By David Gikandi, Founder, SearchPositioning.com
March 27th, 1999

See Also   How to Build a Web Store for FREE   How to choose mailing list management software   How to Grow Your Web Business   How to Accept Credit Cards without a Merchant Account   How To Develop Online Products That Sell   How to Change Your Web Hosting Service (ISP)   How to Deal with Disgruntled Customers   How to Get Top Search Engine Positioning   How to Beat Credit Card Fraud   How to Design an Affiliate Program   How to Accept Credit Card Payments   How to Choose a Shopping Cart

[This is the second part of a two part article. The first part can be read here].

As you have seen, the ranking criteria are highly dynamic, using a complex algorithm that integrates all the above factors in various proportions and with various maximum and minimum values. An important aspect to look deeper into is the keyword placement criteria. These are the various places that engines look for keywords:

• Keywords in the Title
• Keywords in the Meta Description
• Keywords in the Meta Keywords
• Keywords in headlines
• Keywords in hyperlinked text
• Keywords in body copy
• Keywords in ALT tags
• Keywords in comments
• Keywords hidden tags.
• Keywords in URLs

What you would need to do if you were doing this manually would be to do a search on a keyword or phrase in a search engine. See what page ranks highest for that keyword. Make sure that the actual page is the same one displayed in the search results and not a redirected page. Then meticulously inspect that page and create a doorway page that beats that page on all the above criteria, without going too far as to cross the engine's thresholds. You would, for example, make sure that your keyword or phrase appears in all the places that it does in the page you are studying, and it does so just a little more often, and in a weight just a fraction of a percentage point higher. Another thing to keep in mind is that most search engines seems to favour shorter pages, meaning that you should try to achieve the above with a page that is slightly shorter than the current top ranking one.

If you want to save yourself all this hassle and get your pages done by someone else, just find a reputable positioning company or consultant. Currently, there isn't that many, so the fees charged for this service can vary widely, as can the service and results. There are three types of places you could go to. You could go to a consultant - expect to pay up to $3000 for that! Or you could use one of the online services such as Did It or Green Flash. Did It charges $299 for set up for 4 keywords or phrases, plus $0.25 per hit on the doorway page. Green Flash has no set up fees, rather a minimum order size, plus $0.25 to $2.00 per hit on the doorway page. For a lot of Webmasters, that is too high a price to pay, considering those 1000 visitors could end up costing you up to $2,000.

Our service uses a different approach to make it more affordable. The SearchPositioning.com Web site features an online Automatic Doorways Generator, plus other tools, software, information, and resources useful in search engine positioning. We developed, through reverse engineering many search results, a system that instantly creates optimised, professional doorways for Web site promoters. By developing a system that easily allows Webmasters to serve themselves online, we were able to drive costs down and provide the automatic doorways generation service at an affordable $34.95 per year for unlimited doorways and keywords.