Simple search optimization. Yandex and search engine optimization

While there are a few search engines worth mentioning in the SEO discussion, I'm only talking about Google because every other search engine is struggling to catch up. If you are firmly established in Google, you will most likely be able to apply the same strategies in other systems.

And although there is an entire industry of search engine optimization (SEO) services dedicated to helping entrepreneurs improve the position of their sites in search engines, there are still rare honest experts who will immediately say: guaranteed to achieve a high search ranking. impossible. Even if you are lucky enough to climb to the top of Google for a short time, your chances are slim in the long run, and it takes luck and determination to maintain your position honestly.

I've met plenty of site owners who believed they had cracked Google's code, but they all inevitably realized (or will soon realize) the hard truth: Google is too smart to be fooled for long. Only high-quality sites that meet Google standards are in the lead. In one night, anyone can go from page one to page four hundred and thirty-one. Pretending it doesn't concern you is pointless arrogance. I myself decided not to consider my position in Google unshakable and I do not advise you.

However, you should make every effort to get as much free traffic from Google as possible.

What to focus on so that Google will reward you for your efforts?

There are only two proven ways to win the "love of Google":

Create a high-quality site with relevant, easy-to-browse information that matches the keywords.

And most importantly, increase the number of links to you from other pages you visit.

The Google system says, “Pages we consider important get higher PageRanks and are more likely to rank at the top of searches. To improve the ranking of your site, a webmaster needs to increase the number of quality sites, linking to his page.

What is PageRank?

The PageRank used by Google is assigned to almost every open page on the Internet. To find out what level of importance Google has assigned to a page, you need to check its rating - an indicator from 1 to 10, available for viewing by anyone. Most sites have it set to 0 or 1. You can easily add the Google PageRank indicator to your browser's button bar and see which sites Google approves and which it almost ignores. At the same time, beauty or “gloss” does not matter: only the interests of the Google user who searches for words or phrases are important. Google wants the best of the best to get to the top. The best information is the most up-to-date, most often referred to, etc.

What is the difference between natural and paid results?

Please note that this chapter we are talking about the "organic results" of Google searches. There are sites that Google awards high rating completely free for owners. When you search Google, you will see paid results, or PPC ads, appear at the top and right of the screen. Someone paid to show all these ads (sometimes quite a large sum). Entire volumes have been written about the costly possibilities of effective application of such declarations. Personally, I don't trust the pay-per-click model and won't talk about it because it's a costly undertaking and my book is called Free Marketing.

To learn more about Google PageRank, enter the term "pagerank" into the Google search box. About the growth of your authority in in the eyes of Google will indicate a gradual increase in this indicator.

How does the Google search algorithm actually work?

To fully understand what obstacles await you on the path to success, you need to realize that Google takes the issue of site ranking very seriously. The main mission of Google is to automate the process of providing access to the best content on the Internet to all users of the system as much as possible. Once you understand that the goal Google– to provide a basic service at its best, and consider that the company's management spent countless hours and millions of dollars searching for brilliant statisticians and mathematicians, brilliant data analysts, etc., so that they create a secret algorithm that automatically monitors each site and assigns it ranking and then determining how to rank sites in natural search results.

Yes, it is really very difficult. Want more simple explanation? Here is one of the best descriptions of the Google algorithm known to me. Imagine a large wall with many switches on it. Several brilliant engineers are tasked with a top-secret mission to constantly operate circuit breakers, ensuring optimal performance search engine. It's an ongoing process that doesn't stop for a moment - because Google doesn't want to reveal its algorithm to anyone. The company's management does not want anyone else to be able to operate the mechanism. I even have a version (just a guess) that there is an element of chance in this process, because of which no one will ever be able to systematize it (even the company's engineers themselves).

The next time someone promises you a guaranteed result on Google, ask yourself if this person is able to think better than the brilliant engineers who developed the algorithm for millions of dollars. Yes, there is a chance that he will achieve some results, but on short term. The only viable long-term strategy is to play by the rules. This means creating unique, high-quality content that other sites will willingly (and voluntarily) link to. When other sites link to you, this is called a backlink - a reverse external link. If someone tells you that they can automate the process of creating high-quality backlinks, know that Google is spending millions of dollars and attracting the best minds to stop such activity. I will not tire of repeating: Google will not be fooled. It discovers and rewards the best sites, but also makes sure to find those that automate the management of its system and punish the owners.

The term "website optimization" has recently been heard by many companies that provide certain services on the global network. But this is not surprising, given the huge benefits that can be derived by properly building a strategy for advertising your products or services on the Internet. Let's first define the definitions and scope of the Internet audience, which will be discussed in this article. I would like to emphasize that we will talk specifically about site optimization, without affecting such areas of Internet advertising as contextual advertising, media advertising, banner networks, advertising on thematic portals, spam (and, you see, it also has its place, although it can hardly be called an honest method of advertising), creating doorways, etc.

Website optimization (or search engine optimization) implies a set of measures to increase the visibility of the site in the results of search engines (in other words, raising the position of the site) by recruiting key phrases in search engines.

The most visited platforms for media advertising:

Rambler - about 3 million people a week;
Yandex - about 7 million people a week;
RBC - about 1 million people a week.

Well, the last definition that is worth mentioning in this article is the promotion of the site, or its promotion.

By promotion we will understand a certain set of measures to attract targeted visitors to a website on the Internet. It can be a combination of one or another amount of contextual advertising, search engine optimization, media, banner advertising and other legitimate online advertising methods, including in part design and programming work.

On this definition, we would also like to emphasize the fact that in this article we will focus on optimizing the site exclusively for Russian-language search engines. This was done with the aim that you can’t cover everything in one article, but there are quite significant differences between the world search engines and the Runet search engines.

What search engines does Runet have? Let's name the most popular of them:

Yandex, Mail.ru (currently broadcasting Yandex search results), Rambler, Google, Meta.ua, Bigmir.net (currently broadcasting Yandex search results).

Someone can also name Webalta or Aport, but we would not talk about the first one yet, since this search engine is only at the dawn of its activity and its future is still unknown. The second one is already fading away.

By the amount of transmitted search traffic (only in Russia), search engines can be arranged as follows:

Yandex ~ 60%
Rambler ~ 20%
Google ~ 8%
Mail.ru ~ 8%
… other.

The amount of transmitted search traffic in Ukraine:

Google ~ 40%
Yandex ~ 30%
Rambler ~ 18%
Mail.ru ~ 6%
Meta.ua ~ 3%
… other.

From this information, we can conclude that when promoting a site in search engines, a user is most often interested in search engines. Yandex systems, Rambler, Google, Mail.ru, and Meta.ua to attract users from Ukraine.

I would like to immediately emphasize the fact that this dependence is not an axiom, and the amount of attracted traffic depends very much on many factors. Some of them are: the subject of the site, positions in the search engine results, the description of the site given by the search engine (the so-called snippet), the level of indexing of the site by the search engine (in other words, the number of pages of the site known to the search engine).

So, the main stages of search engine optimization of the site are:

1. Initial analysis of the field of activity, site analysis, competition analysis;
2. Selection of key queries for search engine optimization (compiling a semantic core);
3. Work with the structure and content of the project;
4. Optimization of project meta-data;
5. Work on the link popularity of the project (link exchange, registration in search engines, tops, directories, etc.).

These are, perhaps, the main stages of website promotion in search engines. However, it is necessary to talk in detail about each of them.
1. Initial analysis of the field of activity, site analysis, competition analysis.

At the first stage, an initial analysis of the company's field of activity should be carried out, carefully studying the structure of the site, its text content, while assessing the level of competition and, if possible, identifying the difficulties that will be encountered.

Perhaps, this stage should be considered along with the compilation of the semantic core of the project, but let's focus on a real example of determining the competition of a site for the sale of household appliances and several units of goods for promotion through a search engine.

Suppose there is a site www.site.ru selling household appliances with units of goods in three areas: washing machines, microwaves, juicers.

What should you pay attention to?

Website building

A good construction of the navigation structure of the site will be the division of these products into separate headings or folders on the portal, as well as the issuance of the so-called common key queries ( Appliances, buy household appliances, household appliances store) at home page portal (provided that the emphasis is on the promotion of these requests).

For example, www.site.ru - requests for household appliances without reference to models, directions;
www.site.ru/washing/ - washing machines;
www.site.ru/microwave/ - microwave ovens;
www.site.ru/juicer/ - juicers.

A further hierarchy for project promotion will be quite acceptable if, within the framework of each individual direction of the product, there is a distribution according to the characteristics of the product itself, and then - by models.

For example, for washing machines:

www.site.ru/washing/ - washing machines;
www.site.ru/washing/bosch/ - Bosch washing machines;
www.site.ru/washing/samsung/ - Samsung washing machines;
…
www.site.ru/washing/bosch/WVF2000/ - Bosch washing machine, model WVF2000;
www.site.ru/washing/samsung/S1005J/ - Samsung S1005J washing machine.

I would like to emphasize the fact that the construction of the site may be different, but we will consider the most acceptable, in our opinion, general case for large-scale promotion of the site for a large number of search queries in search engines.

Often you can find sites without text content on the main page or a narrow specialization of companies. The main thing from this example is to understand the main essence of the distribution of requests, namely, the placement of general requests that carry the comprehensive nature of the company's activities on the main page, as well as the division of different areas of the company or the online store into pages within the site with further distribution according to functional features and model names.

Such a project structure allows, on the one hand, to facilitate the work of optimizing the project, and on the other hand, to complicate this process and extend the period of website promotion. But if you think globally, are focused on a lasting result, are not afraid of the test of time and difficulties in your work, we advise you to stick to this particular strategy. Why - we will partially explain now, partially a little later (this applies to the internal link ranking of the site).

What will we gain with such a distribution and site construction:

* hit target audience to the page that clearly corresponds to the given request (by asking the query "samsung washing machine", the user will be redirected to the page www.site.ru/washing/samsung/, which fully satisfies his requirements). This indicator will also play a role in evaluating the effectiveness of the search engine optimization of the project. It is not surprising that, having got on this key request to the main page of the site, or to any other, the user simply will not be able to find the information he needs, after which he will close the page.

* Uniform, correct distribution of requests throughout the site. There is a hypothesis and a lot of debate about how many keywords to highlight per page. You will not find a clear answer, but it does not exist. Requests are different, so you need to think in terms of the thoughts of a potential user who will come upon request to the page that you have planned. Let's take our example: a site with a page www.site.ru/washing/samsung/ will look a little incorrect for such queries as "Bosch washing machine". Agree that this is not entirely true. And if there are more than one hundred key phrases, why not distribute them on one page? A correct approach to the problem is needed, and the proposed scheme completely solves it.

* The problem of the text content of the site. Looking ahead a little, let's say that the text content of a site is an important factor in its ranking by a search engine. Finding a key phrase is an important positive aspect for a good site positioning in search engine results. It is very difficult to describe all the goods or services on one page, while maintaining the conciseness and clarity of the information that you want to convey to a potential client.

Many may say: “Yes, we have 5-6 requests, why should they be divided there, because we turn everything to the main page.” Yes, maybe it's just a question of time. search promotion project, but not a question of the convenience of the user who came to the site. It’s good if these requests are single-rooted, and if the site has pages specially designated for this, why not use them?

Unfortunately, this opinion is often encountered. For this reason, many companies, limiting themselves to 10-20 keywords, display the main page of the project for the entire set. The result is a poor return on search engine optimization and wasted money. This may not be entirely correct also because, when ranking a site, the search engine takes into account the “occurrence” of key queries in the text content of the page. Agree, sometimes it is very difficult to contain 10-20 different-rooted key phrases in the text on one page.

After we have carried out a preliminary analysis of the structure of the project, it does not hurt to conduct a small analysis of the site itself.

What you should pay attention to:

* Writing robots.txt

The robots.txt file serves to prohibit certain search robots to index part or all of the site. The robots.txt file is located in the root directory of the site and allows you to select a priority site mirror for some search engines (for example, Yandex) using the Host directive.

For more information about writing a robots.txt file, see: www.citforum.ru

* Use JavaScript, Flash

Search engines can't always process JavaScript links correctly, so it's a good idea to use them as little as possible. Site elements made in Flash are not indexed by many search engines. If the project's internal links are in Flash, most search engines won't find those pages.

* Formation of a list of new pages or site maps

Every time the site appears new page, it becomes known to the search engine only when it is found by the robot search engine. If the page is located deep in the site, this may not happen very soon. Placing a sitemap often solves the problem of indexing and re-indexing a site.

* Dynamic pages

For several reasons dynamic pages poorly indexed or not indexed at all by search engines. We advise you to avoid dynamic spelling of site page addresses.
Competition analysis

It is clear that when optimizing a project, we are interested in the first 10 positions of the search engine results. Therefore, we recommend that you analyze the competition based on the performance of the first ten sites of the search engine issuance. First of all, you need to decide which search engine you are interested in. But due to the fact that the Yandex search engine generates the largest share of Runet traffic, let's focus on the main indicators of the first ten sites that you should pay attention to first of all:

Pay attention to the PR indicators of the main and internal pages of the site, the TIC of the site, and also check its presence in the authoritative directories Yaca.Yandex.ru and Dmoz.org.

For more information about TIC: help.yandex.ru

* Pay attention to the link popularity of the project and the presence of links from the main pages of the site.

This can be done using the http://www.yandex.ru/yandsearch?Link=www.site.ru&iserverurl=www.site.ru command. Google needs to ask search query like link: www.site.ru.

The search engine will give the number of links (not all) to the site and indicate the addresses of their location. When analyzing links to a site, it is important to pay attention to such indicators as: thematic links (the similarity of the subject of the referring site with yours), the presence of links from the main pages of other sites (again, pay attention to the thematic content of sites, site authority indicators, the number of such links) , as well as the nesting of the page on which the link is placed.

Usually than more quantity links, the closer they are to the subject of your site, the higher the indicators of their authority, the higher the competition in this field of activity. It can be assumed that in order to achieve the same result, subject to high level the content of the site, its construction, layout, graphics and other indicators, you will need in total approximately the same number of links to the site.

Also, for the Yandex search engine, it will be convenient to check the number of sites that link to those of interest to us, with certain content in the text of the page. This can be done with the command:

anchor#link="www.site.ru*"[key query] – links to the entire site as a whole with the content of the "key query".

anchor#link="www.site.ru"[key query] – links to the main page (you can specify the address of any other page) with the content of the "key query".

Thus, you will also have additional opportunity evaluate competition for individual queries by learning the sources of links and authority indicators of referring sites.

Unfortunately, direct queries in the Google search engine do not allow this. Look for such an opportunity on the websites of webmasters, although the picture is quite clear from the statistics of the Yandex search engine.

Track the performance of all 10 or at least the first 5 sites from the top 10 search engine results. Carry out a cumulative analysis of those indicators of the authority of the site, which you will be guided by when promoting the project. From the same indicators, taking into account their capabilities and knowledge in the field of promotion, we can draw conclusions about the approximate timing of the promotion of the portal.

After we have decided on the analysis of the site, areas of activity and competition, we proceed to the next stage - the selection of key phrases to promote the project.
2. Selection of key queries for search engine optimization (compilation of a semantic core).

When selecting key phrases, we recommend using two services, namely: Yandex user query statistics - http://wordstat.yandex.ru/, as well as Rambler query statistics https://ad.rambler.ru/swrds/wrds.pl. On the left, you will see the keyword, and on the right, the number of impressions of the request for the previous month. On average, the click-through rate (CTR), in other words, the number of clicks to the site, is 2-3%. Thus, you can also calculate the approximate traffic that you will receive for a specific request, hitting the top of the issue:

Visitors = (Impressions*3%)/30 days per month.

I would also like to note that the number of visitors who clicked on the request directly depends on the position of the site, the so-called snippet (see below), issued by Title tag site, site popularity and relevance of the issuance.

Snippet - a description of the site, displayed by the search engine when issuing. As a rule, this is a piece of text, or the contents of the Description tag, which includes the searched key phrase.

Before promoting the site, it is important to determine for yourself what goals you are pursuing in the process of promoting the project - commercial or informational. Consequently, requests must be divided into commercial and informational.

In our case, commercial general queries for the main page of the site can be attributed (we set the query household appliances in http://wordstat.yandex.ru/):

www.site.ru - main page

home appliances store
online store of household appliances
sale of household appliances
network of household appliances stores
household appliances website
company household appliances
buy household appliances
search for household appliances

Information requests also include:

Appliances
built-in appliances
household appliances market
home appliances expert
home appliances electronics
small household appliances
household appliances forum
home appliances video

www.site.ru/washing/ - washing machines (we take only commercial ones)

washing machines
choose a washing machine
washing machine to buy
washing machine automatic
washing machine choice
sale of washing machines
ultrasonic washing machines
washing machines shops
best washing machine
built-in washing machines

www.site.ru/washing/bosch/ - Bosch washing machines (we take only commercial ones)

bosch washing machine
bosch washing machines
Bosch washing machines
bosch siemens washing machines
Bosch washing machines
bosch washing machines vertical
bosch washing machine price
bosch washing machines

etc. (for simplicity and transparency, we will limit ourselves to these phrases in our example) These are not all key phrases that are worth taking into account. But in order not to confuse the example and maintain some clarity, we will limit ourselves to these most popular phrases among users.

I would like to note that there are also queries like “bosch max washing machine”, “bosch 2460 washing machine” in the statistics, but they already refer to specific models washing machines, for which, according to the structure of our site, individual pages. Therefore, these key phrases should be taken into account when optimizing the respective internal pages.

Such an analysis should be carried out on your entire range of products, asking the queries "microwaves" (don't forget about "microwaves"), " washing machines”, “juicers”, etc.

Perform a complete analysis and compile a complete list of key requests to move the project forward. Pay attention also to the right column in the selection statistics Yandex queries. This is what people who searched for household appliances were still looking for. As a rule, queries in the right column are a good clue when selecting key phrases, often pointing to synonym queries, or other queries of your subject that are of interest to the user.

When selecting key phrases, pay attention to abbreviations, misspelled queries, writing of manufacturing companies in Cyrillic and Latin (for example, Samsung and Samsung). Simply put, when choosing keywords you need to look at the problem through the prism of your client's mindset, analyzing all possible options for submitting requests when searching for a particular product.

Don't forget to look at your competitors and the keywords they use to promote you.

If you're looking for a quick return on search engine optimization, don't great effort promotion of the project on single-word queries at the initial stage. Key queries from one word are often common, and not always great popularity speaks of their huge commercial component. We also recommend giving great attention narrow requests. In our case, these could be requests “buy washing machines”, “buy samsung washing machine”.

It is not necessary to prove once again the fact that users who came to the site by the request “buy samsung washing machine” will be more desirable for you than users who came by the request “washing machines” if you are selling washing machines. Samsung machines. However, this does not mean at all that you should not take into account the request “washing machines”. We just want to emphasize that in terms of commercial return, the second request will be much more practical, although less popular.

Evaluate your efforts to promote the project correctly, because sometimes the efforts spent on promoting one strong request of the “household appliances” class can be directed to promoting 10 simpler, narrowly targeted requests (for example, “buy a washing machine”) and get a much greater return on promotion project, while spending less time and resources. As a rule, narrowly targeted requests are also quite simple to promote, which indicates another important moment of promotion, namely, the ability to achieve a fairly fast and stable result with a good commercial component.

The only problem when promoting a project on a set of narrowly focused requests is their number. Of course, it is more convenient to promote 5-10 narrowly targeted queries than 100-200 small keywords. But let's think, first of all, about what goals we are pursuing, and also about the fact that a good quality site with good targeted traffic- the task is not one or two months. It can take years to resolve.

And did you know that...

AT 1971 Ray Tomlinson of Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN), developed mail program for sending messages over a distributed network.

To March 1972 he upgraded his email program to use it on the ARPANET, the forerunner of the current Internet. It was at this time in the addresses Email the @ symbol began to be used - “at commercial” or colloquially “dog”, “dog”. And the thing is that on the teletype machine “model 33”, which was at the disposal Ray Tomlinson, this key was used for punctuation and for marking the English preposition at (on). Thus, an email address of the form <имя_пользователя>@ <имя_домена> means nothing more than “a user with such and such a name on such and such a domain”.

Search Engine Optimization

This article considers various search algorithms, their specifics, features of work. The information in this article will help you optimize your site for the major search engines: AOL, Google and AskJeeves (Part 1), Yahoo and Alta Vista (Part 2) and MSN (Part 3).

Now everyone has an idea of ​​what a search engine is. As soon as a person has a question, it becomes necessary to find the address of a restaurant or make an online purchase, he often turns to one of the search networks on the Internet.

If you've ever had to use two different search engines to search for the same query, you've probably noticed that search results aren't necessarily the same. Why do different search engines give different results for the same query? On the one hand, this is because the indexing process differs between search engines, and search results will depend on what information is found by the search spider and what information is put into the database by the web developer. On the other hand, and this is probably the most important thing, search engines use different algorithms to search for information in databases. The algorithm consists of certain rules and established sequence action, which is used by the search engine to determine the relevance of information in the database to the user's query.

Search algorithm

Search algorithm- this is a mathematical formula in which the user's query is taken as an unknown, and usually, after considering several solutions obtained using this formula, the search engine issues one. The search algorithm matches query keywords with information in the database and finds relevant results. Web crawlers analyze the content of web pages and the relevance of keywords on those pages based on a formula that may vary from search engine to search engine.

What information is included in the algorithm?

Many algorithms contain information about user requests, the pages they subsequently explore, and the time they spend on the page. With this information, the search engine can return desired results. In order for the results to be relevant to the query, it is necessary to process a huge amount of information for each individual case. Unfortunately, the algorithm is designed only for big number possible requests, which significantly reduces the efficiency of this method.

Another method involves link analysis. It is believed that links exist between related sites, and links from quality sites lead to the same quality sites. By analyzing the principles by which one web page links to another, the search engine can determine what the site is about and how relevant the page is. Likewise, some search engines take into account internal site navigation. So search robots determine how the pages of one site are interconnected, and how user-friendly navigation is. If the "spider" hits a dead end, on a page from which it is difficult to navigate to another section, such a page is "punished".

Regular databases consist of data grouped by a web developer. This approach is already a bit outdated, but most databases are created by humans, the largest of them is DMOZ.

One of the most basic elements that a search algorithm necessarily analyzes is the location of keywords on a web page and their density. The more often a keyword appears on a page, the more relevant it is considered.

Due to the increase in spam, search engines no longer consider meta tags. And those who still pay attention to this factor, mainly consider tags