Arachnophilia, the Joy of Playing with Spiders

Source: By Jim Hedger, (c) 2005 StepForth News Editor

Spiders make great geek pets, at least virtual ones do. Here at StepForth, we keep a couple spiders on our system to test sites, pages and documents in the hopes of learning more about the behaviours of common search engine spiders such as GoogleBot, Yahoo's Slurp and MSNBot. Recently, we learned that virtual pets share a similar problem with live pets; they grow old and eventually die. While our mock-spiders are still very much alive, the information we glean from their behaviours is increasingly irrelevant to predicting how a spider from a major search engine will behave. Our pet-spiders have grown too old to showër us with the informative affection they once did.

It used to be easy to predict the behaviour of common search engine spiders. Today, predicting search spiders is not so easy and with a growing number of spiders and search databases to consider, trying to get a leg-up on where the spiders are going is rather tricky. In previous years, Google, Inktomi and other electronic 'bots could be relied on to visit a site on a regular basis. The working environment was a bit simpler a few years ago, easily summed up with nine letters, G-O-O-G-L-E-B-O-T. GoogleBot was at one time the only important search spider around. While others existed, even as recently as two years ago, Google fed search results to most of its competitors.

Visiting on a somewhat regular monthly schedule, Googlebot would compile information on all the documents in its database, a process that took about one week and then rearrange their listings during the eagerly anticipated GoogleDance. Search engine optimization firms were often able to anticipate the unscheduled start dates of the GoogleDance by examining spidering activities in their weblogs and noting PageRank and back-link updates that generally preceded a shift in Google's rankings. When the shift actually happened, changes stemming from it were fairly significant as many of the search results would be altered based on new data found during the monthly spider-cycle.

What a difference a couple of years can make. Today there are four major general search engines and several vertical search tools, each with a unique algorithm and spidering schedule. So just how important is it to know the spidering schedule of the various search engines?

In previous years, most SEOs would say it was extremely important to know when a spider was going to visit a client's site. SEOs worked with fairly fixed deadlines, hoping to have clients' optimized content uploaded about a week before the expected GoogleDance began. Even then one was not entirely sure that the date they predicted for the Dance was correct but with a somewhat regular spider/update cycle, SEOs had fixed windows of opportunity with subsequent weeks to tweak and rework content if rankings didn't materialize during the last update.

Today's spiders have become almost intuitive and it is less important to know when a spider will visit as it is to know where a spider will visit. Most spiders visit an active website very frequently. According to three months worth of stats compiled by ClickTracks, spiders from Ask Jeeves visit at least once a day while MSN and Yahoo spider the index page of the StepForth site several times a day. Google only visits our index page, every four days on average. Compared to previous years, even the least frequent visitor, GoogleBot is gobbling up content. With daily or even weekly visits, the increased number of visits gives SEOs a much faster turn around time from completing optimization on a site to seeing results in the Search Engine Results pages.

A major shift in the way search engines think about content is seen in where spiders will visit, the frequency of visits, and what drives them there. Previously, search engine spiders would consider a domain or URL as the top level source of information. It would go to the index page and spider its way through the site from that point. That is no longer the case as search engine spiders are today better able to contextualize content found on unique documents within a domain and schedule spider frequencies accordingly. For example, on a site dedicated to the sale of Widgets, the document that refers to the highly popular Blue Widgets will see more spider traffic than a document referring to the less popular Red Widgets. Similarly, a document that changes regularly will see more visits as the search engines tend to know when changes are made on documents in their database. In other words, search engine spiders tend to know your website as a collection of unique documents contained under a single URL or domain, as opposed to a collection of topically themed documents under a single URL or domain. Based on the number of searches for relevant keywords performed by search engine users, the number of incoming links, the frequency of change, and the frequency of live-human visits to a document, the 4 major search spiders are now setting their own schedules.

While the timing of spider visits has changed radically, many standard behaviours remain the same. Spiders still travel where links, both internal and external, take them. The difference today is those links often lead to internal pages. In previous years, most links lead to the index or home page of a site. With the advent of PPC programs such AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, webmasters and search engine marketers are creating product specific landing pages, each of which might be relevant to organic searches. This has allowed savvy SEOs to optimize landing pages for organic rankings as well as PPC conversions. Search engine results now tend to be more relevant to the specifics of any given topic as opposed to a general overview of that topic.

Of all the spiders, the most active by far is MSNBot. Visiting each document in its index at least once per day and often more frequently, MSNBot has been known to crash servers housing sites with dynamically generated content as the 'bot sometimes doesn't know when to quit. After MSNBot, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo are the busiest of the major bots. Oddly enough, the quietest is GoogleBot, which visits each document in our site at least once per month but with little or no discernable pattern.

In order to prompt spiders through the site, we suggest creating a basic, text based sitemap appended to the back of your website. The sitemap should list every document in your website. To jazz it up, add a short description of the content of the document linked to below the link. Add a link to the sitemap to the footer of each page in your site. That will help with Ask, MSN and Yahoo. For Google, a slightly more complex solution is available through the creation of an XML based sitemap.

About two weeks after implementing the HTML sitemap on your site and uploading your XML sitemap to Google, start to watch your server logs for increased spider visits. Be sure to watch for where the spiders are going and which documents receive the most frequent visits. You may be pleasantly surprised at how friendly modern spiders can be.

How to Get Great Organic Search Engine Listings

Source: By Judith Kallos

All too often I find site owners are confused (or in denial) about how to achieve the search engine rankings they desire on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). So, I am pleased to offer you my version of "Organic Listings 101."

Several times each day I get approached by site owners wanting to be in the top 5, 10, top page for organic (free) listings. The organic results are those that display to the left and below "Sponsored Sites" or "Sponsored Results" at Google, MSN and Yahoo!. These "Sponsored" advertisement boxes are part of Pay-Per-Click programs where site owners bid for positioning.

What we're going to discuss today are the free listings that are gained by how your site is ranked based on a combination of unique variables (algorithm) of each search site. Which, to muddy things up further, evolve without notice.

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
~Aldous Huxley

Let's first set the stage so that we have realistic expectations here. When I started my consulting practice back in the early 90s, it was relatively easy to get found. The volume of sites and the level of competition were not one iota of what they are today. Fast forward to 2005 and you have close to 12,000,000,000 (yes, that's billion) pages with a good 10,000,000 being added daily.

So how do you get visibility in the SERPs? Shuffling or adding keywords in your Meta tags won't do it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn't the end-all-be-all either. You have to have a well rounded, smart, long term marketing plan for your site that includes certain basics for you to rise in the organic rankings.

Issues for consideration to gain improved organic listings:

- Look at your Web marketing plan as a long term effort. New sites are in Google's sandbox for 6 months or more, and it will take time and effort to be viewed as more relevant than the sites that are already online in the free positions you seek.

- Part of putting your plan together is to do a search with your top keyword phrases on the various search engines so that you are aware of the competition and the volume of sites already successfully ranking for the terms you are targeting. This gives you a real-world understanding of the level of competition you will be up against.

- Understand that how your Web site ranks has nothing to do with how good you are at what you do. It has to do with how good your site is and how good others including the search engines think your site is. That requires a long term realistic marketing plan to grow your site to be the best most comprehensive resource on your product or service for your site visitors. It doesn't happen overnight or just because you say you want it to.

- Forget about trying to rank for one-word keywords - much too difficult and in some cases downright impossible. Concentrate and target 2-3 word phrases instead of one-word keywords and you'll get more targeted visitors as well. There are several tools to assist you in investigating what keyword phrases your target market is actually using. Use these tools to your advantage!

- Make sure each page within your site targets and is optimized for only one or two, 2-3 word keyword phrases each. Niche is what works for organic listings! The more you are about; the less you are about any one thing. Search results are based on numerous factors; one being relevancy for the terms the searcher is using. If you are targeting 10, 20, 30 terms per page, that page is not strongly about any given topic vs. another site that has a page or pages concentrating on just one or two phrases each. Keep in mind that less is more when it comes to targeting keyword phrases on a page by page basis.

- To "top" the sites already out there, you have to do just that! Top them! What makes your site better and more valuable to your site visitors? If you don't have anything unique and of quality or value to offer, you'll nevër push those who already hold these positions out of your way.

- Plan on adding new information to your site on an aggressive basis. Daily, weekly, minimally monthly! Resources, white papers, "how tos" not only add value but will naturally work wonders as keyword targeted pages. Offer the type of information those seeking your product or service will find useful and search for and that other sites will want to link to. Don't even think of cheating and using content generating software...You'll get nowhere with that approach. You need to have well written content of value; not keyword stuffed ramblings.

- Plan on having lots of patience. Rome wasn't built in a day and attaining great organic listings no longer happens in a day, a month, or even a year. Any business that hopes to succeed needs to take a consistent and informed long-term approach. This applies to organic listings ten-fold.

Yes, without a doubt, all of the above recommendations require your time, effort and a realistic understanding of how organic listings are accomplished. But this is the reality of how great listings, over time, are attained. It is really quite simple - strive to make your site the best it can be; THE site for your product or service and your rankings will improve!

There are no short cuts or trickery for fast top 5, 10, top page organic results. If someone tells you otherwise, they are trying to use what you don't know to get into your pocket book. Make a commitment to continually build your site to be the best it can be to your site visitors and your organic rankings will happen. Web sites and rankings are a work in progress after all!

Without implementing the above, you are left with only one choice in order to get visibility to those searching for your product or service. You will need to invest in a well planned Pay-Per-Click program and the corresponding budget necessary to reach your goals.

Google PageRank Update Analysis

Source: By Dave Davies (c) 2005

For those of you not yet aware, Google is currently updating the PageRank they are displaying in their toolbar. Each update causes a stir among the SEO community and webmasters trying to get their websites to the top of the Google Rankings.

What Is PageRank?
Without getting into too much detail, PageRank is essentially a score out of ten as to the "value" of your site in comparison to other websites on the Internet. It is based on two primary factors; the number of links you have pointing to your website and the value of the links pointing to your website. The value is calculated based on the PageRank of the page linking to you and debatably the relevancy of the page linking to you (there is no hard evidence to back up the relevancy factor in regards to PageRank that I have seen, however it definitely is a factor in your overall ranking).

If you are interested in more information on PageRank you would do well to visit the many forums and articles on the topic and also visit Google's own description on their website at http://www.google.com/technology/ where they give a brief description of the technology.

What's New?
The most current PageRank update will undoubtedly cause a largër stir than usual in that many sites have shown drops in their visible PageRank while at the same time showing significant increases in their backlinks. This fact reveals that one of three things has occurred in this latest update:


1. Google has raised the bar on PageRank, making it more difficult to attain a high level, or
2. The way they are displaying their backlinks has changed, or
3. The way they calculate the value of an incoming link has changed.

Any of these are possible and has been noted in the past as something they are willing to do. Additionally, it is possible for all to occur at the same time.
As we don't like to use clients as examples, I will use the Beanstalk site, backlink counts, and PageRank changes as the meter by which the following conclusions are drawn, however this information was attained through looking at a number of client websites and their competitors.

Google Raising The Bar To Lower Yours
In the past few PageRank updates it has become quite apparent that Google is continuously raising the bar on PageRank. In their defense, with all of the reciprocal link building, link renting, etc. going on this was a natural reaction to the growing number of high PageRank sites that attained those ranks simply by building or buying hundreds and thousands of links.

There is no doubt that this is a factor in the changes in this current update. If your site has maintained it's PageRank, and the PageRanks of your second-level pages, then you have done well in holding steady and, if your competitors have not been as diligent their positions will slip.

New Backlink Calculations
I mention this one only to bring to light that it is a possibility for your future consideration during other updates. The Beanstalk website went from 750 shown backlinks on Google to 864. It should be noted that Google does not show all backlinks (if you want a more accurate backlink count go to Yahoo! and enter "link:http://www.yourdomain.com" (don't forget the http://)).

When the Beanstalk site showed 750 backlinks on Google we were showing around 12,000 on Yahoo! (about 6.5% showing on Google). The Beanstalk site is currently showing 864 on Google and 15,500 on Yahoo! (about 5.6%). If anything then, Google is showing less links than before which negates the possibility that a website's PageRank is dropping due to a decrease in links but being hidden by an increased number being displayed.

In short, while the backlinks Google chooses to display has certainly changed over time, it does not appear to be a major factor in this update. If you see an increase in your sites backlink counts during this update, you undoubtedly have an increased number of links.

The Value Of Links
Separate from the number of links you have is their value. This appears to be an area of significant change in this update. Areas that appear to have reduced value in regards to affecting PageRank are:


1. Multiple links from the same site or run-of-site links
Intelligent and relevant reciprocal links do not seem to have been penalized, probably due to the increased relevancy factor. If you reduce the value of irrelevant links and raise the value of relevant ones, then there is no need to penalize reciprocal links as, done incorrectly, they will penalize themselves.

2. Links with text around them that indicate they are purchased, such as "Partners", "Advertising", etc.
Google has and is actively trying to reduce the value of paid links. This appears to have been moderately successful where there is clear indication that the link is paid for.

3. Links from sites that hold little relevancy (this factor is based on educated speculation)
The relevancy factor appears to have become more important. Links from sites with content related to yours are showing positive results while sites with largër numbers of less relevant links are showing drops in PageRank.

What Does This Mean?
For those of you who have been proactive in your link building, and focused on relevant sites using the Google Directory, searches or a tool like PR Prowler it means, "stay the course". Those of you who have been building or buying links based only on PageRank with little concern for their location, or how they are presented - you will need to adjust your link building efforts accordingly.

What Do I Do - My PageRank Dropped?
The first thing not to do is panic. Take a deep breath, PageRank is one factor of dozens that Google uses to determine the ranking of your page, it is not the only thing. Visit your main competitors' sites - there's a good chance you'll see that they too dropped PageRank. The plus side to these kinds of updates is that they're universal. It's not as if Google has it in for you specifically and so when they do an update, the positive and negative impact is felt by all.

If you've noticed that everyone around you has stayed the same or increased in PageRank try to remember this, there's nothing you can do about where you're currently positioned in regards to PageRank and it will probably be another 3 months before Google updates the public PageRank again so ... start building some good quality (high relevancy, solid PageRank) links. Work towards an increase in the next update.

Panicking won't help, intelligent reaction will.

What Happens Now?
Traditionally the search engine results will begin to fluctuate based on the new visible PageRank 3 to 7 days after they are visible. This does not have to be the case as Google's had these numbers all along but its worked this way in the majority of cases in recent history. So monitor your search engine positions over the next week or two and watch for changes. Try to hold back on making major changes to your site during this time as often the final positions will differ from those that can be viewed during the shuffling. In a couple weeks time evaluate where you stand and tweak your site as necessary but don't spend too much time on that ... you have a solid link building effort to undertake.

The 3 Principles of Image Optimization

Source: By George Peirson

Are you losing visitors to your web site due to slow page load times? Is your site being penalized because the images on your site are too large? Are you able to capture your visitor's attention in the first 10-15 seconds that they are on your site?

All of these problems can be caused by an improperly optimized web page. In other words, the page loads too slowly and your visitor leaves before you have had a chance to hook them.

Optimizing a page for quick load times can be broken down into 3 broad categories: the basic coding of the page, scripts that are used on the page, and images. Of these three, images that are too large can have the most significant impact on load times and therefore have the greatest potential for improved page loading times if properly optimized.

A Brief Primer On Image Types

There are many image formats in common use on web sites, the three most popular being GIF, JPEG, and to a lesser extent Flash content. We will be limiting our discussion to GIF and JPEG images, with a specific focus on still images.

Each of these image formats has their strengths and weaknesses. GIF or Graphics Interchange Format was developed by CompuServe before the Internet boom as a way to share images on the CompuServe service. Due to limitations with screen resolutions and color depths at the time, GIF images were limited to showing up to 256 colors, more colors were imitated by Dithering, a process of fooling the eye into seeing one color by using 2 or more sets of color dots spaced too closely for the eye to distinguish separately.

Imagine a chessboard with black and white squares. When viewed closely we can distinctly see the individual squares, but if we back off far enough we will no longer be able to discern the individual squares and instead we will see one large grey square, the black and white squares merging together in our eyes to form one solid color. This is the concept behind dithering.

The JPEG file format on the other hand is a newer format that can handle millions of colors easily. The initial drawback to JPEG images is that they do contain many more colors, and each color requires some coding for display, making the file size larger.

Speeding Up Image Load Times

The main idea behind making an image load faster is to make the file size smaller. This can be accomplished in two ways, you can either make the dimensions of the image smaller, or decrease the amount of coding that is required to display the image.

The easiest way to reduce an image's file size is to reduce the image's physical dimensions. In other words, the smaller the image, the smaller the file size. Imagine an image that is a square 80 pixels by 80 pixels. The number of pixels contained in the image is 80x80 or 6400 individual pixels. If we reduce the image size by one half to 40 pixels by 40 pixels we then have 40x40 or 1600 pixels. So reducing the image size in half reduces the file size to one fourth of the original.

This is our First Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Use the smallest image dimensions that will work with your layout. And likewise the fewer images on the page, the fewer image pixels, therefore the smaller the page size.

Since GIF and JPEG image formats use different methods of saving image information, they tend to be better at showing some types of images and worse at showing others.

GIF images, since they are limited to 256 colors per image, are better at displaying images with large solid blocks of color and images with very small physical dimensions. The GIF format will produce smaller file sizes than JPEG for these types of images.

JPEG images are better at showing gradients or subtle changes from one color to another. Therefore JPEGs reproduce photographs very well, or any other image with gradations. The JPEG format will produce smaller file sizes for these types of images than the GIF format will.

This is our Second Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Choose the correct image format for the image you are using. Most web pages will contain a combination of GIF and JPEG images.

Decreasing the coding is called image compression. Both GIF and JPEG images can be compressed but the process is different. In GIF images we try to limit the number of colors, in a JPEG image we use software algorithms to remove redundant information from the file.

Whenever we compress a file we will losë some image quality. We have to reach a balance between a small file size and acceptable image quality.

This is our Third Principle of Image File Size Reduction: Find the least acceptable level of image quality. Most images can handle some compression with very little quality loss, and all images can stand more image quality loss and still be acceptable. Your job is to decide how much quality loss you can accept. In other words, the lower the quality, the smaller the file size.

GIF images can usually be reduced from 256 colors to 128 colors or less, the fewer colors used the smaller the file size. JPEG images can almost always be reduced to a quality setting of 80% and frequently can be reduced down to as little as 15-30%. So when you use a higher compression level (smaller number) the file size will be reduced. Experiment with the image, try smaller and smaller settings until you find the smallest setting that still displays an acceptable quality.

The fastest loading page will have no images and the slowest loading page will be completely filled with full resolution images. If you work towards controlling your images using the principles outlined above you will have a very lean web page that will load quickly and be viewed favorably by the search engines.

Google Sitemaps Explained

Source: By Titus Hoskins

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and it's often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps won't improve your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps - mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags. To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

[url]
[loc]http://www.yoursite.com/[/loc]
[priority>1.0[/priority]
[lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00[/lastmod]
[changefreq>daily[/changefreq]
[/url]

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code, and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file! File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important? You have certain pages on your site that are more important than others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly updating your site in Google's massive index or database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.

There is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a generator (Google XML Generator) which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps, but it's encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google Account, gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url



Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a PHP Generator that you can place on your server. This generator will spider your site, and produce a XML sitemap file. Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them at: Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site, you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably the wisest route to take.

The Factors that Play a Role in a Web Site's Ranking

Source: By Courtney Heard

Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for search engine optimization work and wondered what goes into the pricing? What makes one site need more work than another? Why do some sites increase rankings faster than others? Why do some sites get more traffic from their top page ranking than yours?
There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react differently to different marketing treatments.

What are these different factors that go into your web site's ranking? Below is a list of the most important aspects:

1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization - Your web site can have many different attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well or not so well. Your site's PageRank for example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, it's going to take a lot longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic you're after. A web site that has been around for a while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis, will be able to reach top positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.

2. The Keywords You Are Targeting - Some keywords are less competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, you'll see at the top of the results how many web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword phrase "web design" has approximately 303 million web pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in quotations, "courtney heard", you will see that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results.

It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the keywords "courtney heard" than it is for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately how many searches are performed for a given keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and the longer the optimization will take.

3. The Size of Your Target Market - If your site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional market. It also depends on what sort of market you're targeting. If your site sells a product that only a small group of people will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized easier than if the product or service appealed to the global population. For instance, the keyword phrase "real estate" will require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than "real estate canada" and even "real estate vancouver".

4. Competitor Sites SEO Campaigns - You might find that once your optimization campaign is under way, your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many things, but the one we'll look at is your competitors' sites SEO campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and final point...

5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign - Your own link development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign isn't approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and adjust your efforts accordingly.

As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your top page placement will come.