What is the smallest thing you have done that has made a ranking difference?

[Mark_A]

I suppose for me, just playing with inclusion of some terms into a couple of pages has vastly improved our ranking for them..

What are your smallest changes - which lead to improved rankings?

[aakk9999]

Changed language of the home page from local language of the country the client is based to English as their market is European. The site already run in 6 languages and it only needed a parameter switch on the database for this change to be effective.

The number of the long tail keywords that were driving traffic to the site doubled within 4 weeks.

This small parameter change had effect in changing the site structure so that English language pages in main navigation were now one click from home rather than 2 clicks from home as they were previously.

[rowtc2]

Adding H1 tags.

I didn't understand the logic of H1 tag for a search engine, because is not visible for users (H1 can be stylized via CSS).For me H1 is the same with Keywords metatag.But looks it matters in rankings.

[epmaniac]

2. Note the common phrases of 2 to 5 words - this text analysis can be programmed, but you do end up with a lot of "phrases" that don't make sense.

tedster, can you recommend the best tool to do text analysis with? thanks

[tedster]

epmaniac, I'd say first get the idea of co-occurrence [webmasterworld.com] solidly in your mind. Then make observations using your own brain power rather than looking for a tool or trying to program it.

The ability to extract meaningful phrases with a program is rather complex - see Google's patent about phrase-based indexing [appft1.uspto.gov] to get an idea of what you're up against.

Google Code has an article about how to extract phrases [nltk.googlecode.com] from a corpus of text. If that makes your eyes go crossed the way it does mine, you'll see why I gave the advice I did. And remember, you've got to be VERY careful with this stuff! It's not the latest SEO magic button.

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@rowtc2 - what made the idea of H1 tag fall into place for you? Any special details about how you ended up adding it?

[rowtc2]

@rowtc2 - what made the idea of H1 tag fall into place for you? Any special details about how you ended up adding it?

The website was created by a programmer without SEO or usability input. I have studied many lists with ranking factors and implemented on page.

When i have tried H1 it was looking ugly in browser without CSS formatting. i have used html font size for titles in content, because in that time i didn't know CSS.

I was busy with some penalties and in time has recovered and doing well after hard work on content and links.

6 months ago, reading often on forums about this tag, i have reminded to implement it. For each widget i have 2 pages: "red widget keyword1" and "keyword2 red widget". Added H1 on these pages and traffic has increased constantly in next period better than periods before. Also i have applied this on my brother's website with the same good effects. I have 30k visits per day.

There are many simple pages with useful informations, made without SEO knowledge and deserve to be in results. An amateur can see if his page is not relevant in browser like other internet pages, if description of his page is not relevant in search results etc and can take measures. But H1 is hidden, is for search engine, like keywords. He can add font sizes with the same look.


Now i think H1 important for people with disabilities, who can't see and helps them to surf webpages. Also, is an instrument for webmaster to tell Google the page structure (after H1 implementation i have added H2,H3 with no significant effects :) ).

[aakk9999]

But H1 is hidden, is for search engine, like keywords. He can add font sizes with the same look.

Do you mean that in HTML you can see <h1> tag, but whatever the text is in <h1> in HTML does not appear in the page? E.g. do you use display:none or similar?

Unless I have misunderstood what you say, I do not think this is a good idea as it is cloaking and you may be found sooner or later and penalised. If you have <h1> then you should display it on the page and use CSS styling to make sure that it visually looks good on the page.

[rowtc2]

aakk9999, i mean is no difference for user if a text is in H1 or font size, i didn't understand that. Since can use font size to make the same look, why Google want H1? Is only a communication in source code between webmaster and spider.

But it looks is useful for impaired people (accessibility).

[tedster]

The roots of the H1 tag are deep in academic concepts of page structure. The idea is that you start with a document - and that naturally means there is a heading and usually subheadings. So when you prepare that document for sharing on the web, then you "mark it up" to show that structure by using HyperText Mark-up Language.