Orisys Infotech

Changes made to a web page to improve the positioning of that page with one or more search engines is called optimization. It is a means of helping potential customers or visitors to find a web site.

It will take 15 days to optimize a site but after optimization it will take at least 4 weeks from the date of submission for the search engines to review the site.

What is pay per click and how does it differ from the search engine optimization for ranking?

Pay per Click is a type of search marketing where advertisers pay a set amount every time their ad is clicked by a prospect (otherwise known as a click thru).Some search engines, such as Overture, specialize in this type of advertising medium, although pay per click is not limited solely to pay-per-click engines. For instance, Looksmart, a directory, recently changed its business model to pay per click. Also, XML trusted feeds through Inktomi and Fast are sold at a per-click basis. Where as SEO ranking depends upon various other factors like keywords, meta tags, link popularity etc.

Search engine optimization is the practice of guiding the development or redevelopment of a website so that it will naturally attract visitors by winning top ranking on the major search engines for selected search terms and phrases.

I have two websites that mirror each other in content but utilize different keywords and meta tags. Will this help my chances for ranking or hurt them?

In no uncertain terms, building two websites that mirror each other in content will hurt your Internet marketing efforts. Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Inktomi, and Yahoo! all explicitly state that you should not submit sites with mirrored content. Violating their rules is likely to get one or both of your sites permanently banned by the search engines.

Do search engines index ALT text descriptions for JPEG and other image files?

Yes, most search engines, including Google, look at your ALT tags when indexing your Web page. For many sites, particularly image-heavy sites, ALT text is one of the few elements available for the search engines to index. If your page has no text at all on it, it can still get a high search engine placement by using ALT text.

Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page, after the title tag. They take a variety of forms and serve a variety of purposes, but in the context of search engine optimization when people refer to meta tags, they are usually referring to the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag.

Though meta keywords tags are not a major factor search engines consider when ranking sites, they should not be left off the page. Both the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking. A meta keywords tag is supposed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page. The meta keywords tag takes the following form.

Though meta description tags are not a major factor search engines consider when ranking sites, they should not be left off the page. Both the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking. A meta description tag is supposed to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. Think of the Yahoo! or LookSmart directory. You see your site title followed by a brief description of your site or business. The meta description tag is designed to provide a brief description of your site which can be used by search engines or directories.

A spider is a piece of software that follows links throughout the Internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine databases. Spiders follow links from one page to another and from one site to another. That is the primary reason why links to your site are so critical. Getting links to your website from other websites will give the search engine spiders more opportunities to find and re-index your site.

Is it possible to be placed first in a search engine without paying them directly?

Of course it is. If you have patience, your site can be listed on every major search engine and directory at no charge. Search engines send out bots (or spiders) which traverse the Web following hyperlinks from one page to the next, gathering information and adding it to the search engines' databases. If your site is listed on any Web page that is already indexed, then it will eventually be "spidered" and added to Google, AltaVista, MSN, Teoma, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb, and others. Once Google indexes your site, your site will appear in the search results of all the portals and search engines with which Google has a syndication relationship E.g. AOL, Netscape, Go.com, Alexa, iWon, Earthlink, and Compuserve.[Note: As of 02/18/2004, Yahoo! no longer uses Google as its default search engine.]

In a general sense, link popularity is determined by the number and quality of websites that have linked to your website (often referred to as "backlinks"). The effects of link popularity are threefold: (1) links to your site give Web users ways to find your site while visiting other sites; (3) links to your site give search engine spiders (robots) trails to follow to find and index or re-index your site; (3) links to your site are essentially votes for your site in search engine ranking algorithms, but not all votes are counted equally.When two sites are equally well optimized for search engine performance on any given keyword phrase, the search engine will generally rank the one with more link popularity above the other. Google came clean and said in public that the number and quality of links to your site will directly impact its rankings in the search results.AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Teoma, and Google all factor in the number and quality of links to your site when giving your site its ranking.