Any discussion about SEO Fundamentals needs to start with Google. With over 75% of the world’s web searches now being conducted via Google, it’s safe to say that your potential customers will be starting their journey there as well.
Google is the gold standard of Search Engines in both overall search volume and search quality. I’ll save the rationale behind Google’s dominance for another day, but undoubtedly a large portion of their rise to the top of Search Engine excellence can be attributed to their proprietary algorithm, which is the set of calculations performed against the web’s content that decides which web sites they think their viewers will find most relevant for the entered keywords.
Google is the most difficult search engine to optimize against because it does the best job of filtering out all of the short-cuts marketers try to use to cheat the system. Google makes a company work to return high organically. At the most basic of Google’s (and hence, SEO’s) driving factors to page rank are:
- How much relevant content does your site have, and
- How highly the web community values your content (measured in number of links from other sites to your content).
This means that the early days of tweaking a few meta tag descriptions to fix your web site’s SEO are long, long gone. In today’s game, SEO cannot be thought of as a one-time expense. It requires a commitment. Based on your competition, your industry and your objectives, it may also require a good deal of time and money before you see results. There is no short-cut around satisfying these two criteria. If an SEO Consultant tells you there is, it’s likely either a scam or an activity that could get your site blacklisted.
So, how exactly does a company show Google great, relevant content that’s as popular and externally-validated as a southern Homecoming Queen? There’s no magic answer, and the rules are always changing, but….
Without further ado, and in no particular order,
Google’s 20 most important factors to better Google rankings
1. Keyword Use in Title Tag – Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.
2. Keyword Use in Body Text – Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords – Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.
4. Keyword Use in a web page’s Headline (H1 Tag) – Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL
6. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure – Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.
7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages – Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
8. Age of Document – Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporarily relevant.
9. Amount of Indexable Text Content – Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.
10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) – Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.
11. Global Link Popularity of Site – The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).
12. Age of Site – Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).
13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site – The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.
14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site – The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.
16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.
17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.
18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.
19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
20. Age of Link.
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Great list, well-organized. Good job of getting the basics across. It’s my estimation that if you listen to this list, you’ll save thousands of dollors on a variety of SEO tools. Just do what Franklin says and you’ll be fine!
Thanks a lot Brandon. Hopefully what I say can help some people get better search engine traffic. It is definitely better than some people are doing anyways.
Thanks for the info. That’s a lot to take in, but very worthwhile. I actually give Google credit for filtering out the artificial marketing aspect. I’ve been reading a lot of informative blog and I’d prefer to get their content from a search than that of a SEO enhanced site.
I also see that niche groups police themselves. A few of the new blogs I started reading were from recommendations from other sites inclusing this one.
~Gennaro
They are doing a lot better getting sites that are more informative on top of the search engine results. I prefer what you do, the informative blog on top instead of a search engine optimized web site.
This is an excellent outline. The information could not be more clear. I have been a good student (so I say) many of your suggestions I have implemented on my blogs and one of my websites. It WORKS! Seriously, we have hired many tech’s etc… and when you follow the information you provide its all elementary.
Thanks Laura. I’m happy my information is working for you. Especially that it makes everything more elementary. I always want everything to be as easy as possible.
This list allows us to step outside the box and think about what we need to add/remove/modify with our blogs.
Great list! It’s a lot to take in for a guy like me who is by no means an SEO specialist.
I know, there is a lot information there. But you could always just do a little bit at a time. I did a lot of trial and error and that is how I was able to get this information put together.
Great info. I’ve been starting to use more of these suggestions and it seems it is helping. Especially by using All in one SEO on my blog. I think that’s helped a lot. Next thing I will be working on backlinks. We’ll see how that helps
Backlinks will help your Blog a lot when it comes to search engine traffic. Some easy ways are by adding your articles to dofollow bookmarking sites. I have a full list in one of my articles that I recently did.
We should all print this outline out and use it every time we create a new page or post. Nice job.
Well hopefully you get some good use out of it. Thanks again Mike.
Thanks for the list, Franklin. Good stuff! This is right on point. I don’t know very much about SEO, but I know that you gave me at least 6 or 7 new things to consider and work into my search engine efforts.
Much appreciated.
Will hopefully those six or seven things will get you better search engine optimization. Then you can go and dominate the search engines.
Some good tips, you cover pretty much all of the basic SEO tips. Assuming you haven’t severely messed up your site somehow like with flash or bidvertisters sites or something, then it comes down to links. Links come from quality content and time. So typically and again I say typically popular blogs will have good SEO. Like Problogger has a PR of 6 that’s why. John Chow has a PR of 3, because he severely messed up his site.
You definitely added some good tips yourself. You never want to mess up your site with flash and other things. You’ll definitely hurt your search engine optimization. It looks like you do not have to worry about that though.
nope, the simpler the site, the better. Semilogic blog thmes google lvoes, too bad it’s ugly, but if it wasn’t I would still be using it.
Sorry about the misspellings. Your comment box is messed up.
Great tips Franklin. I will try to incorporate some of these strategies to my blod when I submit a new post
They will definitely help if you incorporate them. Just keep in the back of your mind some of these principles and you will help build a better Blog that gets search engine traffic.
A very comprehensive list. If you take the time to implement them all I am sure that you would see a major difference in your rankings. I haven’t heard of a few of these so thanks!
No problem. Hopefully they can be helpful and you can get a lot out of them. If you need any help let me know.
These are all great basic SEO. However, if you actually compare all of these factors for sites that are in the top 5 of the SERPs, you will see that each one is different. It doesn’t matter what the search term is either. It could be any keyword.
It seems to me the one thing driving popularity in google is really great content. It is the glue that makes everything else possible. You will never get high quality incoming anchored text links with any authority without fabulous relevant content.
Webmasters love original content that speaks to them, and as a result, they link to it…
Bang – up goes your popularity and relevant traffic.
Great content is doing a lot better. Links are not always easy to come by right away so you always should try to optimize all your posts in the first six months. You definitely are right about all of that though. In the end, great content always wins.
This is a really good outline. There were a few things that I didn’t know so I am glad you wrote this post. I’ll try and use a few of these for my future posts.
Hopefully they can help your posts get ranked high in search engines. There’s so much you can do which I have found out.
Thanks for the list. Exactly what I am doing to get top rankings.
Awesome! I am happy they are working for your Blog.
thanks franklin!
The great info reminded me to make a better blog rather than SEO for google.
Yes, always make a better Blog then go for search engine optimization. No one will care about your Blog they come and they don’t like it.
thanks for the great tips Franklin, wish my blog will better after this
I will definitely wish to that your Blog is better once you implement these. Good luck!
The list is very good, except it’s not in order. Recently, Google seems to have changed their weighting of keywords in the URL, going from left to right, to the point where sites with all the other items on the list covered still appear below http://www.keyword-phrase.com.
Hopefully, they’ll realize what they’ve done soon and come around.
One more thing: personally, I think link text is very important, as hinted by the inclusion of link text in Google Webmaster Tools.
You are exactly right. You gave us all really important information and thank you for adding to the post.
Nice compilation of list. Very useful for the SEO professionals. Thanks for sharing it here Franklin
Any time. Hopefully you will be able to put them to good use.
I agree with one of the previous comments. So much of it boils down to who has more and higher quality backlinks. I wonder how Google will continue to tweak its system in 2009.
It will be fun to see what they do in 2009. I still get a bunch of traffic from articles that do not have very many backlinks. It has a lot to do with the title of your posts.
Nice list. I already have bookmarked it for future reference. No.20 probably is the most overlooked fact.
It definitely is. And good for pointing that out. Hopefully other people will notice that they are overlooking it.
Nice list. I didn’t see key word meta tag. I have stopped bothering to enter those meta key words on my posts. I don’t think any major search engine recognizes them anymore. Is that right?
They can help a little bit but not even close to as much as they used to. Search engines will usually look at the title of your post and then the words in your content. They kind of match them together. So Keywords have kind of been kicked out. I myself look at the title is one of the most important things.
Hello Franklin,
I was glad to see you mentioned the post title. I know just a little about SEO but, have found that even with junk page rank I get certain post slammed by searches and I had thought it was because of the titles. That led me to using a keyword search tool to help me decide on which phrases to use with some post. So far it is getting me good results.
My daughters blog is more set with SEO standards so, I will use your list to help her double check all of these things.
Thanks for the super easy to understand list,
Sheryl
PS. I followed Brian here.
Well, thanks for following Brian here. Hopefully my articles can help you. It seems like you have been working on some of your search engine optimization. It seems as if the better your pagerank gets the better results you will get.
Excellent content here and a nice writing style too – keep up the great work!
Thanks. I just got an email today saying they hated my writing style. So it feels good to get a complement.
Really very usefull tips
Thanks a lot.
Hello Franklin
Just discovered you through a google search ( I guess you do know what your talking about) I have fallen in love with you on a technical level Franklin. Just reading two of your blogs has help me tremendously
I’m so much wiser today than yesterday.
Since starting my blog two days ago on blogger.com and opening my online vintage store at http://www.ashleygrace.etsy.com. I have been overwhelmed with technical words and concepts. It has made me feel like one of the peanut gang listening to their teacher
I will vist again and thanks for the free e-books for subscriping to you email updates
Peace
Kim
Well thank you for stopping by. If you ever need any help just contact me. I try to answer all my e-mails.
Hey Franklin that’s a good job. Your article shows that how seriously you have taken the ranking and observed so well to hit that..
The way of explaining the points is very impressive.
Thanks a lot. I have definitely researched this overtime but you always have to see what works and what doesn’t through experimentation. That’s the best way I learned anyways. Hopefully these things can help other people also.