Search Engine Keywords
You already know that search engines use complicated secret formulas, called ranking algorithms, to determine the order of their results. You even know from Chapter 3, “Eternal Truths of SEO,” that some of the most Eternally Important factors are your web page text and your HTML title tags. Now we’re going to wrap what you already know into an organic optimization cheat sheet that you can peek at next time someone
asks you, “What do search engines care about, anyway?” But first, a disclaimer: The SEO profession is an upstart one, with no degrees to be earned or widely accepted canon of literature (and if there were, it’d change every five months anyway).
So we’re all out there trying to figure this stuff out on our own, using different test cases, chasing morphing search engines, and possessing varying levels of interest and talent in the writing and technical components of SEO. SEO experts are a diverse group, ranging from the fanatical to the rabidly fanatical, and there are
radically differing opinions within the SEO community about what works and what’s important. We’ve distilled what we believe to be the best-of-the-best advice and present it here in a simplified form.
Here’s the lowdown on the most important factors:
1• HTML page title
2• Visible HTML text on the page
3• Inbound links (quality and quantity)
4• Inbound link anchor text
5• Age of domain
6• Lesser factors
We’ll get into how to optimize all of these factors in Part III. But for now, as you read through them, think about how much attention you’ve given to each of them on your own site. Maybe, like a lot of site owners, you’ve been focusing on the bottom of the list—the least important factors—more than the biggies at the top. As you think about what matters to the search engines, keep this in mind:
That means each and every page is an opportunity to optimize for the following: HTML page title The HTML page title is today’s hands-down leader, and an Eternally Important factor, in search engine ranking algorithms. As a bonus, optimizing your HTML page titles is one of those activities that will quickly affect the way your listings look in the search engines.
Visible HTML text on the page It seems obvious, but you would be surprised at how many site owners miss this simple point: In order to rank well for a particular set of keywords, your site text should contain them. True, there are examples of pages that rank well for words not actually appearing on the page (see the sidebar “Googlebombing and ‘Miserable Failure’”) but this is not something you want to leave to chance.
You may see SEO pros insist that you need 250 or 1,000 words on a page and that 5 to 10 percent of these words must be your target keywords (SEO folks call that percentage keyword density). We say this: As long as you have robot-readable text on your page (a great first step that many of your competitors, believe it or not, may have missed), you should use as many keywords as you need to state your message clearly and as many opportunities to insert keywords as makes sense within the realm of quality writing. Your marketing
message is much too special to be put into a formula.
Inbound links (quality and quantity) Coming in at #3 in our list of search engine ranking factors is inbound links to your website. Why are inbound links so important in the search engine ranking algorithms? Because they can indicate a page’s quality, popularity, or status on the Web and site owners have very little control over their own inbound links. (Being off-page factors, inbound links can be influenced only indirectly.) Links with the most rank-boosting power are links from a home page (as opposed to links from pages buried deep within the site) and links from authority pages in the topical community, meaning pages with their own collection of fabulous inbound links from other websites covering the same topic. The same quality factors hold true for links coming from within your site.
Inbound link anchor text We mentioned in that the way other websites refer to your website is one of the ways that search engines understand your content. Anchor text, also called linking text, is the text that is “clickable” on the Web, and it is an important factor in search ranking algorithms. Anchor text that contains your page’s targeted keywords can help boost your page’s ranks. Combining this keyword-rich anchor text
with relevant text surrounding the link can amplify this good effect.
Age of domain In one of the more perplexing and frustrating developments in SEO in recent years, site owners have noticed that newer domains have a much tougher time making their way up the ranks than older ones. Read more about this in the sidebar “The Google Sandbox.” So far, this phenomenon has only been spotted in Google, but you know what happens when Google does something: Sooner or later the others are
likely to follow suit. You have been warned.
Lesser factors There are a large number of additional, lesser factors that can influence your ranking. Google, for example, probably includes hundreds and possibly even thousands of factors in its algorithm. Things like keywords in your meta tags, image ALT tags, and page URL all have some degree of influence, as do factors that may be harder for you to control, such as the popularity of a page (as measured by the search
engine’s own click-through tallies) or how often it is updated. For a comprehensive list of ranking factors, including commentary from several knowledgeable SEO professionals.
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