The Axandra newsletter archive

20 August 2002

This week we tell you what a difference an "s" makes and why the New York Times should mention your site. :-)

There's a little AltaVista ranking tip that few Internet marketers know about.

Unlike most other search engines, AltaVista distinguishes between singular and plural forms of keywords. For example, AltaVista returns different results for the key phrases "used car" and "used cars" (note the plural "s").

See for yourself:

• http://www.AltaVista.com/sites/search/web?q=used+car
• http://www.AltaVista.com/sites/search/web?q=used+cars

Some people use the singular when searching for information, while others use the plural. In any case, you need to cover all your bases. When you optimize your Web page content, make sure that you use both the singular and plural forms of your keywords.

A legitimate technique that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your keyword is to append an "s" to the end of the word.

For instance, if your key phrase is "global player", then add an "s" to the end of the phrase. By doing so, your page will be found for both "global player" and "global players".

If you want to know more about the ranking algorithms on AltaVista and other popular search engines, take a look at our search engine ranking reports . We also offer a free sample report.

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 #15: Your Web site has a low link popularity.

Link popularity is becoming _the_ determining factor for a top search engine ranking.

Link popularity means the number of Web sites linking to your site. However, the quality of links is more important than the quantity of links. For instance, if the New York Times links to your site, their single link might count a lot more than 30 links from your friends' personal homepage.

By now, all top search engines use link popularity in their ranking formulas: AltaVista, Inktomi, MSN Search, HotBot. For Google, it's even the most important factor in ranking sites.

The idea behind link popularity is that other Web sites will link to your site only if you are a quality site offering quality resources. So if many Web sites link to your site, search engines come to the conclusion that your site must be very popular and deserves a high ranking.

As Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview: "...a page that is pointed to by many other sites is important. In other words, external approval raises a page's ranking."

Link popularity can do a lot for your site. Not only will the most important search engines rank you higher, but links from other sites will also drive more traffic to you.

In addition, as more sites link to you, the odds increase that search engine spider programs will encounter your site more regularly so that it's less likely that they drop your site from their index.

What's the link popularity of your site?

The freeware Windows program Link Popularity Check tells you the link popularity of your Web site is and compares it with competitor sites.

Link Popularity Check is a classic freeware application: it has no nag screens, it doesn't change the system registry, it makes no unauthorized connections to the Internet and it comes with a hands-free uninstaller.

Download Link Popularity Check (freeware).

How to improve the link popularity of your Web site:

You can search the search engines for Web sites that are related to your business, find the webmaster's contact information and then solicit a reciprocal link. Do this every day and your link popularity will climb steadily but slowly. And it's very time-consuming.

That's why we created ARELIS, which automates most of the time-consuming tasks. Read the interesting comparison of the old-fashioned way of improving link popularity versus ARELIS , the new way.

• All about LookSmart USA, LookSmart UK
  
  
• Your Inktomi questions answered
  
  
• Query recent additions to Google
  
  
• Five Google interviews
  
  
• META Description tag for AltaVista
  

* Get excited!

Last Wednesday, Arthur Joyner of SoftwareSeeker.com tested ARELIS, our software program for reciprocal links management:

"I must tell you that I am totally impressed by the quality and usefulness of your product ARELIS. I have no doubt that ARELIS is the best application for managing reciprocal links on the market today.

Believe me, that I rarely make such bold claims about any software application. I literally test thousands of applications monthly and I have become very selective and hard to impress. The product turned out to be really excellent and, therefore, I admire it from the bottom of my heart."

Do you want a software program that improves your search engine ranking and builds a powerful business network for you?

Download ARELIS now and test it for free.

Find out why professional webmasters use ARELIS to promote their Web sites and why ARELIS is now SoftwareSeeker.com's Editor's Pick.

* Marketing Web sites we recommend

If you want to publish one of the above articles on your Web site, you're allowed to do so! However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two sentences with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Internet marketing and search engine ranking software ."

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

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