Achieving financial freedom with Network Marketing on The Internet - Part 2 - Search Engines explained
By Tasos Vasilopoulos
Posted Sunday, August 22, 2004
Introduction
This article makes part of a series of 20 articles. The subject of this series is the creation and promotion of a website as a cost-effective method to establish a profitable home based business on the Internet. In my previous article, “Achieving financial freedom with Network Marketing on The Internet – Part 1 – The method”, I have presented to you the main tasks you have to accomplish in order to become a successful Network Marketer on the Internet. This article will give you the knowledge to understand what you have to do for your website to rank high in the listings of the major Search Engines.
Search Engines – The source of your customers and co-workers
Search Engines (SE) are tools people use to find information on the Internet. In fact they are huge databases stored in many computers, which are spread through the globe. These databases contain tables of billions of web pages with their URL and their theme. The “theme” of a web page is the main idea of the web page, the concept this web page offers content about. Search Engines use programs, called “spiders”, which crawl the web, jumping from one web page to another, using the links these web pages have to each other. This way they build their databases with all the web pages, their spiders have went through. But, before storing these pages, they process them. They extract the theme of each web page by examining its content. They also calculate the relevance of the page regarding its theme and its importance also. This way, if someone uses a search engine to find information about “home based businesses”, for example, the most important and relevant web pages will come up first in the listing that the Search Engines will present to the user. As you may have already understood, if you make your web pages to appear in the first positions for a good theme, then you have accomplished your first target. You have your well-targeted visitors to work with.
So, here we have many new issues to work with:
- How Search Engines determine the theme of a web page?
- How Search Engines determine the relevance of a web page regarding its theme?
- How Search Engines calculate the importance of a web page?
- What is a good theme?
- What is link popularity?
I will start from the question: What is a “good” theme?
Our business is a business conducted at home. So, our target must be to attract people in search of “work at home opportunities”, or “home business opportunities”, or “home based business opportunities”. Or people who want to “make money online”, or want to “earn money online”. The major themes are five: “work at home”, ”home business”, ”home based business”, ”make money” and “earn money”. Best of all them is “work at home”. Very targeted is also “home based business”.
So, one would say: “O.K. teach me how to become first in the listings of the Search Engines for the theme “work at home” and I will accomplish my first task with the best results”.
Well, I will disappoint you, at least for now. Let’s see an example:
Go to Google and enter the keyword “work at home” in the search box. Press enter. You will see the listing of the relevant web pages a few seconds later. See the number of these web pages: more than 12,000,000 theoretically. Among them are web pages about “work” and web pages about “home”. But the web pages fighting for a good position for the theme “work at home” are still millions! You may say: ”How can I make it to appear in a good position for this keyword?” And you will be right. You are not ready to make it to appear in the first thirty or forty positions for this keyword now and you won’t be in grade to do it in a year’s time from now, either. Even, if you work hard for 2-3 or more hours everyday. But, remember, this is not a get rich quick business opportunity. You will need time to make it to the top. If you have patience and persistence, you will make it. Do you know how many people search for this keyword every month? About 250,000. The first web page in the listing of Google receives more than 200,000 visitors monthly. Just from Google, one Search Engine. In fact the first website for the time being receives more than 1,000,000 hits monthly. They are not new visitors all of them. A good percentage is recurring visitors, but this is not bad at all. That website sells products and services and statistics say that a customer sees 7 times an advertising message before taking the decision to buy that product or service. As you may understand the prize is very big and many other webmasters won’t let you easily gain a good position in the first pages of Search Engines for that keyword. But, as always, Tasos says: “Have patience, have persistence, stay focused”. The home page of one of my websites, (www.free-work-at-home-job.com) is listed among the first 30 web pages for the keyword “work at home”. As you can understand I know the way. Also, take a look at Google’s results for the keyword “home based business”. You will find my other website, (www.netincome.gr) among the first 20 results.
How Search Engines determine the theme of a web page?
Now, let’s see how Search Engines decide which is the theme of a web page. To understand the analysis below you must have already studied Appendix A and the first part of Appendix B of my ebook at (http://www.netincome.gr/nm-ebook/ebook.htm). You will find a very simple introduction to the basics of HTML language there. Or you can perform a small search on the Internet regarding “simple introductions of the HTML language”. We will talk about the elements of web pages (also called HTML pages). Search Engines analyze the “title” metatag, the “description” metatag, the “keywords” metatag, the “alt” tag of images, the “word proximity” and the “keyword density” of each web page in order to extract the theme of this web page. So, if you want the theme of your web page to be “home based business”, you have to use this keyword much in your web page. But, have always in mind that web pages are made for humans, not for the spiders of Search Engines. Humans are going to read your pages and act upon what they read. So, putting your keyword many times in your page without any logical sense will have as result the loss of the visitor. Also, Search Engines tend to examine if the keyword is a part of a phrase or stands alone. In the second case they do not take it in consideration. So, just putting your keyword many times in your web page may hurt your scope. Instead, you have to give content to the people. Use your keyword everywhere in your page, but make it appear normally.
How Search Engines determine the relevance of a web page regarding its theme?
Search Engines examine three factors in order to determine the relevance of a web page regarding its theme:
· The way this keyword is used in the specific web page
Your “title” metatag must contain the keyword twice, one time in the beginning and one time in the middle of it. And must not exceed the 15 words. The “description” metatag must contain the keyword twice. And must not exceed the 25 words. The “keywords” metatag must not contain the same word and keyword more than 6 times. It can be 1000 characters long. If you have pictures in your page, the “alt” tag of every picture must be the keyword. The text of the web page must start with the keyword. Must have the keyword as its main title. Your subtitles must contain the keyword. You must highlight your Titles, so Search Engines will understand that these words are important and take them in special consideration. Never underline a phrase that it is not a link. You will confuse people, giving them the impression that this phrase is a link. Your first paragraph must contain the keyword in every sentence if possible. Most of the links in the web page must contain the keyword. Also Search Engines examine the linking text of the outgoing links of your web page and the relevance of the web pages these links are pointing to, regarding the theme of your web page. All these factors count towards the calculation of the relevance of your web page. Use the tool in the website indicated here to get your web page analyzed for a certain keyword: (http://www.keyworddensity.com/)
· The relevance of the web pages that link to this specific web page, regarding its theme
If you have a page with “home based business” as its theme and this web page get links from 200 other web pages with the same or similar theme to “home based business”, then it is considered by the Search Engines as a web page that really has to do with “home based business”.
· The “linking text” used in the links from other web pages pointing to the specific web page
If the 200 pages mentioned above use the phrase “Home Based Business” as their linking text to the specific web page, then be sure that your web page will be considered as an important web page about “home based business” and will appear among the first in the relative listings of the Search Engines.
Follow my instruction and be sure that Search Engines will understand which keyword is your theme and will also decide that the relevance of your web page regarding this keyword is high.
Now, it’s time to see how Search Engines calculate the importance of a web page.
Every Search Engine uses its own algorithm to calculate the importance of a web page. This algorithm takes in consideration two factors to calculate how important a web page is:
- How many links point to the specific web page?
- How important are the web pages that link to the specific web page?
So, if you have a page linked by 200 other web pages and these web pages are important and relevant to the theme of the specific web page and their links have the right “linking text” also, then your web page will be considered as an important web page about “home based business” and will appear among the first in the relative listings of the Search Engines.
This way we arrived to one of the most important issues regarding the placement of your web pages in the listings of the Search Engines: The link popularity.
Link popularity of a web page is the sum of all the links that point to that web page.
The factors, presented above, define the strength and the quality of your “link popularity”.
Many links from important web pages, who have themes relevant to the theme of the specific web page and with the right linking text will give you strong and focused link popularity.
This, carefully built, link popularity will give your web page the importance needed to appear in the first positions of the listing of the major Search Engines for the keyword requested.
And here we set the frame of the first of the two activities you must execute every day, if you want to stay in this business for the long run and be successful:
· YOU MUST BUILD A STRONG AND QUALITATIVE LINK POPULARITY
· YOU MUST KEEP BUILDING IT FOR AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN THIS BUSINESS.
Creating and maintaining a strong popularity will allow your web pages to appear high in the listings for the desired keyword AND STAY THERE.
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Next article in the series “Achieving financial freedom with Network Marketing on The Internet”:
Part 3 - Choose the theme of your website – Choose the domain name of your website.
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About the author:
Tasos Vasilopoulos is a successful Network Marketer on the Internet as Group Leader of SFI Marketing Group. His main method to promote his home business on the Internet is websites properly optimized to obtain a good rank in the listings of the major Search Engines. Get his ebook with an in depth analysis of all the steps of his method and find more resources on proper domain registration, effective website design and search engines optimization in his website at (http://www.netincome.gr).
