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Lets do some refreshing work, what exactly helps in google positoning (#1 dream). I request all others to share experiences.
Tips 1 Url choosing
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kw1-kw2.com is better than kw1kw2.com
Lets share other factors
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1)what is optimum keyword density?
2)short title is better or longer?
3)which one is better "kw1 kw2" or just "kw1" as anchor text for kw1?
4)having h1, h2,h3, h4 for kw1 will help or just h1 and h2 is more effective?
5)what is the penalty for duplicate contents?
6)what is the weigtage given to links?
many more......... ask questions and give answers. lets learn as much as possible from others experience.share whatever you seems will help others. give an increment to tips number.
Hope to see a very useful thread here. All geeks lets help each other.
Thanks
Aji
the only page that has incoming links is the home page, The only links to inside pages on my sites are my own links. But the inside pages are properly optimised.
I have seen that many people has this doubt, let me the frame the question for experts.
1)home page: I am optimizing for "kw1-kw2","kw1-kw2-kw3" only.
2)/kw1-kw4.html I am optimizing for "kw1-kw4".
So should I have incoming links to both the pages, like
(A)<a href='http://www.kw1kw2kw3.com'>kw1 kw2 kw3</a>
(B)<a href='http://www.kw1kw2kw3.com/kw1-kw4.html'>kw1 kw4</a>
(A) is sufficent, just link the inside pages from the home page which has good incoming links.
Please clear this confusion.
Aji
I'm with Googleguy - Content matters.
Links are garnish.
While content is part of a balanced diet, I think links have a little more food value than parsley.
Many of those inside pages come number one for their optimised keywords, but the one thing they DON'T have is carefully selected incoming links, text or anything else. All the incoming links are identical, courtesy of a Dreamweaver template.
So there are still 'incoming links'. :)
So there are still 'incoming links'. :)
Of course - otherwise the visitors would never find them :-)
My point (or my pint, as I first typed), was that all external links are to my home page, so the number of links to the interior of my site is small, and the link text not always very helpful (because it has to be brief enough to fit in the Navigation part of each page).
Notwithstanding that, I can get good results on a phrase like blue widgets, when the only links to the page (and it's number 1 in the SERPS) have words like "on-line shop". I was making the counter argument that content is important too :-)
DerekH
And if you are talking about pages with only your own links, then by definition "content" is not being valued at all. The text on the page could be just gibberish words.
I have not checked but i would suspect the other listings on this page at least have one of the keywords for the phrase in anchor text.
What are the results for allinanchor:keyphrase ?
I know it's only a test page, which is why I put "competitors" in quotes. Could provide some useful info - but to really show anything (even though we can predict the results) we need a little more info....
TJ
(A)<a href='http://www.kw1kw2kw3.com'>kw1 kw2 kw3</a>
(B)<a href='http://www.kw1kw2kw3.com/kw1-kw4.html'>kw1 kw4</a>
Do we need these two to get both pages a better SERP?
Next topic which always have bothered me.
How much does the outgoing links effect my PR and SERP?
Linking to relevent government sites( or any good site for my customer, like xyz analysis site) from each article page without a reciprocal link. Is this a positive move with respect to SE? I am worried as number of outgoing links has a effect on my PR.
Lets share some thoughts.
Thanks for helping all of us learn.
Aji
My personal view about outgoing (and internal) links and SERP's is that anchor text words are weighted slightly more than standard text and as such do help a little in the SERP's - but of course think of your users, i link to useful sites for my users, making sure i include keyword in the anchor text.
As for PR, my understanding is that if your page has a PR of 4 and you have four links (internal or external) each of the pages will get passed PR4 / 4 links = PR1 passed (nearer 1 * 0.85 which is a slight dampening multiplier), now if you add a link, PR4 / 5 links = PR 0.8 passed. Adding links only dilutes that amount of PR each link passes, internally or externally - there's a long thread here [webmasterworld.com...] about external links and PR.
Quick (unrelated) question: if I change a meta tag title and also add hypenhs between kws in url for a page, does that "start the clock over" on my page, meaning that I drop from serps and have to wait til next update?
No. PR is logarithmic. Assuming a base of 6, with 4 links on the page and the damping factor, each page linked to will be more like PR3.
OK, I stand corrected :)
I did a redesign of an indexed site that was *very* hard to find in the SERPs. The content is now extensive, and targeted, and the keywords are skillfully placed throughout each relevant page, etc.
When the changes were first picked up the site hit #3 in the SERPs below less relevant pages (which to me counts as #1) but because it had no incomming links it has dropped to #7.
I've started the link campaign and now I'm up to #1 for real, and it's not falling.
So if "Anchor Text" is king, has "Content" become queen? ;)
Content is a mass of Pawns. Absolutely critical in the strategy and you can't win without them, but not the main guidance or hard core players as far as google is concerned. But if google catches you without them, it'll be check-mate very rapidly.
If you want to win the game though, you need a full set.
TJ
Ridding the Serp's of unscrupulous companies
EW
I will say that it is about 35% responsible for your placement (with everybodies permission).
Content is the queen, but what is content? Now lets clear this concept. Lets say I have a website for xyz product, i can have only 5 really good pages and also I can have 500 pages with all crap(but for google good content, as the pages are full of relevent words).
What is content, is it from customers point of view or from SE's? I think SE just loves relevent words thats all, more you have better it is.
Lets discuss what do everybody mean by the real content.
Thanks
Aji
in other words, if I am searching for 'how to build a fuzzy widget' then I want to find instructions, or examples.
what I don't want to find is someone who is selling credit applications, or viagra but has pictures of fuzzy widgets and a mound of nearly hidden text below the fold that says:
widget, fuzzy widget, brass widget, square widget, more widgets, widgeting, widgeteer, etc.
to me that's crap. unfortunately it does get a good rank now and then.
If I had one suggestion for Google it would be to drop any page that has more than 4 commas between any one set of tags.
By all means, make sure if you optimize, to include all the on-page factors, but that's usually a 2 minute task at worst. It's the off-page factors that are going to make a real difference once you've got that done.
For competitive terms, anchor text is king, because you are focusing on exactly that term. PR can be harder to get beyond around 6-7, but tends to come somewhat with getting anchor text.
For less competitive terms, which is where I find most traffic to come from for my sites, since I don't really optimize for specific terms very much, PR is king, because when it's a mention of a random term that no-one is optimizing for, then you won't find pages with anchor text/title/etc... for that term existing. That means that besides happening to have the term on one of your pages, the most important element becomes the PR of that page.
For PR, I prefer incoming links from places with few outgoing links and lots of PR.
Since that's easier said then done, significant benefit can also come from just any old link, as long as it's not from a spammy neighborhood.
I'm still experimenting between send all links to homepage, then let site structure push the PR around to the other pages, or get deeplinks balanced all over the site. I don't see either making a big difference to the total PR of all the pages, but the deeplink method is both harder to do and more beneficial for anchor text. I'm still not sure the extra difficulty is worth the extra benefits.
I'd like to mention the level of competition, and i'm not speaking about how many results are in the SERPS here - i've seen SERPS with double digit million results that i would say had very low competition.
To rank high you simply have to do a better job than those ranking lower than you, and that can be on anything from getting better content to getting more links or whatever. In SEO'ed areas it's all about doing more work than the others.
In the heavy competition areas of gambling, pr0n and drugs(*) etc, quite a few sites are heavily optimized, and there's only that much difference you can make on-site. In these areas, content will not do it. You'll have to get links as well. Possibly you'll have to use every last trick of the trade and even that will only get you so far.
On the other hand, in the typical "fuzzy-green-widget" case not many sites will be optimized, so you'll do good with less links and quite possibly on content alone.
So... SEO's are really the folks who are pushing the borders here - the more we optimize, the more it takes. It's that simple.
/claus
[edited by: claus at 10:07 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2003]
85% would be low.
Where anchor text exists, it is almost all about anchor text.
Where anchor text doesn't exist, other factors like page title and PR and words on a page decide.
As much as newbies and everyone else might wish other stuff mattered, from a strictly SEO point of view, raw volume of anchor text is what gets good positions (again, where anchor text exists).
SEO is still very much a "cat and mouse game". If your the cat in the equation, your not going to help yourself very much by repeatedly yelling at the mouse "hey I know where you are and here I come to get you"...the stealthy cat get's the mouse, and Google is one fat juicy mouse. I'm not suggesting censorship or selfishness either, just plain common sense.
According to me.
Inbound link text (anchor text): 35%.
title: 10 %
domain name: 5%
large h1-h2 headings: 7%
first sentence of first paragraph 8%
path or filename: 5%
proximity (multi kws): 5%
beginning of a sentence 3%
bold or italic text: 3%
usage in text: 3%
title attribute: 3%
alt tag: 2%
meta descrip: 1%
meta keywords: 1%
rest: 9%
I am new to this realm, so correct me if I am wrong
Aji
Aji, it seems you are looking for absolutes
not exactly, Even at this point of view, I feel that SERP is all about anchor text, but still some other points helps.
I have another doubt
(A) Does H1, H2 is sufficient, Like first H1 then H2. Or should I have H1, H2, H3 and H4? Right now I am doing experiment on this issue.
(B) should I have "kw1 kw2" in bold most of the time? Also some italics and normal but mainly bold.
This is particular field where I have no Idea at all, hope my experiments give some good results.
Thanks
Aji
(C)Does size of the page also affect SERP? Does it include image size or it just include the text size? What is the theory behind it?
please shed some light on (A)(B) and (C).
Thanks
Aji
I would say google is hip to al of those linkfarms on the bottoms of pages.
I am waiting for it, as these three (A),(B) and (C) had bothered me a lot. So If someone can answer these silly question it will be better for all newbies.
I would say google is hip to al of those linkfarms on the bottoms of pages.
Thanks
Aji
At the moment, it's anchor text and page titles. You don't really need to know more than that. At the moment.
Just get those two right and design the rest of the page to look good to humans and offer them the info they're after.
The latter part of that sentence will always hold true. The former part will no doubt change and in six months time we'll all be talking about H1 tags again or possibly something exciting like themes and contextual linking.
All those PhD's must be busy doing something...
TJ
