How Google Measures PageRank |
There are 2 major factors that will influence the ways that Google and other search engines will rank your webiste:
1. Keyword Optimization
2. Link Popularity
|
 |
Keywords |
One of the main factors Google and other search engines use when determining the relevance of an individual web page are the 'keywords' and 'keyword phrases' that appear within it's content. Points are awarded or subtracted based on such factors including:
a) Keyword type - associated HTML tag
a) Keyword position - on the page
b) Keyword frequency - number of times keyword is repeated
|
| 1. Keyword Type |
Google will look at the HTML tag between which the keywords are placed and give a relevancy score based on the specific tag. In the simplest of explanations, Google considers items that are more highly visible, more important. Google is looking for viewable content!
Title
Tag |
The browser title will also appear as the title result for the search engine listing result in addition to the top of the page |
Meta
Tag |
Although this was created for search engines in mind, this tag has been the most misused tool. Therefore Google does not place much relevancy on it because visitors will essentially not see the content of this tag. |
| Links |
Google likes links. More importantly, it likes text links because it is content focused. If you were to link an image, Google has no idea what the image is about and therefore deems it irrelevant. A text link, however is very specific. Therefore it is possibly one of the MOST important placeholders for linking. |
Image
ALT Tags |
Since images cannot be viewed, Google will look at the ALT tag within the IMG tag. This displays descriptive text for the image so that when you mouseover the image, you can read a description of the image. This is also a good placeholder for keywords. |
Header
Content |
Headers are much more visible and therefore important to Google |
Body
Content |
Content, content, content. If you've ever typed in a search and gotten a page filled with ads and promotions or a bunch of links pointing to what you want then you know why Google places such importance on content. Content is King. Write good content and your page is half optimized for search engines already. |
|
| 2. Keyword Position |
One of the most important factors for building a website is consistency. It’s about building a theme. Google can use this information then and the information they are able to obtain in terms of who links to us to classify more accurately what the site is really about and what the pages are likely to be about. That is why the position of your keywords is also important. Having a few keywords at the top of the page, a few in the middle and maybe 1 or 2 at the bottom indicates that your website is about a specific keyword or keyword phrase!
|
| 3. Keyword Frequency |
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times that a specific keyword appears throughout the page. There are some general guidelines that can be followed but really no set numbers that can be followed since Google updates its engines on a frequent basis. In short, be cognisant of keyword spamming.
Keword spamming refers to the overuse of keywords for the purpose of "influencing" search engines. For example, since the page title is deemed very significant for search engines, why not write "Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword"? Because Google will grab your site, say that it is spamming the engine and kick you off of Google altogether. That would really suck!
TIP: Avoid REPEATING keywords in the same sentence!!
| HTML Tag |
Keyword
Frequency |
Total
Words |
Keyword Prominence |
Title
Tag |
Once |
6-9 |
Towards beginning of title |
Meta
Tag |
Once |
1-27 |
Towards beginning of Meta tag |
| Text Links |
1-10 |
1-330 |
Emphasis towards top of the page |
Image
ALT Tags |
1-3 |
1-64 |
Emphasis towards first images |
Header
Content |
1-5 |
N/A |
N/A |
Body
Content |
1-16 |
496-658 |
Closer to the beginning |
Entire
Page |
5-43 |
564-922 |
N/A |
|
| Next |
|
|
|
