Not all websites are created equal. Some websites are better optimized for search engines than others, which means they will get more traffic and usually more revenue. When a website is optimized for a search engine, it will come up higher on a list of results when a particular keyword is searched. For example, if someone searches for the word “shoes”, the websites that are better optimized for search engines will be at the top of the list, whereas the ones that are not optimized might be a few pages back. Obviously, a person searching the web for quick and relevant information won’t look that far and those sites are rarely chosen from the list. While optimizing a site involves following guidelines set by search engines and their criteria, it can be difficult to know if your site will truly have an advantage in a list of results. Luckily, there are tools to help determine whether not a website is optimized for search engines.
Before understanding how tools work to improve search engine optimization, or SEO, it is important to understand which criteria search engines use to determine which sites will go to the top of the list. Search engines use bots called crawlers or spiders to determine whether or not a page is relevant. These bots simply look at the words on the page and calculate frequency with location to determine a page’s relevancy. Sites with many, well-placed keywords will be considered most relevant. Backlinks, or links from other sites, are another way search engines look at websites. If a website has a lot of links leading to it from other sites, it is considered more relevant and will be closer to the top. While these are only a few ways a site’s relevance is determined, they are important for optimization, and there are five excellent tools to help make sure these criteria are being met.
Backlink Trackers
A tool called a backlink tracker can be added to a site to track links around the web and ensure that they are intact and leading to your site. Many backlink trackers provide a daily status report of backlinks, as well as send alerts as soon as the links have been removed or altered. This helps site publishers keep track of their backlink popularity, which is a major factor in search engine optimization.
Spider Simulator
While the human eye will see many words on a web page, spiders cannot “see” all content, and therefore won’t pick up on a lot of the major keywords. For example, if an animation on a page shows many of the sites keywords, they will not even be included in the analysis. Spider simulators allow publishers to see their pages through the eyes of the spider, which eliminates keywords embedded in flash, JavaScript, or images. That way, publishers can add keywords as necessary to increase optimization.
Backlink Builder
Organic backlinks are best because they will likely come from more reputable sites, which weigh more for search engine optimization. However, if a site is new or just starting to increase optimization, backlink builders can help increase the amount of links to a site throughout the web. To do this, backlink builders search and submit to websites with a specified theme that contain phrases like “add URL,” “submit URL,” “add article,” etc. The link will then contain the keyword specified, and backlinks will be created.
Reciprocal Link Check
This tool is perfect for sites that have already taken a step toward optimization with reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is a popular, although not highly recommended, as some search engines like Google do not consider reciprocal links backlinks at all. However, for those sites that have committed to reciprocal links, this tool ensures that the agreed links are intact and active.
Keyword Suggestion
While you might think users will simply search the word “wine” to get to your wine website, the keyword suggestion tool will look at your website and make suggestions for more popularly searched words. This tool might determine that you’ll get more hits by making the word “Bordeaux” a keyword, as it might be a more popularly searched term. If your site has keywords exactly relevant to the phrases that people are searching, it is more optimized and will appear higher in a list of search results.
These five optimization tools and others can help publishers ensure that their ranking on a list of search results is as good as it can get. While search engines use some top-secret criteria to determine the relevance of websites in a search, it is important to utilize the identified criteria to our advantage, such as backlinks and spiders. Aside from having great content, website optimization is a great way to make sure your page is seen by as many people as possible.
Related posts:
