How Many Ranking Factors Does Google Use in Their SEO Algorithm?

The reason why search engine optimization is so complicated is that there may be 100 or more factors included in Google’s ranking algorithm. This is probably why many people seem to be touting many different strategies these days. My goal in this article is to explain what I think are the main ranking factors you’re going to need to pay attention to and respect.

Since SEO is split up into two main categories, on-page and off-page SEO, I’ll be splitting them up too. I’m not necessarily ranking them in order of value because nobody really knows for sure which hold the most value. However, it is important for you to try to heed all of them.

On-Page SEO Factors:

1) Keyword in the Title Tag
2) Keyword in the URL
3) Keyword in the H1 Header
4) Keyword in the description
5) Keyword used at least 3% on page and first 100 words of html
6) Page linked to from other pages of the site with keyword in anchor text, links to other pages on the site, and links to external sites
7) Substantive content existent on the page
Recent page and content creation
9) Site “crawlability” by Google spiders

Off-Page SEO Factors:

1) Quantity and “quality” of the backlinks to the page
2) Keyword usage in the anchor text of backlinks
3) Link diversity – domains, IPs, countries, and extensions
4) Total quantity and quality of links to the domain
5) Total number of indexed pages on the domain
6) Directory listings in the Yahoo Directory and dmoz.org
7) PageRank
Domain age (especially as it applies to brand new domains)

These are the main factors you need to concern yourself with now and as you go along in your SEO training, it will behoove to understand the specifics of each category and which other factors may apply to your site.

What is interesting about the algorithm is that there seems to be an extreme amount of weight put onto certain items and these items can actually outweigh the others completely. For example, there is only so much you can do when it comes to on-page optimization. But you can always continue to build thousands of quality backlinks to a page and that factor may come to outweigh everything else. In fact, I’ve seen a page rank #2 for a keyword with 21 million competing pages and a title of “Page Not Found.” After researching the issue, it was clear that the number of backlinks to the page was allowing the page to rank very highly.

Overall, it is probably best to try to implement all of the above techniques because many of them are easy to do and have proven to be of SEO significance at some point in time.

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Suffocating Your Keyword

Keywords are the key to the way your writing is presented to the internet whether it is writing a blog, an article or content for your webpage. It is possible to not have enough of your keyword in what you written and on the other hand when you are conscience of the need of having keywords in what you write then you tend to suffocate your keywords by having too many.

You may think you can never have too many keywords but when the spider crawls your content it can end of choking to death on too many keywords meaning your site will be rejected as being spammy or artificial. I will now offer an explanation on keyword density, educating you as to what is and is not OK in the way of peppering your writing with keywords. I have mentioned density here which is to mean the number of times your key word appears in what you have written.

The word processor you use for writing will likely have a word counter (I use Microsoft Word and I has one) so to make the best of what I am presenting here it will be assumed that you have the ability to count words. Moving forward with keyword density, keyword density is the percentage of your keyword to the number of words in what you have written. With all of the talk of keyword density you probably are wondering what the accepted density is. When your concern is the search engines if your density is 3% to 5% you should have no problems. Another area to be aware of is when writing articles and submitting them to an article directory, their tolerance may be lower like around 2% max, but they will not leave you guessing, the article directory will let you know exactly what their parameters are.

To help you in determining what your density is; we will assume that your word counter shows that you have 400 words and using a keyword density 0f 3% you should not have you keyword appearing more than 12 times. This is not a total for your total website but it is just for the unique web page, blog or article.

When I want to check and see how many times I have used my key word I will select the search and replace function of the word processor, but first I will save my completed work so this operation won’t produce a hosed up piece of work. Once the work has been saved and I have selected the search and replace option I will use my keyword as what to search for and then in the replace option I will use “KEYWORD” as it is show here exactly so I have a visual of the replacement and when the operation is done the replace option will report that it had replaced 9 words in my 400 word content. Doing the math here of dividing 9 by 400 will give you the result of 2.25% keyword density which is acceptable for the search engines.

About the Author: John T Adams is your everyday type of internet guy who has made money from the internet with internet marketing. Come learn how you can do it too at my website.

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Keyword Usage For Maximum SEO

The first place to use your keywords, and the easiest way to get a search engine “bump”, is to choose a domain name that includes your best keywords. Simply find a domain that is as short as possible and includes you best keyword phrase. This can be overdone if you try too hard; be sure that the domain name is also human friendly (not just “search engine spider” friendly).

The next place to insert your keywords is in the title and description tags. If you have a wordpress.org blog this is easy to do because you just enter the title and description of each page using the SEO plug-in.

The title and description are important for two reasons. One, they will be visible to your audience in the search engine results. And they will ALWAYS be spidered by the search engines.

If you know some HTML or know what a “source code” page is then you can easily locate the title and description tags and insert your keyword-precise title and description for your website.

If you don’t have any idea about HTML or websites that’s fine, just create a condensed title and description and tell your website developer or programmer to add them to your website. (You will do this for your homepage as well as each additional page. Each page can be, and should, be optimized for a certain keyword phrase.)

Along with the title and description tags, there are also ‘meta tags’. These are not visible anywhere, but instead are only seen by the spiders.

They are not as important for Google as they once were, but still important for other search engines. All you do for these is list your best keywords in order of importance and add them to your website under the appropriate “tag”.

The next “hidden” place you should put your keywords is in image file names and “alt text”. As you know every file has a name and images are no different. Use your keywords as they apply when naming your images.

The “alt text” for your image is just the description of the image that people will see who have a text-only browser. Use your keywords as they apply because the spiders will pick up these keywords too!

Another area to place your keywords is in the “H” tags. These are also code and are labeled 1, 2, 3 and so on. The H1 tag is viewed as the most important by the search engines, as it should because these tags also dictate the size of the text on the page. H1 would be considered a headline and H2 a sub-headline and so on.

And last, but not least, you need to use your keywords in the content of your page. Each article or post should use the keyword you would like to optimize it for once in the title or headline (H1), once again in the first 50 words of the page and then at about a 2-3% frequency throughout the page.

The important part with this is to be sure that it reads well for your human viewers and not just the search engine spiders!

Be sure to use your keywords in these places on every page of your website and you will soon be pulling in tons of FREE traffic! That is if you have chosen the right keywords for your business.

Shawn Hutchison is the CEO of Online Unlimited, LLC, an online marketing company that specializes in keyword selection and ethical, sustainable, and free website traffic strategies.

Learn everything about selecting profitable keywords in this free DVD: “7 Secrets to Creating a Profitable Keyword List “.

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On Page Search Engine Optimization Elements

On-page SEO is very important for website ranking in the search engines. There are four main considerations when considering an on-page SEO strategy: title tags, meta tags, keyword usage and good content.

In HTML, the title tag is denoted and must include primary keywords in its description. Meta tags describe the contents of a website. The two primary meta tags from a SEO point of view are meta description and meta keywords. Meta description is very important to control the SERPs description of a website. The description tag should tell the reader what the page is about. Use primary keywords in the description tag. This will help achieve a higher SERPs and higher click through rates (CTR). Meta keywords also indicate to the search engines what the website is about but are only displayed in the website HTML code. Meta keywords are important for optimization and site indexing and their use should be limited to 3 keyword variations per page.

Keyword usage determines how website content are used throughout website text. Content is the main indicator for search engines to determine topical relevance of a web page. It is important to match specific keywords with specific pages. Limit each page to three to five main keywords and add new content from time-to-time (250-500 words). Adding new content to a website is very important; moreover, It will increase linking and more website visibility.

On-page SEO serves as a starting point when a website is first developed. When done properly, it is a simple and effective SEO technique to rank higher in the SERPs. Follow proper on-page SEO guidelines to achieve a better website ranking and user experience.

James Smith is a SEO Consultant and Internet Marketer. For more information please visit: http://www.LearnSEM.net

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Using Keywords to Boost Search Engine Optimization

Proper keyword usage is a determining factor in your online success and website presence. The objective of using keywords to boost Search Engine Optimization is to organically (naturally) rank high in Google and the other search engines. Effective search engine optimization (SEO) along with proper keyword usage will help to accomplish this goal

Keyword research helps determine the phrases and terms that are being used to find the content and products that you want to deliver. Once you have this information, the next step is to make sure you are using the relevant keywords and phrases on your site and in your content.

So now that you have your keywords, how do you use them and where do you place them? For awhile, everyone emphasized using keywords in the Meta tags in the HTML. Although it may not carry as much weight as it used to, it’s still a worthwhile strategy to use meta keywords.

Keyword placement is not a one size fits all strategy and has a lot to do with the type of page you are building. For Web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo, Hub Pages or Google’s Knol, it is suggested that the keywords be in URL you register, in the titles, subtitles, written content and in any tagging space that they allow you to fill in.

It’s also beneficial to have the keyword in your URL when working with blog posts. Although in order for this to work, you will need to be using a blog template that allows you to change the permalink structure of individual blog posts. To be sure, look in the settings to see if you can change the permalink for your particular blog post.

There are many blogs that will assign a blog post a number such as this: yourblogname.com/?p=123. In this case, you will need to select a custom structure and enter the code: /%postname%.html – this will make your blog post URL appear with the title of the post, where your keywords will be, like this: yourblogname.com/title-of-blog-post.

Be sure to use your keywords in all of your content. Plan on using your keyword in the first paragraph and if possible, within the first sentence. Google will reward you for doing this by bolding the keyword if the keyword used matches the keyword searched.

While there is some debate about keyword density (recommendations range from 2% to 10%) you want to write for both human visitors and the search engine spiders. Be sure your content reads smoothly and makes sense, but still contains enough keywords to get the ranking you desire.

No better time like the present to learn more about Search Engine Keywords

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From Andrea Chin an online marketing consultant passionate about helping small businesses and entrepreneurs market themselves more effectively to boost their business and produce more profits.

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