Page Critic Guide

Optimizing a page using the Page Critic involves editing the content of your page. Before making any edits, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the factors that affect a web page's position.

To analyze a page with the Page Critic, the first step is to create a new Page Critic mission. Click the Page Critic button in the left navigation bar in WebPosition, and then click the "New" button on the Mission tab. On the Page Setup tab, enter the domain name for the web site. For example:

mydomain.com

Next, enter the full URL for the page to be analyzed. For example:

http://www.mydomain.com/mypage.html.

Now proceed to the Keywords tab. Enter a keyword or phrase that you wish to optimize for in the text box. You have now entered all of the essential information the Page Critic needs to perform the analysis. Although there are options that can be adjusted on the Comparisons, Settings, and Customize tabs, the default settings are recommended for your first analysis. Click the "Start" button to run the mission.

When the analysis is complete, you will see the Page Critic report that gives you the advice you should follow to optimize your page. It's best to approach the report in the following way:

1. Page Averages
   Start with the Page Averages area of Page Critic report. Read each of the suggestions and make the appropriate change(s) to your web page. To make the edits, you can either use the Page Editor located in the Page Critic mission, or open the page using your favorite HTML editor. Note that you can specify your preferred HTML editor in the Application Settings which can be found in the Edit menu.

2. Engine Advice
   Read through the latest entries in the Engine Advice tab of the Page Critic report. This is general information that applies to the particular seach engine you have analyzed the page for. Make changes to your page according to these tips if applicable.

3. Page Analysis
   Study the statistics in the Page Analysis table of the Page Critic report. Your goal is to edit your page so that your page's statistics are comparable to the statistics of pages that already rank well. You can do this by comparing your page to a specific page, a group of top-ranking pages, or to the top averages for that engine. The comparison options may be set on the Settings tab of the Page Critic screen. By default, the Page Critic will compare your pages to the top ranking pages for a variety of keywords. We recommend this setting because the statistical averages are likely to be more reliable when taken across a broad range of keywords.

   Note: making your numbers "higher" than those of high ranking pages is not a good approach. Search engines rank pages well that appear within acceptable ranges. If you exceed their limits, you can actually do more harm than good.

   On the Page Analysis table, area rows that begin with "Main Page" refer to the averages for the page you are analyzing. By contrast, area rows that begin with "Compare" contain statistics for the optional comparison page you selected on the Comparison tab of the Page Critic mission. If you don't select a compare page, then these lines will not appear.

   The comparison feature can be useful in figuring out what makes one particular page "better" than yours. Keep in mind, however, that a page can do better than yours even though it may have fewer keywords or lower scores. More or higher is not always better. Be wary of comparing to pages that just don't "make sense." Sometimes you'll run across pages that rank well for a variety of reasons, even though the content does not appear to justify the ranking.

   After editing your page, run the Page Critic mission again to check how the changes have affected the Page Critic output. Optimizing a page is an iterative process.

4. Page Properties
   The Page Properties section of the Page Critic report displays other properties about the page that may affect the page's position in search engines. Review the information about these page properties and make changes to the page if necessary.