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Do you have a question about the Search Engines in general; or maybe something about your particular website? Chances are that many small business owners have the same question and just do not know who to ask for a simple answer.

E-Mail us at questions@emlwebsolutions.com and we will answer all your questions in this forum. If we do not know the answer, we will research the question and try to provide a proper solution. There are no obligations or tricks . . . we just want to help.

"I saw your site and I think being able to ask a question is a great idea. What is the most effective things I can do to
my site without getting too technical or too involved and rank higher in the search engines?
Mark, Kansas City, MO

Thanks for the question Mark, I am glad you like our new service. If I could pick the two most effective things to do to
a site to improve its rankings in the engines I would make sure that I had effective "Title Tags" and effective "Anchor Tags" from my inbound links. The Title tag is contained in the <head> section of tour web page. It is the text that appears in the top of the Internet Explorer window when you open a webpage. You can locate it by the text between the <title>.....</title> tags. Make sure that this tag is at the top of the <head> section of the page and that it contains your most important keywords. Do not try to place too many words in there at once, and be aware that most engines will only display about 80 characters in the title tag. Go to each page and adjust the title tag for the keywords specific for that page.
Next make sure that the anchor text from your inbound links reflects your selected keywords. The anchor text is the highlighted portion that people "click on" to get to your site from another web site. Instead of having the link just say "Click Here" try to include your important keywords. An example would be "Click Here for Discount Digital Cameras". Try to put your keywords in the beginning of the link. The link that shows anchor text is <a href=http://your site.com>your anchor text here</a>. Write to the people that have links to your site and request that they change the anchor text to your site. Most web site owners realize the importance of this and will comply with your request.
Those two changes should improve your search engine rankings for your selected keywords, be sure to be patient and allow the changes time to take effect. Some sites are only indexed about once a month. Go to your web logs and check the last time the search spiders have visited and go from there....Good luck Mark.

What is Google PageRank? I know that it is related to links on my site, but what is it and how does it work?
Trisha, Houston, Texas

Great question Trisha, The answer lies in the top secret safe in the Google basement somewhere in the Silicon Valley. Seriously, if you ask 10 different SEO marketers you will get 10 different "interpretations" of how the program works. I will give you my take on the subject and some basic rules for effective link development and that should get you started in the right direction.

As far as PageRank is concerned here is a direct quote from a Google representative, "PageRank Technology performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of millions of variables and more than 2 billion terms. Google does not count links; instead PageRank uses the link structure of the web as an organizational tool. In essence, Google interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a "vote" by Page A for Page B. Google assesses a page's importance by the votes it receives. Google also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' Important, high quality pages receive a higher PageRank and are ordered higher in the results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. Google does not use editors or its own employees to judge a page's importance."

With that being said, Google uses PageRank as a link popularity gauge that is a proprietary measure of a pages importance. So, the next question would be, How can I manage my link program to take full advantage of the PageRank system of measurement.

Lets start with the inbound links to your site. Google prefers "high quality" links from sites that not only are associated in subject matter, but also of high PageRank themselves. One solid inbound link from a quality site with a high PageRank is worth fifty links from non subject matter related sites from all your friends. A excellent source of quality inbound links are the major directories, Yahoo Directory, and DMOZ are two excellent examples. Another source of respected sites are any with the top level domain of .edu, or .gov. These sites tend to carry a little more weight as far as respectability is concerned because they normally have no commercial agenda and are concerned with accurate reliable information. PageRank is developed on a page by page basis. Try not to have all your inbound links to just the homepage, spread them out so the link is tied to the page that best describes the reason for the link. That being said, Google respects internal site links. A high PageRank homepage will transfer most of its ranking to the internal pages in the site structure. Be sure that the inbound link has a relevant, keyword rich, anchor text instead of just the sites URL.

The outbound links from your site should be kept to a minimum. Links leaving your site can deplete your PageRank strength. If you have a site that has a "link page" that contains many different sites to help your customer, consider a "robots.txt" tag, for no index. This will render the page harmless as far as loosing PageRank, but will also not be indexed by the search engines. The links that do go out should be to non-spam sites that stay with the general theme of your sites subject matter.

I hope this helped, Good Luck Trisha.

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