What is allinanchor, allintext, allinurl, etc?

Many people read about Google’s advanced search operators on various SEO forums, but don’t have a clear understanding of what they are, or how they are useful. Some of these operators include site, related, allintitle, allinurl, and allintext. To read Google’s official explanation of some of these operators, you can go to the Advanced Search Operators page. Not all of these operators are listed on that page, but you can get an idea of what the non-listed ones mean simply by understanding the listed ones.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the normally underlined text that a user sees when viewing a link. An example:

SEO Scoop – SEO Scoop is the anchor text.

The Basics of Optimizing A Site

For you newbies out there, here’s a quick rundown of the basics of optimizing a site.

On-page optimization:

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MSN Search coming soon

MSN plans to launch new search improvements in July, and will roll out its own new search engine later this year. According to an article on ZDNet, Microsoft is nearly ready to go head to head with Google and Yahoo. We’ve all seen MSNBot churning through our sites over the last few months. Looks like it won’t be long before we get to see the results of all that spidering. Bill Gates is claiming they will be able to understand what a document is about in a new more sophisticated way using linguistics. Should be interesting to see how relevant searches are when the new MSN Search Engine rolls out.

Does Relevancy Matter?

There is lots of discussion in the SEO world about whether or not Google uses relevancy of topics and backlinks when determining a site’s ranking. Some claim that Google is now using Hilltop in its algorithm. You can read more about Hilltop at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~georgem/hilltop/. Basically, Hilltop’s summary is ‘In computing the usefulness of a target page from the hyperlinks pointing to it, we only consider links originating from pages that seem to be experts. Experts in our definition are directories of links pointing to many non-affiliated sites. This is an indication that these pages were created for the purpose of directing users to resources, and hence we regard their opinion as valuable. Additionally, in computing the level of relevance, we require a match between the query and the text on the expert page which qualifies the hyperlink being considered. This ensures that hyperlinks being considered are on the query topic. For further accuracy, we require that at least 2 non-affiliated experts point to the returned page with relevant qualifying text describing their linkage. The result of the steps described above is to generate a listing of pages that are highly relevant to the user’s query and of high quality.’

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Google SERPs with PR displayed

Another excellent tool by WebmasterBrain is known as PROG. Essentially it returns Google results, but shows the PR of the results pages next to each listing. A really powerful tool to use if you want to search for backlink partners!

Future PR during an update

When Google begins it’s monthly (roughly) PR and BL (backlink) update, SEO’s anxiously watch the toolbar to see if their PR changes (hopefully for the better). However, since the update propogates across the datacenters, sometimes slowly, this can be an agonizing process to observe. The solution? A fabulous tool at WebmasterBrain shows you the PR across all datacenters. During a non-update period, they will all be the same, but during an update, you can see your new PR on other datacenters long before you might see it on your toolbar. Great stuff!

Google vs. Yahoo optimization

Now that Yahoo has cut the ties with Google for a while, my opinion, based on my own results, is that optimizing for Yahoo is similar to the way we used to optimize for Google (before November, 2003). In other words, Yahoo is more focused on on-page optimization with fairly high keyword density, as well as keywords in title, meta tags (yes meta tags), and H1, H2, etc. headings. It also considers off-page optimization, i.e. backlinks, but not to the same degree as Google does.

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What is a backlink?

A backlink is any link pointing to a particular page of a website. Some search engines consider the number of backlinks, and the status and relevancy of those backlinks to your page as a factor in the algorithm when determining placement of your page in the SERPs.

What is an algorithm?

An algorithm, often shortened to algo, is a mathematical formula used to determine the sites listed in search results, and the ranking of those sites.

What are SERPs?

SERP stands for one of the following (depending upon who you ask):

1. Search engine results page
2. Search engine ranking page
3. Search engine results position
4. Search engine ranking position

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Need a one-stop place for tons of good SEO tools?

I like www.webmaster-tookit.com. There are tons of places on the web that offer SEO tools, but this place has a nice, handy collection of them all in one spot.

Looking for a rankings tool for all the major search engines?

Check out seo-guy’s SERPS Tool. You’ll be able to quickly find your rankings on Yahoo, Google, All The Web, MSN and Hotbot.

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