"What's Wrong with our Search Engine Rankings?"

Many web marketers aren't aware of what's wrong with their site. Is it the Google sandbox? Is it just a Pagerank update delay? Is it an anti-optimization penalty? Why aren't the big links leading to my site not giving it a boost?

Google is constantly revamping their search engine algorithm and this makes it tougher not only for Professional search engine optimizers, but for the average Web site owner who may not be aware of the underlying factors in how they rank pages.

Google has added a new layer of complexity by adding on filters and new indexing criteria. The latest add-on to the term vector based method is called latent semantic indexing or LSI.

Latent Semantic Indexing

Google Corporation recently purchased Applied Semantics, creator of CIRCA, a software application which "understands, organizes, and extracts knowledge from websites and information repositories in a way that mimics human thought and enables more effective information retrieval." CIRCA is a mathematical formula for processing documents based on keyword themes.

In layman's terms, Google is now analyzing the keyword themes of sites in a new way. It is studying your site and the links leading to it for words related to your targeted keywords but not necessarily your intended keywords unless they are relevant. Therefore, they can actually ignore the keywords that most SEOs will be optimizing sites for. That could render their work ineffective. If your current SEO is just focused on the obvious, then you might find your Google rankings in question.

Semantic indexing is already evident in Google's search results since some sites rank well for keyword phrases they don't have on their site. In fact, in some cases they don't even have related words. LSI analyzes the underlying meaning inherent in links between Web sites and infers meaning from them. That doesn't mean on-site optimization is irrelevant, because strategic keyword usage on your site will generate an advantage. LSI is simply another technique.

Google continually changes the way it indexes Web pages so if your current SEO company is not having much luck, they may simply not be able to keep with this growing complexity. Google has to stay ahead of Webmasters and SEO companies who may be a little too effective in getting their sites to the top.

Is Your Site Content the Best Available?

Google is improving the screening of pages and links that are misrepresentations or offer low quality information. And they're also generating more relevant search results using new components on top of their usual search algorithm such as latent semantic indexing, content redundancy filters, authority-based link analysis and topic sensitive PageRank™.

Just because your content appears to be unique to you and your copywriter, Google might read it as just more "yada yada." Your linking may be fine for your visitor's use, but perhaps Google sees it as blah, meaningless, repetitive or not the kind of linking that delivers unique content. Links in menus for instance are increasingly being downgraded. So the fact that your site lives up to trendy or established web design principles may actually be crippling your site's ranking.

What you Can Do

Search engine rankings are very competitive so you need to have your site strategically tuned. The old methods of doing link exchanges or gaining links from high Pagerank sites doesn't work anymore. Repetitious keyword use still may be required but strategic keyword variance is now a must. How do you do it? Hire a competent and experienced SEO specialist.

High Google rankings are very desirable and profitable so consider going the extra distance and creating a site that Google will continually value. This way your site won't succumb to those occasional indexing changes. Get a reliable SEO company to do the work and one that can add extra value to your Web site. The two often go hand in hand.

Search Engine Optimization and Brands

One SEO Company can actually can help you improve your brand's reach with creative search engine optimization techniques. Brand Identity Guru can create effective content to engage visitors from across the US and design interactive Flash design and video sales strategies to help you capture more leads. BIG can help you improve your conversion rates and pump up your brand identity. Here is an SEO company that can help you get the most from search engine optimization.

Search  Engine Algorithms

Algorithm: a finite set of instructions followed in a specific order to solve a mathematical problem.

A search engine algorithm is an ordering or indexing of a collection of web pages based on keywords. These instructions are simply an analysis of the components of the web pages, such as headings, title tags, copy and link structure. One set of indexing or processing instructions is called latent semantic indexing. It goes further on the keyword-based analysis to use related words, synomyms and polynyms to better understand what a document is about thereby classifying that document more accurately.

A knowledge of LSI gives you an opportunity to make your site more relevant to Google.

LSI Links

Latent Semantic Indexing - frequently cited paper by the National Institute for Technology & Liberal Education

Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis - by Deerwester, Dumais, Furnas,
Landauer and Harshman.

Redundancy Removal Techniques for Multi-document Summarization by Newman, Doran, Stokes, Carthy and Dunnion, Intelligent Information Retrieval Group at the University College Dublin Ireland.

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