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1. Keyword in Title Meta tag
2. Keyword in Description Meta tag
3. Keyword in Body text
4. Keyword density - 1-7%(?) - No more, no less. Results will vary. 5. Page Rank/Links - best if from related sites with higher PRs
6. Sufficient Content (Google seems to like bigger sites, more content)
7. Keyword in incoming links
8. Keyword in incoming link text
9. Keyword in text surrounding incoming link text
10. Keyword in <H1> tags
11. Keyword in outgoing links - best if to related sites with higher PRs
12. Keyword in outgoing link text
13. Keyword in text surrounding outgoing link text
14. Keyword in alt image tags
15. Keyword in bold
16. Keyword in italics
17. Keyword in domain or sub domain name
18. Keyword in keywords Meta tag
What have I listed that is not at all important?
18. Keyword in keywords Meta tag
Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag but other search engines do
What would be YOUR order of importance?
1. Keyword in Title Meta tag
2. Keyword in Description Meta tag
Keyword in <H1> tags and
keyword in <h2> tags I believe are more important
3. Keyword in Body text
not just in body, but at least once in first paragraph, again in the middle, and again at the end of the body text
4. Keyword density - 1-7%(?) - No more, no less. Results will vary.
I would agree with Brett that up to 20% is optimum, and I think 1% is just too low. Generic words hit 1% too easily for any importance to be attached to this low a density. I try for 5% to just under 20% myself
5. Page Rank/Links - best if from related sites with higher PRs
6. Sufficient Content (Google seems to like bigger sites, more content)
I think content is more important than PR links. Without quality content, you won't get links, but you can get good ranking without links if you have good content
7. Keyword in incoming links
8. Keyword in incoming link text
9. Keyword in text surrounding incoming link text
11. Keyword in outgoing links - best if to related sites with higher PRs
12. Keyword in outgoing link text
13. Keyword in text surrounding outgoing link text
14. Keyword in alt image tags
15. Keyword in bold
16. Keyword in italics
hard to tell whether bold/italics would be more important than links, but I would definately include one bold keyword and one italic keyword on each page
17. Keyword in domain or sub domain name
I think it is more important to have the page/folder names include the keyword for that page and category. If you have one primary root keyword that covers your entire site, then using it in the domain won't hurt IMHO.
Deb
A page with no text except a back to main gallery link.
The page only has one picture on it, the title of the page reads jap widgets and the alt text for the image reads line up of widgets. I have had alot of hits for line up of jap widgets from Google. In the search the Google snippet, it shows the alt text as being used for the search.
This has only started in the last month or so (took a while to get Google to go into all the images and crawl them), I have not seen the alt text used in this way before, I know it does happen, just I havent seen it ;)
Craig
etc....
You can forget the rest, unless you're very very close in raking to a competitor and you just want to nose above. The rest of your list will not make *major* changes, *but* they are all good SEO and should also be done. But most importantly make your page really easy to read, even at the expense of the other SEO options on your original list such as bold, italic etc.
If you want to make your big jump in the SERPS, the above are the ones to get right. Even if you ignore the others, your site will still do very well in Google.
TJ
Keyword in URL (not necessarily domain name)
In my own experience I would rate keywords in the domain name as being more important than the URL of the page. Not saying that the url of the page isnt important, because it is ;)
Craig
In my own experience I would rate keywords in the domain name as being more important than the URL of the page.
This is my experience too Craig. The point I wanted to make was "don't worry too much if your already established domain doesn't have a googleable keyword in it". Go for second best with shoving the keywords in the URL's.
I agree with you though - keyword.com counts for a lot - but inbound anchor text does top it. I saw "keyword.com" get knocked off the top by "brandname.com" after a lot of work getting inbounds with anchor text, and it occurred at the same point at which "allinanchor:keyword" also showed brandname.com at #1. PR on both sites was the same (accepted that we're looking at whole numbers though of course).
So if google is giving a bias toward keyword.com, I don't think it's by very much.
On a practical level of course, with keyword.com you can't fail to get anchor text inbounds. And that can be handy. How many of the sites that link to you mispell your name or keywords?!
TJ
What exactly do you mean here? What sort of "hard to read" things would a Googlebot be able to pick up on? Bad grammar?! Keyword stuffing I could see, but what else for example?
Thanks.
SN
What exactly do you mean here? What sort of "hard to read" things would a Googlebot be able to pick up on? Bad grammar?! Keyword stuffing I could see, but what else for example?
LOL
I was talking about your *users*! Humans use websites too you know!
The point is, don't try and cram the little SEO things in there at the expense of readability. Get the title, anchor text inbounds and H1, 3 and 2 tags right and you're 90% there anyway (assuming you have good content of course).
TJ
1. Keyword in Title Meta tag3. Keyword in Body text
8. Keyword in incoming link text
Most of the SEO is taken care of with these above 3 parameters (in combination with actual page rank). As said earlier the other factors come into play only if there is a very close neck to neck competition.
19) Keywords in Dmoz listing either in anchor text or description are also a factor.
Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag but other search engines do
That would not be entirely true because they have said in past that they do use Keywords Meta Tags in rare instances (like when the page has only graphics or is a flash only page).
HTH :)
Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag but other search engines do
I've never used them in keyword meta tags and do pretty darned good with the search engines that count. I've found they do a darned good job with snippets in the description after the title in search results. But having the content is the key the way I see it. Which SE's should I be thinking about with keyword tags? Still a newbie and learning.
I too have been noticing alt text being helpful.
Gus
Number 3 should be change something on all your pages every day. Freshbot is your friend. Fresh content seems to be king.
I'm not sure where to put it but PDF's seem to rank good these days.
Also keep your pages small and fast loading.
If you ain't in when Googlebot comes calling, she'll give you a couple of goes, and then you are going to drop like a hot potato.
Number 3 should be change something on all your pages every day. Freshbot is your friend. Fresh content seems to be king.
Yep, good one ogletree, forgot about that.
TJ
Freshbot is your friend
I've had freshie index new pages but that hasn't happened for at least a month. I have several new pages added since the last update, but freshbot isn't doing what it did before. Any ideas why?
Craig
Just wonderin'
Hope all this does not generate Google anti-SEO algorithms.
Getting harder to do that. You could look at the things discussed here more as "good design principles for a webpage".
Google penalising in their algorythm for accurate page titles, good anchor text and H1 tags?
I suspect not.
Of course, if you have a site about shiny red widgets and you go for "matt blue widgets" in titles, anchors and H1's then google's little banning bot probably has his eye on you......
And quite right too.
TJ
4. Keyword density - 1-7%(?) - No more, no less. Results will vary.
I would agree with Brett that up to 20% is optimum, and I think 1% is just too low. Generic words hit 1% too easily for any importance to be attached to this low a density. I try for 5% to just under 20% myself
When evaluating keywords and competition for them in Google since Esmerelda I've seen top ranked pages with keyword density anywhere from the mid 30% to mid 40%. 1-7%? Yeah,sure. And Alexa is still the fourth most visited site on the web. ;-)
Exactly how is keyword density calculated?
Search Google for "keyword density". Several tools will show up for doing this.
Number 3 should be change something on all your pages every day. Freshbot is your friend. Fresh content seems to be king.
Why would I change all of my pages? It should be enough to "update" the home page once a week. On Linux servers the Recently Modified thing lasts 3 days. As far as SEO goes,you want the home page to be the one seen first and most. Keep two versions of the home page on your machine. Upload the other version once or twice a week and the freshbot should see it. If you wanted to you could have two sets of all of your pages. Then it is just a matter of uploading either one or the other.
2. Use appropriate titles to help get the attention of the user when they see you in the SERPs.
3. Provide an attractive, fast loading page so that you don't lose the user before your page finishes loading.
4. Provide good, easy to follow navigation. it helps both the user and the SE.
5. Make sure that your site is worth linking to. See all of the above.
6. Never write with only the SEs in mind. If it does not read well to a HUMAN, then that high listing is just wasting everyone's time.
The above items give you what Google would really prefer to be able to serve up to their users in the ideal world. When the Google hackers are tweaking the algo, they will be happiest to see sites like that on the front page.
Only when you have all of the above in good order should you worry about things like keyword density.
Hope all this does not generate Google anti-SEO algorithms.
I suspect this is occuring already. How many top 10 results have no keywords in the titles or headings.
I am seeing an increasing amount over the last 4 weeks.
Time to re-write the SEO bible.
