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A Keywords Co-Occurrence (C-Index) Primer

Keyword co-occurrence - it bewilders and energizes the minds of SEOs everywhere. By far, the best information on co-occurrence as it pertains to SEO comes from Dr. Garcia of Mi Islita.com:

• Part 1: On Co-Occurrence and Semantics
• Part 2: Mathematical Background
• Part 3: Co-Occurrence Analysis and C-Indices
• Part 4: Sequencing Analysis and EF Ratios
• Part 5: Basic Co-Occurrence Strategies
• Part 6: Query Expansion and Relevancy
• Part 7: Term Weights and Keyword Density Values
• Part 8: Selectivity: The Effect of Hyphens in Queries

Yahoo! Site Explorer Live

Yes. It’s live.

Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Better Search Engine Ranking - 93 Factors

Rand from SEOmoz has done it again with his list of 93 search engine ranking factors that altogether can make or break your SEO campaign.

On-Page Factors (Ranked by Importance):

• Title Tag
• Keyword Use in Document Text
• Related Term Use in Document Text
• External Links in Document
• Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages
• Uniqueness of Document Text
• Age of Document
• High Level Authorship Marks
• Document Language
• Stemming & Plurality Evaluation
• Paragraph Headings
• Citation Links or Sources
• Depth of Document in Site
• Rate of Updates to Document
• Variety & % of Content Changes
• Organization of Document Text
• Internal Links in Document
• Meta Keywords Tag
• Keyword Use in URL
• Meta Description Tag
• Use of H1, Bold & Other Visual Tags
• Grammar Use in Document Text
• Spelling Accuracy in Document Text
• Stopword Frequency
• Reading Level of Document Text
• Quality of Document Text
• Text in Alt/Img Title Tags
• Document Length
• Use of In-Document Links & Anchors
• Document Type
• W3C Validation

Site Factors (Ranked by Importance):

• Global Link Popularity of Domain
• Link Popularity of Domain in Topical Community
• Primary Subject Matter of Domain
• Anchor Text of Incoming Links to Domain
• Topical Relevance of Incoming Links to Domain
• Age of Domain
• Domain Language
• Rate of Document Additions/Change
• Rate of New Incoming Links to Domain
• Rate of Expiring/ Removed Links to Domain
• Historical Rankings of Domain in SERPs
• Historical User-Action Metrics Related to Domain
• Keyword Use in Domain Name
• Hyphens in Domain Name
• Top Level Domain (.com .org .net)
• Internal Link Structure
• Membership in Sitemaps/Paid Inclusion Programs
• Semantic Connections of Hosted Documents
• # of Hosted Documents
• Size of Hosted Documents
• Shifts in Rate of Change to Hosted Documents
• Existence of Sitemap Page on Domain
• Use of re-direction directives

Link Factors (Ranked by Importance):

• Anchor Text of Link
• Global Popularity of Domain
• Popularity of Domain in Topical Community
• External Links to Linking Page
• Location of Linking Page in Domain Structure
• Text on Linking Page
• Text Directly Surrounding the Link
• Semantic Relationship of Linking Page
• Age of Link
• Affiliations of Linking Domain with Target Domain
• Existence of Rel=Nofollow tag
• Implicit Trust of Domain
• Shared IP Address or C-Block Address
• Link Relationships Between Domains
• Additional External/Internal Links on Page
• Existence of Link on Other Pages of Domain
• Related Term Use in Linking Page
• Rate of All External Links to Domain/Document
• Anchor Text of All Links to Domain/Document
• Top Level Domain (.com .org .net)
• Rate of Content Changes to Linking Page
• Updates/Changes to Link
• Link Title
• Visual Tags Affecting Link Text
• Location of Link on Page

Technical and Hosting Factors (Ranked by Importance):

• Accessibility of Document
• Use of Web Page Frames
• Dynamic Parameters in URL
• Session ID Variables
• Hosting Uptime
• Use of Noarchive/NoIndex in Robots.txt
• Domain Registration Information
• Domain Registration Length
• Geographic Hosting Location
• URL Length
• IP-Based Content Delivery
• Domain Registration Date
• Robots.txt Presence

Harmful Ranking Factors (Ranked by Importance):

• Cloaking
• Duplicate Content
• Canonical Issues
• Link Spamming
• Keyword Spamming
• Invalid Code
• Linking to "Bad Neighborhoods"
• Unethical Practices
• Illegal Content
• Un-"safe" Content
• URL Hijacking
• Broken Links

There’s a ton more information such as explanations for each item, but you’ll just have to check out the SEOmoz for that. As with any list of this sort, there are quite a few items that are up to debate. Compare your own empirical research with this list and decide for yourself.

Throwing Out Keyword Density Analyzers and Tools

For those of you who laugh at the effectiveness of keyword density and its use in SEO, Rand breaks it down for you in a follow-up to his excellent keyword density is a myth post:

[I]f you’re targeting “blue widgets”, just make sure that the most common 2-word phrase on the page is “blue widgets” and you’re there. No need to make it appear more than that.

If you’re targeting multiple terms on a page - you can either opt to have them be the same frequency, or in order of importance, i.e. “blue widgets” x 4, “red widgets” x 3, “yellow widgets” x 2.

Simple. And to those of you who harp on keyword density in this day and age of SEO, stop.

Free SEO Tips and Techniques

I like this list - Todd’s top 10 free seo tips and techniques for any website:

• Make sure all pages are consistent in their naming conventions (I.E. no dupe pages - same content different names) - This is especially true with the homepage. Please don’t have the www.yoursite.com/ and www.yoursite.com/default.htm and www.yoursite.com/home/default.htm all with the same homepage content.
• Staying with consistency - make sure the non-www version of your site 301 redirects to the www version.
• Please write good titles - if I see “homepage” or just your company name in the title bar I may have to gnaw my arm off. I will only rip my hair out if you have the same title for every page on your site.
• Use your internal anchor text - it is really one of the most powerful elements of SEO and one of the best kept secrets. I can’t GIVE you the secrets, but wise up and be creative with how you link to other pages on your site
• Don’t go hog wild with images and use some good alt text (especially if they’re linked)
• Write some content for cryin’ out loud - there is NO reason to only have 20 words on a page unless it is a page about clarity being brevity.
• Build a sitemap - use good descriptive relevant internal anchor text and link to your important pages first. Build multiple sitemaps if necessary.
• If it is at all possible rewrite your urls - forget about SEO - it just looks so much prettier.
• Make “commercial” words images - it’s good to appear to be a resource even when you’re just hawking your wares. Buy, shopping, cart, purchase, etc. - make this text an image where possible. It pays to be paranoid about which words you use. Big brother is watching, but he can’t read images well yet.
• I only had nine good ones on the top of my head - GET MORE LINKS

Nice list. I would add keyword research and a slightly more on-page focus. He’s right on with the internal linking, though.

In Search of a Better Link: Command

Ok, so we all know that the link: command is seriously lacking - you can only check one page at a time, it treats www and no-www as separate pages, and forget about trying to find links to your internal pages without busting out the server logs. So how about combining the link: command with site: to give something such as the following:

link:site:mysite.com

So, Google, how ’bout it?

While we’re waiting, try this free tool to make your link checking easier.

SEO Link Neighborhoods and Theming

Jim Boykin offers excellent advice in his most recent post on link neighborhoods:

Rankings change, and they always will. Stop chasing a moving target, and just settle down in your neighborhood and start making connections there. Buy, beg, borrow, or barter your way in, or get in with great content. He who is most connected in his neighborhood will have the most and the best rankings accross time and engines.

I second that.

Google Says: Index Size Does Matter

Now that they ore once again boasting the biggest, Google says that index size does matter. The beauty of it is that they are too cool to come out and say the number:

But can we prove it?
Yes, but even better, you can prove it yourself. The basic test for search engine comprehensiveness is whether you can find uncommon information. Popular queries return millions of results, but even the most obsessive searcher isn’t about to surf a few million pages, or even a tiny fraction of them; in most of these cases, you’ll either quickly find what you’re looking for or refine your search to be more focused.

So there you have it. Google says their index can beat up yours. Who cares. We know it’s all about relevancy.

Update: Graywolf has more:

[L]ets give Google a few quick tests to see how things work out.

search for the term [the] 9.2 billion results

ok great but there are all sorts of pages that don’t have the word [the] on it for example what about flash pages. Well that’s where it gets pretty simple we’ll just do a nice little negative search for all of the pages that don’t have the word [-the] and we end up with 1.3 billion pages which gives us about 10.5 billion pages. Not highly scientific but a good estimate, but looking at google’s recent explanation you’ll notice this sentance:

To see for yourself, try searching for something very specific

Clearly [the] and [-the] don’t meet this criteria, so lets search for something very specific like [triskadecahedron lycanthropy]. Well that certainly is specific, in fact it’s so specific there are zero results. So if none of the documents contain those terms, logically all of the documents are in the opposite set, so lets look for [-triskadecahedron -lycanthropy] and we get 9.58 billion results. Now of course when you work with multiple terms sometimes things get a little funny so lets try it with quotes [-”triskadecahedron lycanthropy”] nope still 9.58 billion results.

While it’s quite vogue to pick on google nowadays, lets look at the exact same searches on yahoo

Yahoo [the] 10.9 billion results
Yahoo [-the] 0 results
Yahoo [triskadecahedron lycanthropy] 0 results
Yahoo [-triskadecahedron -lycanthropy] 0 results
Yahoo [-”triskadecahedron lycanthropy”] 0 results

While there are problems with this kind of cursory research, it seems to be pretty solid as to what the average Joe can do to check size.

Impressions of the IE Developer Toolbar

I haven’t had a chance to test the new IE developer toolbar until now. I like it, but that’s not saying much because it’s a blatant rip-off of the Firefox developer toolbar I have grown to depend on. Do your own development, Microsoft. This is pathetic.

That said, the toolbar provides for some nice debugging in IE that was previously unavailable. However, it is missing live CSS editing, one of the more useful features in the Firefox version.

Search’s Future - What is academia up to?

An article at SEO Chat posits that since search was born in academia, its most important advancements will also take place there.

Carnegie Mellon University was the birthplace of Lycos, one of the oldest search engines on the web. Stanford University can boast of being the birthplace of two of the most widely used search engines, Google and Yahoo. So no one should be surprised that, as the challenges of search have changed over the past few years, universities are moving to stay at the forefront of research and development related to search.

The University of California at Berkeley brought this point home recently by announcing the creation of an interdisciplinary center for advanced search technologies. The university is talking with a number of search companies to interest them in the project, including Google. Robert Wilensky, the center’s director and a professor of computer science and information management at the university, speaks about the center with infectious enthusiasm. “If you have 20 researchers interested in search, then getting them together where they are cross-fertilizing ideas, you make something bigger than its parts. You can create a nuclear reaction,” he said in an interview with CNet. Professor Wilensky hopes to open the interdisciplinary center early next year.

Privacy, asking questions of search engines, the indexing of an increasingly non-textual internet, and more are concerns for the next-generation of search engines.