)
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Link Monkeys Your Number One Source For Link Exchanges Online
Buy and Sell your text link ad space for FREE. Why pay a company a percentage of your income every month when you can sell it here for FREE? Text link marketing is here to stay and we are proud to offer this service for no charge to you. What is the catch? Read on... About The Author: Michael Wong is an internationally recognized internet marketing expert, and the author of a leading SEO book, numerous marketing articles, and reviews of marketing software and ecommerce software. Publishing Rights: You may republish this article in your web site, newsletter, or ebook, on the condition that you agree to leave the article, author's signature and photograph, and all links completely intact. Full instructions on how to copy and upload my photo to your server.  How To Find Link Exchange Partner Sites To Improve Your Link Popularity Last Update: Sunday, March 06, 2005. In this article I show you how to find link exchange partners to improve your link popularity rating, which in turn will improve your search engine rankings. Search engine optimization experts agree that link popularity is now considered by most search engines to be one of, if not, the most important factors that determines a site's ranking in the search engines. If you're not sure what your site's link popularity rating is, then use this link popularity check tool to check your link popularity rating in the top search engines. Let's say we have two identical sites. One has thousands of targeted sites linking to it. The other only has a few incoming links. It's virtually guaranteed that the site with thousands of incoming links will rank higher than the other site. So how do you find reciprocal link partners? First, you need to work out what type of web sites would link to your site. Here are some examples of sites and the types of sites that would link to them.  Your Site: Links From:Pet store Pet lovers' sitesSite design service Webmaster sitesTravel site Local guidesPC store Software/hardware review sitesMusic store Music fan sitesAs you can see, you're looking for sites that are on the same subject matter, but not necessarily similar. So now you know what sites to look for, how do you find these sites? There are basically two methods: In the following examples, we'll use "pet lovers'" sites as the type of sites we're looking for. 1. Find targeted sites in the web directories, such as Yahoo!, LookSmart, or theDirectory Project. Go to a directory's home page and search with the keywords, "pet lover." Then click on the category the top listings belong to. The sites listed in these and related categories are the types of sites you need to contact. If the category has a resources or directories sub-category, then try the sites in those categories first. Resources typically offer links to sites on the same subject. 2. Use the search engines to find sites that link to your competitors' web sites. Using the search engines is probably a more efficient method of find reciprocal link partners, than searching the directories. Go to your favorite search engine, such as Google, and search for any of the following keyword phrases: "pet directory" - Searches for pet directories. "pet search engine" - Searches for pet search engines. "pet lover" links.html - Searches for link pages in pet lover's web sites. "pet lover" resources.html - Searches for the resource page in a pet lover's Web site. Don't forget to include the quotation marks to narrow your search. Also try replacing the ".html" with other file extensions, such as ".htm," ".shtm," ".shtml," ".cfm," and ".php." Now make a list of the sites. Then create a links or resources page and add links to the sites on that page. After you've done that, link to that page from your home page. If you have hundreds of links, split the pages into different sub-categories. When you're done, upload the pages to your server. Now contact each site by informing them that you have linked to their site and request a link in return. Don't forget to be polite and inform them of the benefits of exchanging links. Some sites, such as web directories, will not require a reciprocal link. So simply submit your link. The most important tip I can give you with regards to reciprocal linking is to only exchange links with targeted sites. I highly recommend that you don't exchange links with sites that bear no relation with your site. If you link to poor-quality or spam sites, it could affect your search engine rankings. WARNING Under no circumstances should you link to, or add links from, link farms. Link farms are considered as spam sites in the eyes of the search engines. If you want to save time and effort, you could use a reciprocal link management tool, such as Arelis. It will help you find and contact link exchange partners. Good luck with improving your link popularity!
 
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