Creating Keyword Rich Pages

Author: Sumantra Roy
Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.
This article is focused on how you should create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge of the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc.
Now, let us assume that your company sells packaged tours to Australia, and that you are targeting the keyword "travel to australia". Here's how you create the KRPs:
The Title Tag:
The first and most important tag to consider is the Title tag. You should always begin the Title tag with the keyword that you are targeting. Also remember that the search engines are going to display the Title tag while they are displaying the results of a search. Hence, you need to make the Title tag attractive to humans as well.
Here is one Title tag that I may have used: "Travel to Australia and discover its scenic beauty". Have a look at the Title tag - it uses the keyword right at the beginning and also tells people how beautiful a place Australia is.
Of course, all Titles need not be like the one I used. The Title that you use depends on the subject matter of your site. However, you should follow all the general rules that I have outlined here.
Meta Description Tag:
The Meta Description tag is used by many search engines to provide a short description of the page that is listed in the search results. Hence, like the Title tag, it is important that the Meta Description tag be keyword rich as well as attractive to humans.
The rules for the Meta Description are more or less the same as those for the Title tag. However, the content of this tag will generally be longer than that of the Title. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Description tag:
"Travel to Australia - We take care of all the details of your trip so that you can travel with complete peace of mind."
Note how this description repeats the keyword and also the benefit that it stresses - it says that the customer will be able to travel without having to worry about the intricate details of the trip - you will take care of them.
Meta Keywords Tag:
The Meta Keywords tag has become less and less important as far as search engine optimization is concerned. In fact, you can get top rankings without having anything in the Meta Keywords tag at all. However, just to be on the safe side, you would want to include some keywords in the Meta Keywords tag. You should also include some of the common upper/lower case variations of the keyword. The rules for the Meta Keywords tag are pretty simple - don't repeat any keyword in the Meta Keywords tag more than three times and don't repeat any keyword one after the other. Here's what I may have used in the Meta Keywords tag:
"Travel to Australia, tourism, travel to Australia, Down Under, TRAVEL TO AUSTRALIA"
Note how I have introduced "tourism" and "Down Under" just to separate the different instances of the keyword.
Body of the page:
Now we come to the actual body of the page. Begin by getting hold of a nice (but not too large) picture which is applicable for the page that you are creating. In the present case, I might include a picture of the lotus shaped Sydney Opera House. Place this picture at the top of the page. In the Alt tag for the picture, just mention your target keyword once, i.e. the Alt tag would be "Travel to Australia". You can include other words in the Alt tag, but it should start with the keyword you are targeting.
Once you've put up the picture, it is time to create a Heading for your page. Use the H1 tag to do so. Again, in the H1 tag, mention your target keyword once, i.e. like the Alt tag for the picture, the H1 tag could be "Travel to Australia". Again, like the Alt tag, you can include other words in the heading, but the heading should start with the keyword you are targeting.
Now it's time to create the actual text of the page. The way you create the text of your page would depend largely on what you want the visitor to do after reading this page. In some cases, you may simply want the visitor to go to the home page or another specific page in your site after reading this page. In this case, you should write the text in such a way that the visitor is attracted to the page that you are targeting. You would also want to provide links to the home page or the specific page that you are targeting at strategic places in the KRP. Or, you may want the visitor to click on the link to an affiliate program that you are a member of. In this case, you would stress the benefits that the visitor gets by purchasing the product or service that the affiliate program is selling. You would also want to provide links to the affiliate program at strategic places in the page and/or at the end of the page. Whatever it is that you want your page to do, there are some general rules to follow:
1) The first thing to remember is that some search engines don't recognize the Meta Description tag. These search engines will often simply take the first few lines of text in the body of your page and display that as the description. Hence, you must ensure that the first few lines of text in your page are attractive to human beings.
2) Ensure that as many sentences as possible in the page contain your target keyword once. The keyword shouldn't just be placed on an ad hoc basis - the way the keyword is placed in every sentence should actually make grammatical sense and the repetition should be such that your human visitors do not feel that you have deliberately repeated a particular phrase throughout the page. This is not only important from the point of view of ensuring that your readers don't get a bad impression of your site, but also from the point of view of search engine optimization - the search engines may penalize your page for spamming if they find that you have randomly repeated the keyword throughout the page. Also, while repeating the keyword in the page, try to repeat the keyword once near the top of the page and once near the bottom.
3) Make sure that your paragraphs are not too long - each paragraph should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences long. This is because people on the web simply don't have the time or the inclination to read long paragraphs.
4) Try to ensure that the page contains links to other pages with the keyword being present in the text under the link. This can often lead to a higher ranking for your page.
5) If possible, link to other pages which have the keyword in the file names. This can again lead to a higher ranking for your page.
6) There is no hard and fast rule regarding the total number of words that should be present in the KRPs. As a rule of thumb, try to ensure that there are between 500-600 words. However, if the number of words falls a bit short of or exceeds this limit, don't worry too much.
Once you have created the page, ensure that the name of the file in which it is saved contains the keyword and that the individual words of the keyword are separated by hyphens. In this case, the name of the file would be travel-to-australia.html. This will get you a higher ranking in the few search engines which give a lot of emphasis on the keyword being present in the file name.
Now that you have created the KRP, you cannot simply upload it to your site and submit it to the search engines. This is because the search engines take a rather dim view of pages which only contain outgoing links to other pages but do not contain any incoming links from other pages. The search engines may penalize sites which have such pages.
What you should do is to provide a link to these KRPs from the home page of your site. Now, you don't want people who are seeing the home page to actually follow these links to the KRPs - you only want the search engines to follow these links. However, you can't create links with hidden text (i.e. text with the same color as the background color) in your page since the search engines will almost certainly penalize or even ban you for doing this.
What you should do is to create a small transparent gif image. Then, name this image with the same file name as the name of the KRP you have created. Hence, in this case, you should name the image travel-to-australia.gif. Then, add this image to the end of the home page and have it link to the KRP. Also, you should explicitly set the border of the image to 0 (add border = "0" to the img tag of the image). Otherwise, when you get the image to link to the KRP, a border may be visible. In case you don't want to create your own image.
That's it! When you want to target another keyword, create another KRP for it, make a copy of the image that you created for the first keyword, rename it to the file name of the new KRP, add the image to the home page and then link it to the new KRP. Repeat this process for every keyword that you are targeting. Once you have created all the KRPs and once you have got the home page to link to each of them, upload all the KRPs and the gif images to your site, and submit your home page and each of the KRPs to the search engines. When you are submitting these pages, to be on the safe side, make sure that you submit no more than 1 page per day to any search engine - otherwise, you run the risk of some search engines ignoring some of the pages you have submitted.
Follow all the rules that I have outlined in this article and you can soon see your search engine blues disappear for ever!

Create your Traffic Virus

1. Interview Experts
I always get this excuse when telling people to create their own information products, "I'm not an expert and don't have anything to write."
Here's your solution. Find an expert. Interview them. Write down what they say.
Sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? Well, it is easy. People just don't get off their butts and do it. Find three or more experts on the subject you want to do your traffic virus on and interview them. Send them a personalized email asking if you can interview them on the phone while you record it.
Send them over a copy of the questions you will be asking them so they have time to prepare and make themselves comfortable. Go down to your local Radio Shack store and tell the associate there you need something to record a phone call with. They will set you right up and it will only cost you around $20 for a cheap phone record system you plug into your tape player.
Do the half-hour or hour long interview and then use the tape to create an ebook out of. You can either transcribe it yourself if you are very short on funds and want to do a lot of editing. Or you can also look on one of the search engines under "transcription" and find a secretarial service to do it for you.
Do three or more of these interviews and you have your first traffic virus.
2. Create a Tips eBook
This is one of the easiest formats to write and is the one I recommend for anyone wanting to write their own first ebook.
Anytime you look at the top 100 books you are sure to find at least several which are tips books. For example, "1001 Ways to Be Romantic" is a top selling book. So guess what? Gregory Godek came out with a follow-up book: "1001 More Ways to Be Romantic."
Just take a notebook with you during research and throughout your day and write up 77 ways to, 784 easy designs, 176 golf tips to lower your score, and 283 ways to make more money online.
This notebook will become your writing fuel. Every time you visit a web site and see a new tip idea, add it to your list. If you think of an idea while in the shower, put it down. If your friend mentions an idea, write it down.
You can ask for people to send you ideas from the mailing lists, forums, and newsgroups you have been participating in. Under each tip you may make a paragraph of simple notes.
It is quick and easy to create...and is built in the exact model that Internet users love. Remember what everyone loves most is to be able to have more free time. With a tips booklet format, you are able to give them a large amount of information without taking up much of their time. It is the perfect Internet product.
3. Do a Resource Guide
Most people don't want to spend their lifetimes searching the net to find information. They want all of the best resources given to them in one easy format.
The hot selling "Net Detective" is an example of this type of product. It gives you thousands of web site links for finding relatives and doing background research on other people you deal with. It is one of the hottest selling products online and all is basically is a resource of links for private investigating.
I have seen Internet Marketing Resource Guides, Wholesale Resource Guides, Import/Export Resource Guides, Fitness Resource Guides, Network Marketing Resource Guides, Free Advertising Resource Guides, Magazine Resource Guides, Publicity Resource Guides, etc.
I know the experience of trying to find information I need for whatever (maybe even a simple Java code to create a popup box on a web site) and it takes hours or even days to find this type of thing. For me as a webmaster, I would be more than willing to pay for a resource guide of all of these types of tools.I am sure you have had the same experience at sometime or another. You know exactly what you want, but no matter what search engine you use you just can't find the simple resources you want. It takes days! So, a resource guide with all of the top resources given specifically may have quite a value in your market.

traffic virus

Author: Terry Dean
What's a Traffic Virus?
Unlike a computer virus that will destroy your software and damage your business, a traffic virus isn't harmful at all...except to your competition.
In reality, it also isn't a virus at all.
A traffic virus is just termed a virus because it has a few of the same features to it.
A computer virus gets passed from computer to computer automatically without any effort from the creator. If there is a virus on your computer, anyone else can get it on their computer if you share a file, disk, or email attachment with them.
Most of the recent viruses spreading around the net have also been programmed to automatically email themselves to any of your friends (email contacts) and to everyone you send email. They automatically spread themselves and you may not even know about it!
A traffic virus has this same feature built into it. It will spread itself around the Net automatically from person to person without you even being involved.
Unlike a computer virus, it isn't damaging to the recipients. It helps them instead! This is the key aspect to a traffic virus, it helps the users and this causes them to send it to their friends.
For example, one type of "traffic virus" is a web site postcard system. Many web sites have installed a free postcard system so their users can send postcards to friends and family. They pick a picture, choose an audio presentation, write a short note, and then email it to their friends.
The key to the viral system (another term for a traffic virus) is their friends and family must come to your web site to pick up their card. Your web site gets automatic traffic without you having to actively be involved in it.
Then, hopefully they will send postcards to their friends and family. This never-ending cycle will continually bring new visitors to your web site who you market your products and services to. It becomes an automatic traffic generator.
Here are few examples of possible viral marketing strategies:
1. Postcards - Visitors send postcards to family and friends. Their recipients visit your site and send postcards to people they know. The cycle continues for automated traffic.
2. eBooks - You give away a highly informative ebook free and then other webmasters take your ebook and post it to their sites. People all over the web get your information and links because those sites are advertising for you.
3. Refer a Friend - The goal of this is to provide valuable information they will pass on to others!
4. Software - Look at programs such as ICQ. It gives you the ability to chat online with your friends. The key is your friends must also have this free software to chat with you. So you automatically try to get them to download the software to.
5. Free Email - Ever wonder why so many companies are offering free email addresses? It's because they want their own traffic virus. Every email someone sends from a free email address includes a little link at the bottom taking the recipients to your web site.
6. Free Web Sites - This is a traffic virus as well. The web hosts offering these free sites place ads on your free web site. When you advertise, you are also advertising for them. More people sign up for free sites and the process continues.
7. Two-Tier Affiliate Programs - When you offer a two-tier affiliate program, then your members advertise for more affiliates to promote you. Not only do you have affiliates you sign up advertise your site, but they refer others to advertise you as well.People are always asking why they need to start their own viral marketing strategy...It's simple. A traffic virus means you may never lose money advertising again!

seo

Author: amazon.com
One of the most cost-effective ways to drive traffic to your Web site is to optimize it for search engines. Many of them use automated programs called "crawlers" or "spiders" to create an index of the Web, which they use to determine what sites are most relevant to users' queries. These programs essentially visit Web sites, read the pages' content, and follow any links to other pages, repeating the process on the sites where they end up. By also retrieving information on link destinations and frequency, among other things, the search engines are able to better "understand" Web sites than if they only took site text into account. Therefore, the key to better placement in search results is making sure it is easy for crawlers to gather useful information about your site. Search engines particularly take into account the location and frequency of keywords on your pages in determining your site's relevance. Here are some specific things you can do to optimize your Web site:
• Get yourself a good domain name. Not surprisingly, URLs containing clear keywords generally perform better than those that appear random or are excessively long. And in addition to getting you higher placement in search results, having its own domain name gives your site added credibility. You'll want to make sure the name you choose logically pertains to the subject matter of your site, isn't too long to remember, and isn't easily misspelled. Use keywords that a crawler will understand, and try to avoid numerals or abbreviations.
• Choose keyword-rich titles for your pages. The [TITLE]; element that appears in your page headers is often used by search engines as the text for their link to your Web site. (As an example, the title of http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/?node=11091801 is "Amazon.com: Musical Instruments.") When you just use "Home Page," your company name, or something similarly uninformative, you are missing an opportunity to drive traffic to your site, since search engines weight [TITLE] elements heavily when determining the relevance of a page to a user's search. Therefore, try to make your titles easy to understand and rich in the keywords that your customers will be searching for.
• Add META elements to your site. Make use of description and keyword properties in your headers' META elements. META name="description" content="[a brief description of your site]" is often used by search engines to determine what your site is about. META name="keywords" content="[a list of relevant keywords]" is used less frequently by search engines, but can also help boost your site's relevance in their eyes. In writing a description and choosing keywords, think about how customers will be looking for information on your site, and choose specific terms that will attract traffic. You may want to use research tools like Wordtracker to help you in this. Avoid using the same set of keywords on every page of your site, however--they should be tailored to each page's specific content.
• Content matters. You will also benefit from providing rich content on your site. It is important that you include at least a few paragraphs of copy that is visible to crawlers and full of keywords, which will enable search engines to better classify your pages. Use the keywords you included in your elements, and don't be afraid to use them many times within your copy. But, of course, what you write should make sense and be easy to digest, as readability is vital. You should also display text on your site as text, not as images, which crawlers cannot read. Use tags for pictures you do use, so that crawlers can get some information out of them, and incorporate HTML navigation wherever it is possible, even if this means adding redundant navigation at the bottom of your pages.
• Leverage links. Web sites that are linked to from lots of other sites are often deemed more popular and get a higher ranking in search results. However, more important than the number of links is the quality of those links. Contact owners of other Web sites that score highly for key phrases related to your content, and ask them if they will provide a link back to your site. Make sure, too, that the content on your own site is properly linked together. Crawlers will often start with your home page and then follow links from there to other areas of your site. Therefore, if you fail to provide working links to all your pages, some of your content may end up unindexed.
• Register your site. Once you've built and optimized your Web site, it's best to manually register your site with major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, the Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org, LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves, or have a partner like Submitnet to do it for you. Registration doesn't take long, but do be careful to follow the instructions provided by each engine, as they are all a little different. Careless mistakes could keep your site from being indexed properly, or at all.
• Avoid pitfalls. Your goal is to increase your search-engine rankings, not to decrease them, but there are some things you can do that will accomplish just that. For example, some search engines don't index dynamic content on framed pages. If this applies to your site, therefore, think about ways to modify it so that it can be more easily indexed, or create alternate, crawler-friendly versions of your pages. Also, keep in mind that many search engines are familiar with common spamming techniques, like hidden text and irrelevant metadata, and will take appropriate action when pages using them are detected in their indexes.
• Be patient. Above all, remember to be patient! There's no magic bullet for getting the top spot in search engine indexes. If you've spent a lot of time optimizing your Web site and you still aren't seeing results, it may not make sense spending more time tweaking it so it will surface higher. There are other ways for you to drive traffic to your site on which your time would be better spent.

common mistakes in search engine submission

Author: Sumantra Roy

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords
The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag
I often see sites which have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.

3) Repeating the same keyword too many times
Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags. Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion. Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furth
ermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.

4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages
Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines. While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other. The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines.

5) Using Hidden Text
Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text. Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.
However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background. Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black. Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.

6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines. For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.

7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames
Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them". For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.

8) Using Page Cloaking
Page cloaking is a technique used to deliver different web pages under different circumstances. People generally use page cloaking for two reasons: i) in order to hide the source code of their search engine optimized pages from their competitors and ii) in order to prevent human visitors from having to see a page which looks good to the search engines but does not necessarily look good to humans. The problem with this is that when a site uses cloaking, it prevents the search engines from being able to spider the same page that their users are going to see. And if the search engines can't do this, they can no longer be confident of providing relevant results to their users. Thus, if a search engine discovers that a site has used cloaking, it will probably ban the site forever from their index. Hence, my advice is that you should not even think about using cloaking in your site.

9) Using Automatic Submission Tools
In order to save time, many people use an automatic submission software or service to submit their sites to the major search engines. It is true that submitting your site manually to the search engines takes a lot of time and that an automatic submission tool can help you save a lot of time. However, the search engines don't like automatic submission tools and may ignore your pages if you use them. In my opinion, the major search engines are simply too important for you not to spend the time to submit your site manually to them. In order to speed up the process of submitting your site.

10) Submitting too many pages per day
People often make the mistake of submitting too many pages per day to the search engines. This often results in the search engines simply ignoring many of the pages which have been submitted from that site. Ideally, you should submit no more than 1 page per day to the search engines. While many search engines accept more than 1 page per day from a particular domain, there are some which only accept 1 page per day. Hence, by limiting yourself to a maximum of one page per day, you ensure that you stay within the limits of all the search engines.

11) Devoting too much time to search engine positioning
Yes - I lied. There's another common mistake that people make when it comes to search engine optimization - they spend too much time over it. Sure, search engine placement is the most cost effective way of driving traffic to your site and you do need to spend some time every day learning how the search engines work and in optimizing your site for the search engines. However, you must remember that search engine optimization is a means to an end for you - it's not the end in itself. The end is to increase the sales of your products and services. Hence, apart from trying to improve your site's position in the search engines, you also need to spend time on all the other factors which determine the success or the failure of your web site - the quality of the products and services that you are selling, the quality of your customer service, and so on. You may have excellent rankings in the search engines, but if the quality of your products and services are poor, or if your customer service leaves a lot to be desired, those high rankings aren't going to do much good.

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Glossary of Search Engine Ranking Terms

Alt Tag : The alternative text that the browser displays when the surfer does not want to or cannot see the pictures present in a web page. Using alt tags containing keywords can improve the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.

Click Popularity: A measure of the relevance of sites obtained by noting which sites are clicked on most and how much time users spend in each site.

Cloaking : The process by which your site can display different pages under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most search engines will penalize a site if they discover that it is using cloaking.

Comment Tag : The text present within the tags in a web page. While most search engines will ignore the text within the Comment Tags, some, like Excite , will index the text present within them.

Directory : A site containing links to other sites which are organized into various categories. Examples of directories are Yahoo! , Open Directory , LookSmart , NBCi etc.

Doorway Page : A page which has been specially created in order to get a high ranking in the search engines. Also called gateway page, bridge page, entry page etc.

Dynamic Content : Information in web pages which changes automatically, based on database or user information. Search engines will index dynamic content in the same way as static content unless the URL includes a ? mark. However, if the URL does include a ? mark, many search engines will ignore the URL.

Frames : An HTML technique allowing web site designers to display two or more pages in the same browser window. Many search engines do not index framed web pages properly - they only index the text present in the NOFRAMES tag. Unless a web page which uses frames contains relevant content in the NOFRAMES tag, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in those search engines.

Heading Tags : A paragraph style that is displayed in a large, bold typeface. Having text containing keywords in the Heading Tags can improve the search engine ranking of a page for those keywords.

Hidden Text : Text that is visible to the search engines but is invisible to humans. It is mainly accomplished by using text in the same color as the background color of the page. It is primarily used for the purpose of including extra keywords in the page without distorting the aesthetics of the page. Most search engines penalize web sites which use such hidden text.

Image Map : An image containing one or more invisible regions which are linked to other pages. If the image map is defined as a separate file, the search engines may not be able to index the pages to which that image map links. The way out is to have text hyperlinks to those pages in addition to the links from the image map. However, image maps defined within the same web page will generally not prevent search engines from indexing the other pages.

JavaScript : A scripting language commonly used in web pages. Most search engines are unable to index these scripts properly.

Keyword : A word or phrase that you type in when you are searching for information in the search engines.

Keyword Frequency : Denotes how often a keyword appears in a page or in an area of a page. In general, higher the number of times a keyword appears in a page, higher its search engine ranking. However, repeating a keyword too often in a page can lead to that page being penalized for spamming.

Keyword Prominence : Denotes how close to the start of an area of a page that a keyword appears. In general, having the keyword closer to the start of an area will lead to an improvement in the search engine ranking of a page.

Keyword Weight : Denotes the number of times a keyword appears in a page as a percentage of all the other words in the page. In general, higher the weight of a particular keyword in a page, higher will be the search engine ranking of the page for that keyword. However, repeating a keyword too often in order to increase its weight can cause the page to be penalized by the search engines.

Link Popularity : The number of sites which link to a particular site. Many search engines use link popularity as a factor in determining the search engine ranking of a web site.

Meta Description Tag : The tag present in the header of a web page which is used to provide a short description of the contents of the page. Some search engines will display the text present in the Meta Description Tag when the page appears in the results of a search. Including keywords in the Meta Description Tag can improve the search engine ranking of a page for those keywords. However, some search engines ignore the Meta Description Tag.

Meta Keywords Tag : The tag present in the header of a web page which is used to provide alternative words for the words used in the body of the page. The Meta Keywords Tag is becoming less and less important in influencing the search engine ranking of a page. Some search engines ignore the Meta Keywords tag.

Meta Refresh Tag : The tag present in the header of a web page which is used to display a different page after a few seconds. If a page displays another page too soon, most search engines will either ignore the current page and index the second page or penalize the current page for spamming.

Robot : In the context of search engine ranking, it implies the same thing as Spider . In a different context, it is also used to indicate a software which visits web sites and collects email addresses to be used for sending unsolicited bulk email.

Robots.txt : A text file present in the root directory of a site which is used to control which pages are indexed by a robot. Only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will follow the instructions contained in this file.

Search Engine : A software that searches for information and returns sites which provide that information. Examples of search engines are AltaVista, Google, Excite, Northern Light etc.

Search Engine Placement : The practice of trying to ensure that a web site obtains a high rank in the search engines. Also called search engine positioning, search engine optimization etc.

Spamming : Using any search engine ranking technique which causes a degradation in the quality of the results produced by the search engines. Examples of spamming include excessive repetition of a keyword in a page, optimizing a page for a keyword which is unrelated to the contents of the site, using invisible text, etc. Most search engines will penalize a page which uses spamming. Also called spamdexing. In a different context, spamming is also used to mean the practice of sending unsolicited bulk email.

Spider : A software that visits web sites and indexes the pages present in those sites. Search engines use spiders to build up their databases. Examples: The spider for AltaVista is called Scooter, the spider for Excite is called ArchitextSpider, the spider for Northern Light is called Gulliver.

Stop Word : A word that often appears in pages, yet has no significance by itself. Most search engines ignore stop words while searching. Example of stop words are: and, the, of etc.

Title Tag : The contents of the Title tag is generally displayed by the browser at the top of the browser window. The search engines use the Title tag to provide a link to the sites which match the query made by the user. Having keywords in the Title tag of a page can significantly increase the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.