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The Axandra newsletter archive
11 June 2002
WEEKLY SEARCH ENGINE FACTS
http://www.Axandra.com
Issue #7 - June 11, 2002
Copyright 2002 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH
Hello!
1. Facts of the week: Keywords in IMG ALT texts for Inktomi
One month ago, we finished the biggest search engine ranking study ever conducted: We analyzed 103,260 top 10 Web pages to find out why they are well ranked in the search engines.
We examined six search engines. To analyze the Inktomi database of Web pages, we decided that the search engine iWon would be a good representative for Inktomi results.
As you might know, Inktomi provides (part of) the search results for About.com, AOL, .com, HotBot, ICQ, iWon, Looksmart, MSN Search and Overture.
We discovered something very interesting on the Web pages that iWon/Inktomi returned for our search queries. An unusual high percentage of #1 Web sites on iWon had keywords in their <IMG ALT> attributes.
27,13% of the #1 Web pages on iWon/Inktomi result pages have the queried search term in their <IMG ALT> attributes. This is more than the Web pages have on the positions 2 to 10, and significant more than on other search engines.
So it's fairly safe to assume that in order to get a high ranking on Inktomi powered search engines, it helps to put your keywords in the <IMG ALT> attributes of your Web page.
Source: Search Engine Ranking Studies Q2/2002
http://www.axandra.com/search-engine-studies/index.htm
If you want to know whether putting keywords in <IMG ALT> attributes also helps for Google and AltaVista rankings, read our search engine ranking studies for those search engines:
http://www.axandra.com/search-engine-study-store.htm
2. 19 common mistakes that prevent your Web site from getting top rankings on search engines - Part 6 of 19
Is your Web site not getting listed in search engines? Is your Web site listed but it's not getting top rankings? In our series we tell you the 19 common mistakes for low or no ranking and what you can do about it.
Reason #6: Text in the background color of the web
"Color can kill your ranking!" Some Web designers, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their Web pages as keyword-rich as possible. They try to spam search engines by repeating keywords in the same color as the background color to make the text invisible to browsers and search engine spiders.
However, almost all search engines already know that trick. They will penalize or even blacklist your Web page if they determine that your page is trying to unfairly misrepresent its actual content. This tactic is commonly referred to as "spamming the search engines" or "spamdexing".
Unfortunately, the problem is that the search engines may end up penalizing Web sites which did not intend to use the hidden text trick. For example, suppose you have a Web page with a black background and a table in that page with a white background. Now suppose that you've added some black text in that table. This text will be visible to your human visitors, so in fact, the text isn't hidden. However, the
search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they overlook the table background color.
I recommend going through all your Web pages and make sure that you haven't inadvertently made any such mistake.
And, by the way, search engines also catch on using a slightly different color than the background color to hide words, so don't use that trick.
3. Previous articles
The importance of H1 tags on AllTheWeb
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter6.htm
Search term density on AltaVista
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter5.htm
Robots.txt on 6 search engines
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter4.htm
Teoma and reciprocal links:
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter3.htm
Web site age on Google and AltaVista:
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter2.htm
4. Recommended resources
* Top ratings for the webmaster software ARELIS
ARELIS is a software program that helps the professional webmaster to get more reciprocal links. This brings targeted traffic to your Web site and you'll also get better search engine rankings because of the higher link popularity.
Last week, ARELIS received five top ratings from popular software sites:
- 5 out of 5 stars from Tucows.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from FileHungry.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from VersionTracker.com
- 4 out of 5 stars from BlueChillies.com
- 5 out of 5 stars from FileTransit.com
And that's for the current version 2.3 of ARELIS. This week, version 3.0 will be released with many improvements. For example, the interface will be even easier to use and it will support the new Windows XP design. In addition, ARELIS 3.0 will find more relevant links and it will support SMTP authentication.
Version 3.0 will be a free update for all registered version 2 users.
Download the free trial version now:
http://www.Axandra.com/download.htm
* Check your popularity today!
Without marketing, just by word-of-mouth, the freeware program " Link Popularity Check " is downloaded more than 500 times per week. Why? Because it offers a fast and easy way to check your link popularity on five search engines at
once:
http://www.CheckYourLinkPopularity.com
* Our 2-tier affiliate program pays you 35% + 10%
We pay you up to US$139.98 every time one of your visitors buys our products:
http://www.Axandra.com/affiliates.htm
* Marketing Web sites that we use
http://www.axandra.com/webmaster-resources/index.htm
Please recommend this issue to anyone you know who is interested in search engine facts. It's a good way to stay in touch with your clients, too.
If you're receiving this issue as a forward, and would like to get your own free subscription, visit
http://www.Axandra.com/subscribe.htm
Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com
Copyright 2002 Axandra / Voget Selbach Enterprises GmbH
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