This article will focus on the factors that, we believe, affect your results on Google searches. But remember, Google does not publish its algorithms and is always changing and updating the way it views sites - so these are the guidelines for you to follow, rather than a definitive statement of the processes involved.
The major factors fall into two main types, namely, on-page and off-page factors. Basically, on-page factors are those things that you can do to improve your ranking by adapting the actual coding of your site. This article will focus on on-page factors, and a second article will cover off-page factors (those factors mainly relating to incoming links to your site).
In terms, of on-page factors the areas we will cover are:
Keywords - not just the meta tag, but throughout the site
Linking - where your site links to and who they are
Content - how big and new your content is and who is viewing it
Keywords
Funnily enough, probably the least important keywords are those that you put in the actual keyword meta-tag. This feature has become so abused that Google had almost disregarded it, whereas other search engines do pay attention to this tag.
Simple rules for the keyword meta-tag are to make sure its short (less than 10 words), make sure it is relevant (all keywords used appear on the page) and there are no duplicates. Remember search engines work on a page by page basis so always think about the specific page you are working on. We have a feeling that Google only uses this meta-tag negatively, which means that it will mark you down for breaking the rules, but not necessarily mark you up for doing a good job.
Other places where keywords are important are the actual text (see later), your domain name and the other meta tags. We have found that having your keywords in your domain name help, as long as they are not overdone. So www.seo-gurus.co.uk is good whereas www.good-search-engine-optimisation-for-google-that-works.com is bad. Again some other search engines weight the actual domain very highly, as can be seen when you do a search using their engine.
The jury seems to be out on the title tag since duplication of the same keywords here may be seen as spammy or overload by Google. Similarly the description tag should contain a meaningful sentence outlining the theme of the site without overdoing the keywords.
In the actual body of the text, keywords should be apparent without being duplicated so much that Google sees them as spam. Many people use one of the various keyword density analyses, such as the one on the Free SEO Tools site www.datacoms.co.uk, this gives you an idea of the relative density of your keywords compared with the rest of the page. Other good ideas are to have your keywords in H1 tags and also highlighted in bold, both of which Google seems to take into account.
Linking
We are not just referring here to external links, but also how you link between pages. In fact, a good internal linking strategy seems to be highly rated by Google. Whereas a complex internal linking hierarchy can mean that some of your pages just don't get found by Google. We try and keep the maximum number of clicks to reach a page down to three, and preferably two. It is worth considering using Google site maps, since Google seem to be doing a lot of work in this area which means they will probably become more prominent with time.
One last point on internal links, try to make the linking anchor text consistent, Google likes to see the same anchor text on different pages linking to a page.
External links should be used with caution. We saw a site with had an address book that a Russian porn site added its URL into. This led to Google banning the site because we it was deemed to be linking to a bad neighbourhood - sometimes you only learn from your mistakes. It is also worth checking periodically that all the links on your site still work. If you have broken links, Google is more likely to hold your site back in the search results. We also believe that Google rates link stability highly, so don't keep churning the links of sites that you link onto.
Content
Google likes big, old sites and that's a fact. A large site that has been around for 5 years is always going to out-gun a small, new site in the results page takes. So as a new site, you have to keep Google interested, and one way of doing this is new well-written content. Try and put up at least a few new pages a month, all nicely linked to the rest of the site. Avoid having no new pages for 3 months then 100 new ones on one day, we have a feeling Google prefers to see a gradual increase in content. Again suddenly increase of content or links may be seen as spammy by Google and your site devalue in its eyes. Google is trying to see if your site is genuine and growing organically.
We have seen sites with pages that run for miles. Short, well-themed pages are again a big attraction to Google, this also allow you to do more clever internal cross linking with consistent anchor text. It is also better for human readers who can be put off when they see how small the scroller button is on the scroll bar - keep pages short and focused.
In the second part of the article we will look at how off-page factors can affect your Google ranking.
Clear Google Recent Searches
Different search engines use different algorithms to calculate where you appear on their search results. This article will focus on the factors that we believe affect your results on Google searches. One word of warning, Google does not publish its algorithms and is constantly changing and updating the way it views sites - so these are the guidelines for you to follow, rather than a definitive statement of the processes involved.
We will divide the major factors into two main types, namely, on-page and off-page factors. Basically, on-page factors are those things that you can do to improve your ranking by adapting the actual coding of your site. Off-page factors are those factors mainly relating to incoming links to your site. This article, the second of two will focus on off-page factors.
In terms, of off-page factors the areas we will cover are:
IBLs ? inbound links to your site
Directory Listings ? which directories feature your site
User Statistics ? who visits your site and for how long
Inbound Links (IBLs)
Many of you may not be aware that many sites may be linking to your own site and sending new users and traffic to you. You can check who links to your site using an IBL checker, like the backlink checker that can be found on the free SEO Tools site www.datacoms.co.uk.
These checkers allow you to see which sites have linked to you as identified by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Interesting, the Google list is always smaller and more quirky than the other two. This is because Google has decided that pure volume of links is not a good measure of a site's attractiveness since this metric can be spammed by the use of links farms, where unscrupulous webmasters can buy loads of links for free.
So Google uses other factors to check your site's IBLs, and one of these is certainly pagerank. The concept of pagerank was developed by Google to rank sites across the web on a number of factors that overall aim to show how attractive a site is to potential viewers. Your site will have a pagerank, even if you don't know about it. Again you can check your pagerank for free at www.datacoms.co.uk.
Sites with a pagerank or PR of 4 or more are considered worthy sites by Google and so a link from a site with PR 4 or above is more important to your site's overall ranking. PR starts at 0 and goes to 10, with only sites like Microsoft, Apple, Google or NASA getting a perfect 10.
It is also very useful to get sites to link to you with consistent anchor text; this is the text description of your sites URL. So we try and use SEO Gurus for all out links, but some sites seem to take pleasure in changing this for us. The point is the more consistent the anchor text is the better you will be found. The old example of keying "miserable failure" into Google is a good one to demonstrate the power of consistent anchor text. This search gives George Bush's biography on the Whitehouse site ? no mention of "miserable failure" on the site, but it has many sites linking to it using those words as anchor text.
So try and get lots of sites of PR 4 or above linking to you, especially if the site has a similar theme to your own site. However, don't grow your links too fast as Google sees this as spammy, and try and avoid reciprocal links where possible (these are links where each site agrees to link to each other). The best way to get links is with consistently good, well-written content that interests people.
Directory Listings
There are many directory listings sites on the internet, but some are much more important than others, because they are big and powerful with a high PR. Top of the list must be DMOZ, with a PR of 9. Also known as the Open Directory Project, DMOZ, is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. It gets the name DMOZ from the acronym for Directory Mozilla, as it is administered by Netscape Communication Corporation. It costs you nothing to get your site onto DMOZ, except blood, sweat and tears ? see www.datacoms.co.uk for more details. DMOZ is important because it is one of the places Google looks when deciding the importance of your site. Hence, a listing on DMOZ almost guarantees better search results performance.
Yahoo is probably the second most important listing, but costs $299 a year to list your site, again a PR of 9. There are many other sites, far too many to mention, that may be useful to you. Some are free, others ask for reciprocal links or a payment. It pays to be selective on your links and we have as yet not paid for any links. Interestingly, even without paying Yahoo you can get high on their searches if you have a listing on DMOZ, so worth persevering.
User Statistics
Google has developed a number of measures to record the amount of visitors your site and individual pages visited. How did they get there (keyword searches), what pages did they visit, how much time did they spend on each page, did they bookmark the site, etc.
After all, a true measure of where you should appear on the search results is how popular and interestingly your site is. The only real way you can have this is by having interesting, or in marketing jargon, ?sticky? content. Many sites are trying to add news feeds, puzzles or quotes of the day to try and achieve a greater degree of stickiness. But, in our opinion the reason people come back to your site has to be the quality and quantity of information that you have presented and organised for easy access by them.
John Fowler has sinced written about articles on various topics from Sales Training, Site promotion and Sales Training. John Fowler trained as a Mathematician and has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, much of the time in sales related functions. He now spends his time between being a partner in SEO Gurus and as a sales and management trainer for ICT companies. J. John Fowler's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.
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