Optimisation report help

HTML size

Page size matters because search engines limit size of a cached page. For example, Google will only cache a full page if the size of its HTML is less than 101 Kb (images and external scripts are not included). Yahoo! caches text of up to 500 Kb per page. This means if your HTML page is too large, search engines will not cache the full page, and only the top part of the text will be searchable.

Last modified

This attribute shows how old the document is. It is taken from the server response to HTTP request. You can see if your page has been updated lately.

Same color text and background

If the color of the text on a page is close to the background color, the text becomes almost invisible. As a rule, this technique is employed to populate a page with keywords without damaging its design. Since it is considered as spam by most search engines, we suggest that you do not try it.

Tiny text

If a page uses Cascading Style Sheets and there are fonts smaller than 4 pixels, they are reported as tiny texts. Most search engines consider tiny texts as an abusive practice - this is why you should avoid using them.

Immediate keyword repeats

The same keyword repeated one after the other a few times, for example air tickets on-line, air tickets, air tickets, air tickets, air tickets in Hong Kong is a questionable trick. For this example, there will be three repetitions reported, because the keyword was placed three times in a row after it was used first. Such repetitions are considered as spam by most search engines.

Controls

If the page has HTML tags (HTML only, not other scripts) that create controls, it will be mentioned in the report. Try to avoid too many controls on your page, especially in the top area, since it may decrease your keyword prominence and result in low rankings.

 

Frames

Frames use is reported here. Not all search engines support frames, i.e. can follow from a frameset page to content frames and index texts. If your Web site consists of frames, and you cannot redesign it, you can solve this problem by putting the content of an optimised page with links to other pages into a <NOFRAMES> HTML tag.

 

External and Internal JavaScript

If there is a Script tag with a link to a JavaScript external file on the page, it will be mentioned under 'External JavaScript'.

Embedded (internal) JavaScript representing the full content of the SCRIPT tag will be reported here as internal JavaScript use. Do not use too many embedded scripts on the page, because your keyword prominence will be reduced, and thus your page will be ranked lower on search engines. We advise putting the script in an external file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as possible.

 

External and Internal VBScript

If an external VB Script file is referenced from the page, it will be mentioned under 'External VBScript'.

Detected internal VBScript within the SCRIPT tag will be reported as Internal VBScript use. Please note that excessive use of scripts in the top area of the page dilute keyword prominence and therefore affect your rankings. Put the script in an external file or move it as close to the closing Body tag as possible.

File robots.txt allows spidering

Robots.txt is a text file placed in the root directory of a web site to tell robots on how to spider the website. Only robots that comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will read and obey the commands in this file. Robots.txt is often used to prevent robots from visiting some pages and subdirectories not intended for public use. However, if you want search engine robots to spider your site, there should not be disallowing commands included within this file for all or particular search engine robots.

<HEAD> area

Each HTML document should have a HEAD tag at the beginning of each document. The information contained inside the head tag (<HEAD>...</HEAD>) describes the document, but it doesn't show up on the page returned to the browser. The Title tag and meta tags are found inside the Head tag.

<TITLE> tag

Syntax: <title>Web Page Title</title>

An HTML tag within the Head tag is used to define the title of a Web page. The content of the Title tag is displayed by browsers on the Title bar located at the top of the browser window. Search engines use the Title tag to provide a link to the site matching the user's query. The text in the Title tag is one of the most important factors influencing search engine ranking algorithms. By populating your most important keywords in the Title tag, you dramatically increase the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.

Stop Words

To save space and speed up searching, some search engines exclude common words from their index, therefore these words are ignored when searches are carried out.

'The', 'or', 'in', 'it' are examples of such words. These words are known as "stop words." To make your pages search engine-friendly, you should avoid using stop words in the most important areas of your page like title, meta tags, headings, alternative image attributes, anchor names, etc.

Besides, stop words have no contextual meaning - using them in short areas such as a title, headings, and anchor texts will reduce weight, prominence and the frequency of keywords.

Keyword frequency

Frequency is the number of times your keyword is used in the analysed area of the page.

Example: If the page's first heading is 'Get the best XYZ services provided by XYZ Company', frequency of keyword 'XYZ' in the heading will be two. Frequency relates only to the exact matches of a keyword. Therefore, frequency of key phrase 'XYZ services' will be one, because as exact match, this keyword is used only once.

Search engines use frequency as a measure of keyword importance.

Search engines rate pages with more keywords as more relevant results, and score them higher. However, you should not use too many keywords, since most search engines will penalise you for this practice for being seen as an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.

Keyword weight (density)

Keyword weight is a measure of how often a keyword is found in a specific area of the Web page like a title, heading, anchor name, visible text, etc. Unlike keyword frequency, which is just a count, keyword weight is a ratio.

Keyword weight will depend on the type of keyword, that is if the keyword is a single word or phrase. If the keyword includes two or more words, for example, 'XYZ services', every word in the key phrase (i.e. both 'XYZ' and 'services') contributes to the weight ratio in the weight formula, and not as one keyword ('XYZ services').

Keyword weight is calculated as the number of words in the key phrase multiplied by frequency and divided by the total number of words (including the keyword).

Example: The title of a Web page is 'Get Best XYZ Services'. Keyword weight for 'XYZ services' is 2*1/4*100%=50%. If you reduce the number of words in the title by removing the word 'get', so the title becomes 'Best XYZ Services', than the keyword weight will be larger: 2*1/3*100%=67%. Finally, if you only keep 'XYZ Services' in the title, the keyword weight will become 100% -- 2*1/2*100%.

So, to increase the keyword weight, you should either add some more keywords or reduce the number of words in the page area. The proportion of the keywords to all words will become larger, so will the keyword weight.

Many search engines calculate keyword weight when they rank pages for a particular keyword. Normally, high keyword weight tell search engines that the keyword is extremely important in the text; however, a weight that is too high can make search engines suspect you of spamming and they will penalise your Web site's rankings.

Keyword Prominence

Prominence is another measure of keyword importance that relates to the proximity of a keyword to the beginning of the analysed page area. Being the keyword that is used at the beginning of the Title, Heading, or on top of the visible text of the page is considered more important than other words. Prominence is a ratio that is calculated separately for each important page area such as a title, headings, visible text, anchor tags, etc.

HTML pages are written in a document-like fashion. The most important items of a document's visible text are placed at the top, and their importance is gradually reduced towards the bottom. This idea can be also applied to keyword prominence. Normally, the closer a keyword to the top of a page and to the beginning of a sentence, the higher its prominence is. However, search engines also check if the keyword is present in the middle and at the bottom of the page, so you should place some keywords there too.

The prominence formula takes the following factors into account:

1) Keyword positions in the area,

2) Number of words in the keyword, and

3) Total number of words in the area.

100% prominence is given to a keyword or keyphrase that appears at the beginning of the analysed page area.

Example 1: Let's take the page title 'Daily horoscopes on your desktop' and analyse prominence of keyphrase 'daily horoscopes'. The title word order will be: 'Keyword1, keyword2, word3, word4, word5'. Prominence will be 100% here as the keyphrase is present at the beginning of the sentence.

The keyword/keyphrase in the middle of the analysed area will have 50% prominence.

Example 2: The anchor name is 'Find here the daily horoscope for your sign'. The keyword prominence of the phrase 'daily horoscope' in this case will be 50% as the keyphrase is located in the middle of the sentence -- 'Word1, word2, word3, keyword4, keyword5, word6, word7, word8'.

As a keyword appears farther back in the area, its prominence will be counted from zero and it will depend on how close to the end it is. If the keyword appears at the end of the area, its prominence will be close to 0%. If the keyword appears at the beginning of the area and then is repeated in the middle or at the end, its prominence will be 100% because prominence of the fist used keyword prevails over the repeated keywords.

META Description

Syntax: < META name="Description" content="Web page description">

This is a Meta tag that provides a brief description of a Web page. It is important the description clearly descibes the purpose of the page. The importance of the Description tag as an element of the ranking algorithm has decreased significantly over years, but there are still search engines that support this tag. They log descriptions of the indexed pages and often display them with the Title in their results.

The length of a displayed description varies per search engine. Therefore you should place the most important keywords at the beginning of the first sentence -- this will guarantee that both users and search engines will see the most important information about your site.

META Keywords

Syntax: < META name="Keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">

This is Meta tag that lists the words or phrases about the contents of the Web page. This tag provides some additional text for crawler-based search engines. However because of frequent attempts to abuse their system, most search engines ignore this tag. Please note that none of the major crawler-based search engines except Inktomi provide support for the Keywords Meta tag.

Similar to the description tag, there is a limit in the number of captured characters in Keywords meta tag. Ensure you've chosen keywords that are relevant to the content of your site. Avoid repetitions as search engines can penalise your rankings. Move the most important keywords to the beginning to increase their prominence.

META Refresh

Syntax: < META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://newURL.com/">

This HTML META tag also belongs in the Head tag of your HTML page.

The META Refresh tag is often used as a way to redirect the viewer to another Web page or refresh the content of the viewed page after a specified number of seconds. The META Refresh tag is also sometimes used as a doorway page optimised for a certain search engine, which is accessed first by users, who then are redirected to the main Web site. Some search engines discourage the use of this META tag, because it is an opportunity for webmasters to spam search engines with similar pages that all lead to the same page. In addition, this also clutters the search engines databases with irrelevant and multiple versions of the same data. Try to avoid doorways and redirects altogether in your Web building.

META Robots

Syntax: < META name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW">

The robots instructions are normally placed in a robots.txt file that is uploaded to the root directory of a domain. However, if a webmaster does not have access to /robots.txt, then instructions can be placed in the Robots META tag. This tag tells the search engine robots whether a page should be indexed and included in the search engine database and its links followed.

The content of the robots meta tag is a comma separated list that may contain the following commands:

ALL also INDEX,FOLLOW -- there are no restrictions on indexing the page or following links; NONE also NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW -- robots must ignore the page; a combination of INDEX, FOLLOW, NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW -- if you want a search engine robot just to index a page but not to follow links, you should specify 'INDEX,NOFOLLOW', if you want it to follow links without indexing the page, you should instruct robots as 'NOINDEX,FOLLOW'.

The purpose of the check is to ensure there are no commands that might prevent search engine robots from indexing a page and following links. For that reason, 'ALL' or 'INDEX, FOLLOW' are commands expected in this tag.

<BODY> area

The body tag indentifies the beginning of the main section of your Web page, the main content area. The whole of the Web page is designed between the opening and closing body tag. (<BODY>...</BODY>) including all images, links, text, headings, paragraphs, and forms.

The recommendations on how to use keywords in the BODY tag are the same as in other important areas. Your primary keywords should be placed at the top of your body tag (first paragraph) and as close to the beginning of a sentence as possible. Do not forget to use them again in each paragraph. Keywords should not be repeated one after another. For search engines that check keyword presence at the bottom of the body tag, you should use your most important keywords within the last paragraph from the closing body tag.

 

Visible text

The content of the Body tag includes both visible and invisible text. The term 'Visible text' refers to the portion that is displayed by the browser. The visible text analysed is all within the Body tag but exclude HTML Comments (invisible) and ALT Tags (partially visible).

Extra emphasis by search engines is put on keywords when you underline them or make them bold, thus helping higher rankings for these keywords.

First heading on the page (H1-H6)

Syntax: <H1>Keyword in the Heading</H1>, < H3>Keyword in the Heading</H3>, etc.

It is important the keyword is present in the very first heading tag on the page regardless of its type. If the keyword is also used as a first word, you will raise its prominence.

All headings

There are standard rules for the structure of HTML pages. They are written in a document-like fashion. In a document, you start with the title, then a major heading that usually describes the main purpose of the section. Subheadings highlight the key points of each subsection. Many search engines rank the words found in headings higher than the words found in the text of the document. Some search engines incorporate keywords by looking at all the heading tags on a page.

Links

Syntax: <A href="#xxx">keyword</A>

Anchor tags on the page can also have keyword-rich text as anchor names. This text can be important to some search engines and therefore also for the rankings of the destination pages. Create anchored links with keywords in them to link pages of your Web site.

Text in links including ALTs

Syntax: <a href="mypage.htm"><img border="0" src="image.gif" Alt="keyword" width="100" height="200"></a>)

Images like buttons, banners, etc. may include Alt attributes as a text comment describing the graphic image. If this image has been used as a hyperlink, the Alt attribute is interpreted as a link text by some search engines, and the destination page will have a significant boost in rankings for the keyword in the Alt attribute. Use graphic links with keyword-rich Alts to link pages of your Web site.

 

ALT image attributes

Syntax: <img src="image.gif" Alt="keyword" height=100 widths=200>

Optimisation of Alt image attributes gives you another opportunity to use keywords. It is advantageous if the page is designed with large graphics and very little text. Include the target keyword in at least the first three Alt attributes.

Comments

Syntax: <!-- Comment: keyword -->

This tag lets webmasters write notes about the page code, which is only for their guidance and is invisible to the browser. Most search engines do not read the content of this tag, so Comments optimisation will not be as helpful as Title optimisation. The Comment tags should be populated with keywords only if the design of the Web page does not allow more efficient and search engine-friendly methods.

Keyword in URL

Having keyword in your domain name and / or folder names and file names increases your chances to gain top positions for these keywords. If you aren't a brand-oriented business, it is recommended that you purchase the domain name that contains your keyword. If your keyphrase consists of more than one keyword, the best way to separate them in the URL is with a hyphen "-":

www.my-keyphrase-here.com

If it seems impossible to get such a domain name, or your site is already well established over a keyword-poor domain, attempt to compensate it by using keywords in folder and file names of your site's file system on the server.

Link popularity

This is the number of links from other Web site pages to your page that search engines are aware of.

Each search engine only lists links embedded on the sites that are preindexed by that particular search engine. So, the presence of certain links in Google's index will not guarantee that Inktomi has also indexed the same sites. Therefore the number of links shown will be different from engine to engine.

In general, the more links that point to your page, the better your page will rank.

However, a large number of links is not the deciding factor that helps your site get to the top of the results pages -- the quality of those links is of greater importance. If a link to your site is placed on a page having very little importance that is this page itself is linked to only a few other pages or none, this kind of link will not improve a page's popularity. The links to your pages should be subject-relevant because theme-based search engines will check the parity of content between referring and referred pages. The closer they are, the more relevant your site page is to the searcher's query for your keyword. Avoid reciprocal linking with sites that have a low weight, or a questionable reputation or are different from yours in subject matter. As a part of their anti-spam measures, search engines can penalise your site's rankings for ignoring these pitfalls.

Theme

For spam-free and relevant results, search engines start evaluating sites as one page to find the main theme covering all pages of the site. Most major search engines have become theme-based.

Search engines extract and analyse words on all pages of a Web site to discover its theme. The more keywords found on your Web site that relate to the user's query, the more points you get for the theme. Therefore, if your Web business includes many products or services, try to find the theme that covers them all.

To analyse the theme of your site, the program follows links on the analysed page and sees if there are keywords in the Body, titles, and descriptions of the linked pages.

Open Directory Project listing (dmoz.org)

The ODP (also known as DMOZ) is the largest human-edited directory on the Web. Many major search engines use the ODP data to provide their directory results. This works because sites put forward for inclusion in the ODP are reviewed by real people who care about the quality of their directory.

It is still a good for a Web site to be present in the ODP. For new sites, it is an excellent starting point, because Google regularly spiders the ODP to update its own directory based on the ODP listings, and if your site is included, you'll get a link that Google believes important enough to start off crawling your site.

As well as the weight of a link from the ODP, it would be even better if the site were listed in the most topic-specific category to make the link not only important, but also content-relevant.

Yahoo! Directory listing

This is similar to the ODP -- Google relationship. The Yahoo! directory is regularly crawled by the Yahoo! robots. A new site has a greater chance of being included faster in the Yahoo! search engine if there is a link to this site from the Yahoo! directory. If you get your site is listed within the Yahoo! category closest to your site theme, this particular link will help your site move up.

Total number of words (Density report)

This number tells you how many words there are in all page areas (e.g. TITLE, Meta Description and Meta Keywords) chosen for analysis. The more words, the better, however you should look through the density report and decide if the keywords and key phrases you'd like to rank high for have enough density, i.e. they are repeated enough times throughout this text. The bigger this total word count, the more times your key term combination has to be repeated across these page areas.

User agent

A user agent is the client application used with a particular network protocol; Web user agents range from web browsers to search engine crawlers ("spiders").When Internet users visit a web site, a text string is generally sent to identify the user agent to the server. This forms part of the HTTP request, prefixed with User-agent: or User-Agent: and typically includes information such as the application name, version, host operating system, and language.

Search Engine Bot

Search engine bot is a type of web crawlers which collects web documents to generate and maintain index for the search engines.