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Do you need a web site or web services?Optimizing Your Web PagesNow that you know how to structure your site, you next need to optimize your web page content for Google. Put another way, here we discuss those aspects and elements of web pages that determine relevancy in Google. Keyword Factors Used in the Algorithm The following factors play a part in the portion of the Google algorithm that determines page relevancy. Google looks at the following keyword factors and assigns a relevancy score for each page of your site. The factors are listed in approximate order of importance, however, like all factors in the Google algorithm, this is subject to change. Keyword Proximity Google looks at individual words that make up phrases. Keyword proximity is a measure of word order and closeness. The closer all words in a keyword phrase are together, and in the correct order, the better. Obviously, exact matches score the best. As an example, say someone does a search on "country house plans". Google will assign a higher score if your page contains "country house plans" than if it contains "country and farm house plans". For the latter, all three words are contained on the page, so the page would receive some score, but since this is an inexact match (there are words in between "country and "house"), the page score would be lower than for the exact match of country house plans. Keyword Placement This measures where on the page keywords are located. Google looks for keywords in the page title, in headings, in body text, in links, in image ALT text and in dropdown boxes. Keyword Prominence A measure of how early or high up on a page the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best. Keyword Density Also known as keyword weight, the number of times a keyword is used on a page divided by the total number of words on the page. There is some confusion over keyword density. Part of this stems from the fact that different software programs look at different parts of the page and calculate this differently. There doesn't seem to be an ideal density value for Google. Just don't spam. In other words, don't fill your pages up needlessly with your keywords - not only will customers think your site is amateurish, but Google may penalize you Keyword density used to be more important in the past for search engines, and you may still find books that stress the importance of this factor. For Google, it is not important so don't get hung up on it. Keyword Format A measure of whether keywords are bolded or italicized on the page. The best place to do this is in the first paragraph of the page. This isn't a real important factor, but every little bit helps. How and Where to Use Keywords Don't try to use all of your keywords on the home page - rather focus only on your Primary Keyword Phrase and your best Secondary Keyword. Use your product or service pages to focus on the more specific keyword. You will likely want to use the plural form of your keywords. However, you need to verify this using KeywordDiscovery or WordTracker as sometimes the singular form of a word is searched on more often. Google treats hyphenated words as two words: "house-plans" is the same as "house plans" on Google. However, words connected by an underscore or slash, such as "house_plans" and "house/plans" are treated as a single word "houseplans" currently. Google is not case-sensitive, so HOUSE PLANS, House Plans, house plans, and HoUsE pLaNs are all treated the same. The Importance of Title Text There is one place on a web page where your keywords MUST be present, and that is in the page title, which is everything between the <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of a page. The page title (not to be confused with the heading for a page) is what is displayed in the title bar of your browser, and is also what is displayed when you bookmark a page or add it to your browser Favorites. Correct use of keywords in the title of every page of your website is important to Google particularly for the home page. If you do nothing else to optimize your site, do this! The "Keywords" META tag is ignored by Google. Concentrate your efforts on the title for each page, making sure they contain the best keywords for the content of each page. The title shouldn't consist of much more than about 9 words or 60 characters, with your keywords used toward the beginning of the title. Since Google is looking for relevant keywords in the title, this means you should NOT include your company name in the title unless your company name is so well known as to be a keyword in it's own right with instant name recognition like Disney, Nike, or Yahoo. If you must include your company name in the title, put it at the end. In addition, each page title should be unique don't duplicate titles on pages. Improper or nonexistent use of titles in web pages keep more websites out of top rankings on Google than any other factor except for a lack of quality links from other websites that point to your site. The following table shows both the improper and proper use of titles for a website that sells house plans. You undoubtedly have seen numerous websites that use "Home" as the title of their home page. Google may think these sites are about homes!
As you can see, you should use relevant keywords in every title of every page of your site. Most people get this wrong. Do a search for "Welcome to", "Home", "Home page", "Untitled Document", or "index.html" and you'll see what I mean about incorrect use of TITLE text. Writing Compelling Title Text You have undoubtedly seen any number of spammy-looking titles that are "optimized" in the hopes of getting better rankings. Keyword after keyword stuffed in the TITLE, separated (or not) by commas. Realize that your page title acts like a billboard and is what people click on in a search results page. So you should differentiate your title from that of your competitors by writing "smarter" page titles. Here's an example of what I mean: Ho-hum title: House plans, home plans, home floor plans, home design plans, plans Compelling title: Unique home & house plans: dream homes start with great floor plans Notice that both contain multiple keywords but which one would you rather click on? Come up with a set of different titles for each of your important pages and rotate among them to see what ranks better over time. Best Practices for Creating Titles Here are some best practices you should follow for creating titles on pages: Each page should have a unique title. Try to include your Primary Keyword Phrase in every title of every page. Begin the title of your home page with your Primary Keyword Phrase, followed by your best Secondary Keyword Phrases. Use more specific variations to your Primary Keyword Phrase on your specific product, service, or content pages. If you must include your company name, put it at the end of the title. Use the best form, plural or singular, for your keywords based on what KeywordDiscovery or WordTracker says is searched on more often. Don't overdo it don't repeat your keywords more than two times in the title. Make sure the <TITLE> tag is the first element in the <HEAD> section of your page this makes it easier to find by Google. META "Description" Tag Text Google doesn't factor in META tag text in ranking a page, but you should still strive to fill in this META tag on your web pages: <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your best sales pitch here"> Google uses the first 160 characters or so (about 25 words) of your META "Description" tag to populate what is displayed under your listing on a search results page. If no META Description tag content is found, Google uses the description from the DMOZ directory. If you don't have a DMOZ directory listing, it uses semi-random snippets from your page that contains the search term queried for. This can lead to some really awful-sounding descriptions, as rarely does anyone write anything compelling in the META Description tag. So take your best shot and come up with your best sales pitch in 25 words or less to put in your META Description tag. Something that would actually compel someone to click on YOUR listing. Descriptions that do well include a call to action ("visit us today"), phone number ("call xxx-xxxx for more information"), geographic term if applicable ("located in Seattle"), discounts, specials, prices, anything that will draw the eye and make them click. Basic direct marketing 101 pitch. Note: If you want your META Description text to be used, it must include the exact phrase that was queried. About Word Stemming Google uses word stemming. Word stemming allows all forms of the word singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words and synonyms to be returned for a given search query. This can work both for and against a site depending on which form of a word a page is primarily optimized for. So if someone types in "house plans", not only will pages that are optimized for that phrase be returned, but so will pages that contain all variations of that phrase, for example: house plan house planning house planner Conversely, a page that optimized for "house plans" will also be returned whenever a searcher types in any variation of that phrase. Using the same example, typing in any of the phrases below would also return a page optimized for "house plans": house plan house planning house planner Word stemming is a helpful feature for searchers, since it saves them from having to think of many variations of a word. Word stemming can help as well as hurt your ranking for a given page as not only does it increases the number of words that you can rank well for (even if you do not include a given form of the word anywhere on a page) but it can also increase the amount of sites (competition) returned for a given search query. When you enter a search query in google, put a plus "+" sign in front of the word for which you want to disable stemming for. For example: house +plans Would disable stemming on "plans" and thus only return pages for "house plans" and pages that contain variations on the "plan" word. Pay attention to stemming for your keywords particularly to what the "root" word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word when optimizing pages over time. About Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Also known as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), this technology allows Google to analyze and quantify related keywords within the larger set of content on a web page. Think word synonyms, different word endings, etc. Lots has been speculated about the extent that latent semantic indexing influences ranking. It is a complex technology, particularly in how it may be implemented. The effect of LSI on your rankings is not well understood, but it means your page may rank better for a related keyword, one that may not even be on the page, than your primary keyword! Use Keywords in the Following Places The following are places where keywords should be used on your web pages. The first four items are more important, with Google giving weight to keywords found in the title and link anchor text more than any of the other locations. Title: <TITLE>keywords</TITLE>. Keywords should appear as first or second word in the title. Link (anchor) text: <A HREF>keywords</A>. The clickable portion of links. Headings: <H1>keywords</H1>, <H2>keywords</H2>, etc. Use a stylesheet (CSS file) to control the size of heading text to make it blend in better. First paragraph of page (first 20 words): <BODY><P>keywords</P> Bold and/or italicize keywords also. Last paragraph of page: <P>keywords </P></BODY> Drop-down boxes: <FORM><OPTION>keywords</OPTION></FORM> URLs: <A HREF="http://www.keywords.com/"></A> Folder & file names: keywords/keywords.html, keywords.gif Image ALT text: <IMG SRC=" " ALT="keywords" > for graphical links Some people abuse H1 tags by wrapping them around entire pages of content or by using multiple H1 tags on a page. This is a bad idea and borders on spam the H1 tag should be used as a page headline. It is perfectly legitimate to reduce the size of H1 text using a style sheet but that's about it. As a result, Google may be discounting H1 so it may carry less weight for ranking moving forward. The same can be said about image ALT text some people put entire paragraphs of content in them for each image on a page. It is perfectly legitimate to put keywords relating to the image but that's it. Similarly, image ALT text now carries less weight than before. Images that are clickable (wrapped in a HREF link tag) do not appear to have a discounting - yet. Proper Internal Link Structure Besides the title of a page, Google places special importance on the use of keywords in the text of links. This means you need to structure your links correctly. Ideally, you should only use text links on your site as opposed to graphical "button" links. Google looks for keywords contained in link anchor text the clickable portion of the link. Google cannot see graphics-based links all it has to go on is the ALT attribute for image tags, which doesn't carry as much weight. Keywords in link text should match keywords found on the page that the link points to especially in the title of the page. Here is an example of the ideal link structure for Google. Of primary importance is the use of keywords in link anchor text (text between the <A HREF> </A> tags). Note also the use of keywords in the actual name of the graphics file. Text-Based (Ideal) Link Structure: <A HREF="your-keywords.html">your keywords</A> If you must use graphics-based links on your web pages, be sure and fill in the ALT text attribute of the image tag as follows: Graphics Link Structure: <A HREF="your-keywords.html"> <IMG SRC="your-keywords.gif" ALT="your keywords" BORDER="0"></A> What Google Ignores Google ignores the following elements on your web pages. Due to their abuse and misuse, META tags are a thing of the past with Google! Information in the <META name= "Keywords"> tag Information in all other META tags (see META "Description" tag caveat) Information within the <!Comments --> tag Information within the <STYLE> Information within <SCRIPT> tags (JavaScript and other client-side code) Duplicate links to the same page (only counted once) Links that point to the same page they are on Any graphics or multimedia (menu buttons, photos, animations, Flash) Stop words ("a", "the", "is", etc), single letters and numbers, punctuation. |
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