Search engine optimization is fast becoming a hot topic on the web - firms
promise to 'optimize' your pages, discussion lists advise to create 'bridge' pages,
adult sites overload meta tags with thousands of keywords. But do any of these techniques
really work?
We don't know! We don't claim to know! No one except for the higher-ups
at each particular search engine actually know for certain what algorithms get used
for indexing and searching for web pages. Danny Sullivan at searchenginewatch.com
is about the closest thing to a search engine guru there is, and even he points out
that there are no sure fire methods for ranking 'in the top 10'.
This does not mean that all is lost! Most of the major engines use 'keyword frequency' as
one of their ranking factors. While no one knows exactly how much of a factor
this is, it is a factor. Danny Sullivan writes, "A search engine will analyze
how often keywords appear in relation to other words
in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant that
other web pages." (source)
If you run a site about motor car racing, you can have
all the meta tags you want, but if you fail to mention 'motor', 'car', or 'racing' in the
body of the pages that you submit to search engines, you are pretty much assured of ranking lower
than people who use those terms often.
We've created a way to determine the keyword
frequency as a percentage of total words (excluding HTML tags), and compare those numbers to
those of another URL. Why is someone else ranking higher than you in Infoseek, even though
your meta tags are more descriptive? Check their keyword frequency against yours! You may be surprised
at the results! Click here for some examples.
We recommend using a combination of our service and programs like WebPosition and PositionAgent.com
for an more complete search engine optimization toolkit. Use those programs to find who ranks
above you, and use ours to help determine WHY!
Use our simple form to
submit a URL for analysis.
Please note that this tool is meant only to help
give you a general idea of the frequency with which words appear in web pages. There is no guarantee
that these results are accurate, nor that the results represent the indexing logic of any particular
search engine
The most popular service for identifying popular
keywords is at
Goto.com
It's a nifty little time-
saver that lets you enter a keyword or phrase and then gives
you not only the stats for that keyword but related ones as
well. This is probably what you're looking for.
Personally, I like the stuff that Virtual Promote offers (by
Jim Wilson). Jim's World has a ton of free features included
on
jimtools.com
It is just about the
most comprehensive keyword analyzer out there that I know of.
Finally, another source for analyzing keywords is Lycos. If
you are looking for top terms being searched for on the
Internet (not site promotion),
50.lycos.com
updates
weekly and is done in a friendly editorial style. Also, you
should know that 50.Lycos.com has been cleaned of adult terms.