I would like our website to rank higher for the search term
"automation" on the Google search engine.

Our URL is www.atsautomation.com, our business is industrial
automation.

We rank about # 68 on Google and on MSN we rank #1 (for search term
automation). I understand that automation is a very broad term.

I see many other sites ranking higher for this term than ours. The
word automation in many of our pages, it is even in the URL, meta
tags, and ATS has a healthy number of links-in. Traffic to the ATS
site is healthy, although we do not update as often as I would like.

Question, why are we not ranking as high as we could be ? 

What specifically can we do - that we have not already done, to rank
higher vs. our competitors (especially those sites which are ranking
in postion # 8, 9, 10) etc? What are they doing correct compared to our website.

And are there any technical reasons (Re: our site) that may be holding us
back from achieving this target ?

Jberetta

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Request for Question Clarification by sgtcory-ga on 29 May 2003 11:11 PDT

Hello beertit,

I would like to offer assistance with this question. I must clarify
that the answer would not revolve around how to *cheat* the Google
system, rather focus more on the major factors that may lead up to
your site struggling more than others. We researchers are not
affiliated with the Google search engine, but my focus on questions of
this nature has been extensive.

Please review some of my past answers for clients in this area, and
let me know if you would like a thorough answer with some tips for
improvement. You can review my answers by clicking on my name.

Thanks for the clarification -
SgtCory

---

Clarification of Question by beertit-ga on 30 May 2003 05:57 PDT

Sgtcory - I think that I would rather have you look at some of the
sites (that rank for the term automation, in comparison to our site,
especially just off the main page. There are volumes written about -
generally - how to (try) to rank well on Google. The most helpful
answer would list very specific things that I can apply, that some
much smaller sites are doing, for the search term automation.

You may note that ATS has done very well with other power search terms
(in Google) like "factory automation" and "automation systems".

Thanks,

Jim

---

Request for Question Clarification by sgtcory-ga on 31 May 2003 10:29 PDT

Hello beertit,

I think I may leave this open for another researcher. While I admire
and follow closely how the Google engine works, I'm not qualified in
the area of keyword building.

I can tell you this - your ranking on MSN may be due to the fact that
MSN considers the URL in their search factoring. You can see this when
you do a search for any 'plain' term, including automation. This
coupled with keyword density seems to be a huge consideration. You'll
notice that all the URL's with the keyword in them are usually listed
first. (aside from sponsored listings)


"I see many other sites ranking higher for this term than ours. The 
word automation in many of our pages, it is even in the URL, meta 
tags, and ATS has a healthy number of links-in. Traffic to the ATS 
site is healthy, although we do not update as often as I would like."

Google does not make use of META tags for keywords or description.
When you see a result that has a description, it is the data that
resides in their local DMOZ directory.

The key thing I noticed is the lack of updates. If you update your
site more often, you may see an increase in Googlebot activity.

I wish I could have been more help, but this is a very subjective
question, and my answer would simply be one of the many opinions
available on this topic.

Good Luck!

SgtCory

Hi Jim,

Good day and thanks for your question. The good news is that your site
is up to #61 from #68.

The most burning issue in the world of Search Engine Optimization is -
how do I rank higher on google? People come up with methods that
'trick' the googlebot, but Google responds strongly to counter those
tricks. I advise you not to try any of those tricks. Also, don't
approach people who say that they will guarantee a #1 position on
Google. Those things either don't work or work for maximum, a month.
The Google algorithm changes frequently (I've been researching a bit
on the methodologies used - I even got my site to #1 for a very common
keyword, only to see it knocked down to 38 in it's next index).
Furthermore, resorting to means like cloaking, keyword spamming etc.
could see the end of your listing on google. Getting re-instated is
not as easy as getting indexed, which itself is hard enough.

I will present a small analysis of the top 10 sites for "automation"
and how they are there. This will be followed by my suggestions as far
as your site is concerned.

ATS Automation - http://www.atsautomation.com/
Pagerank: 6/10
Inward links: 256
Pages indexed: 352



#1
--
Rockwell Automation - http://www.rockwell.com/ &
http://www.rockwellautomation.com
Pagerank: 7/10
Number of inward links (pages that link to the site): 2,940
Number of site pages indexed on Google: 15,400


#2
--
Smarthome - http://www.smarthome.com
Pagerank: 6/10
Inward links: 1,240
Pages indexed: 8,270


#3
--
Home-Automation - http://www.home-automation.org/
Pagerank: 7/10
Inward Links: 110
Pages Indexed: 61


#4
--
Rockwell automation - refer to #1


#5
--
The ABB Group - http://www.abb.com/
Pagerank: 8/10
Inward Links: 1,370
Pages Indexed: 17,000


#6
--
http://www.homeauto.com/
Pagerank: 6/10
Inward Links: 141
Pages indexed: 560


#7
--
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society - http://www.ncsu.edu/IEEE-RAS/
Pagerank: 7/10
Inward Links: 310
Pages indexed: 450


#8
--
40th DAC Home - http://www.dac.com
Pagerank: 8/10
Inward Links: 814
Pages indexed: 3,520


#9
--
Scientific Computing & Instrumentation Online - http://www.scamag.com
Pagerank: 7/10
Inward Links: 219
Pages indexed: 108
* I couldn't access the site as it was giving a HTTP 500 Internal
Server error.


#10
---
Managing Automation: The technology guide for manufacturing -
http://www.managingautomation.com/
Pagerank: 7/10
Inward Links: 157
Pages indexed: 206


As you can see from the above, high ranked sites have a lot of inward
links. It's no big secret that the best way of moving up the google
rankings is to have a lot of people linking to you. The logic is like
this. The googlebot crawls a page and stores it's links for it's next
crawl.

Seems easy...but it isn't. The pagerank of the sites linking to your
site is also taken into account. That explains why #7, #9 & #10 have
high ranks despite a relatively small number of inward links. Most of
the inward links to these sites are from the .edu domain, which are
known to have high pageranks.

One way of getting your site linked to, is to see who have linked to
the top 10 sites. To do this, you have to type the URL into the Google
search box and click on the "Google Search" button. In the resulting
screen, you will see a line like this :
Find web pages that link to <website address>
Click on 'link'. A list of all the webpages and websites linking to
that particular address will be displayed. You can email the
webmasters of the various pages requesting them to link to your site.
Most of them will expect a link in return. Be prepared for that.

Also, the word used to link to your site is also considered. For
example, if the text conatining the link is "automation", then it is
considered as related to the search. Also, when you request webmasters
to link to your site, ask them to specify the link text as "ATS
Automation" or "ATS-Automation". In the next paragraph, I will explain
why it is important to separate the words

You may probably be wondering why home-automation.org has a high
ranking. Basically, it contains the word automation. You may argue
that your domain also contains that word. However, home-automation is
hyphenated and is considered as two different words (home &
automation). Search for home-automation on google and you'll
understand. If you maintain the exact same content, ats-automation.com
will fetch a higher ranking that atsautomation.com, as atsautomation
is considered as one word.

Another good source of incoming links are from pages on your site
itself. I've gone through your website and noticed that not all pages
link back to the home page. Furthermore, the link is in the form of <a
href="/index.htm">. Change the link to either <a href="/"> or <a
href="http://www.atsautomation.com">.

I also notice you have the tag <meta NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="4
weeks">. Although I am not sure whether googlebot follows this or not,
I suggest you remove it. Why would you want to restrict the frequency
of visits of a search engine robot/spider? Frequently updated sites
are given a higher ranking as it is considered to be more related than
others.

Introduce the ALT field in the <IMG> tag. Also, name images with the
word "automation", but remember try to put an underscore to separate
the word "automation" eg. automation_of_machine.jpg instead of
automationofmachine.jpg. Don't blindly go about naming *all* images
with the word automation. Name only the related ones.

If it's possible, try to add as many pages as possible, but maintain
the quality of the site.

Do these and watch your site's rank increase!

If you have any clarifications, please don't hesitate to ask

Thank you for using this service and have a nice day.

Regards,
aditya2k

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Request for Answer Clarification by beertit-ga on 14 Jun 2003 07:43 PDT

I am not sure that my question has been answered. It is fairly obvious
that ratings will increase with number of pages and inward links. Our
site has a lot of pages and inward links.

For example - ranked number #10. www.managingautomation.com vs
www.atsautomation.com.

Why are we so low compared with them when we have better math on our
inward links, number of pages, etc.

Jim

---

Clarification of Answer by aditya2k-ga on 18 Jun 2003 13:13 PDT

Hi again Jim,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

According to you, your site has better "math" on your inward links,
pages indexed etc. You are looking only at one dimension (and that is
the raw number). Let me quote the following from my answer:
"The pagerank of the sites linking to your site is also taken into
account. That explains why #7, #9 & #10 have high ranks despite a
relatively small number of inward links."

There is another dimension....the pageranks of the inward links.
Let us compare the pageranks of the first seven listed inward links of
http://www.managingautomation.com/ and http://www.atsautomation.com
(Pageranks are in parantheses)

managingautomation.com
----------------------
http://www.entivity.com/press16.htm (5)
http://www.arcweb.com/Events/forums/0603.htm (5)
http://www.supplychainbrain.com/news/quickread.htm (5)
http://www.vastera.com/press/in_the_news_archive.htm (4)
http://www.ebape.fgv.br/Institucional/asp/dsp_links_per_internacionais.asp
(4)
http://www.autofieldguide.com/dp/WebLinks/WebLinks_Zones.cfm?Mag=PROD&Zn=70
(4)
http://www.thomaspublishing.com/searchsupp.html (4)
AVG = 4.43

atsautomation.com
-----------------
http://www.atsautomation.com/automation/ultrahigh/uh_wireless.asp (5)
http://www.boc.com/news/article_detail.cfm?ID=379&bSegment=0 (5)
http://www.spheralsolar.com/1_company-profile/2_history.asp (4)
http://dmoz.org/Science/Instruments_and_Supplies/Laboratory_Automation_and_Robotics/
(5)
http://www.business.com/directory/industrial_goods_and_services/machinery_and_tools?partner=FT
(3)
http://www.spheralsolar.com/7_contact-us/ (3)
http://www.exfo.com/en/products/gf_Product239.asp (3)
AVG = 4.00

The above should give you a clear idea. Secondly, I noticed that your
site has a higher percentage of inward links from self compared to the
other site.

If you have any clarifications, either on this or on anything else,
please don'g hesitate to ask. I will clarify it sooner than this one
:)

Cheers,
Aditya2K

Beertit:

My own site took a huge hit for no reason on Google's last dance. I'd
wait til the next Google dance to see if they get some jinks fixed
before I take any advice from anyone.

Take a look at Webmaster World and you'll get an idea of the tossup
everything is in.

Jeude

Hi,
Try naming all your image files to automation (automation_1.gif etc).
Also include ALT tags with your images, that include the automation
keyword.

Another trick I have found to work well is to name your javascript
functions to include your keyword.

regards Nick

Another note : I'd be cautious about any of the tricks that may be
listed here. It may be hard to get good ranking, but it's even harder
to get back in the index if your site gets the boot.