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How Search Engines Treat Links versus On Page Factors

And what this means to your link development efforts

         

Crush

9:15 pm on Jul 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



How much are on page factors good for serps these days in the era of links being the most critical factor.

I just posted that in copywriting section but maybe here is more suited.

martinibuster

9:53 pm on Jul 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



For Google, I think the links mean a lot, although insite linkage patterns seem to hold some weight, which counts as on-page factor.

I think less so with Yahoo and MSN. I'm a fan of MSN because they seem to be hitting a reasonable balance between links and on-page factors.

Google and Yahoo are on extreme opposite sides in the way they handle on-page factors as well as links, imo.

So in terms of Link Development, I try to concentrate on finding a site that msnbot and slurp like in order to get squeezed through their front door. You can call it a quality site or a site with good backlinks.

Anyone else have thoughts about this?

nuevojefe

10:35 pm on Jul 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



MSN still loves sitewides from what I've seen.

Crush

9:41 am on Jul 15, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Talking more about keyword density on the page rather than sitewides. We just removed a load of links from a big travel site because we thought it was overkill and a lot of other travel sites have tanked because of this as well IMO.

I noticed recently that we took away some text from a page and it dropped even though we had zillion of links with good anchor pointing at it. So from that i deduce that on page factors still have some weight even if you have lots of inbounds.

sit2510

10:16 am on Jul 15, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



>>> Google and Yahoo are on extreme opposite sides in the way they handle on-page factors as well as links, imo.

With respect MB, I think they are quite on the same side regarding Links. In my opinion, Yahoo appeared to come to the point in handling links where G used to stand before Florida, but Google has leaped forward by several miles. In other words, how you can achieve high ranking in Google in the past, you have good opportunity to rank high in Yahoo, using those old techniques. I could be wrong but that is what I saw and felt in my niche.

DaveAtIFG

1:59 am on Jul 16, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yahoo appeared to come to the point in handling links where G used to stand before Florida
That's my sense too. For me, a high volume of links from diverse sources weighs heavily. I don't do link exchanges or join link networks and have had good success on Yahoo with clean white hat sites, some in fairly competitive areas. Unlike pre-Florida Google, they MAY target/punish for obvious link spam, but I can't say. Anyone?

MSN seems to favor directory links in my experience. Haven't yet narrowed it to which directories but the MSN Small Biz Directory is probably a given.

Marcia

3:01 am on Jul 16, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>I'm a fan of MSN because they seem to be hitting a reasonable balance between links and on-page factors.

Me too, a big fan, I'm very impressed with them - though they're still kind of like trying to aim for a moving target.

I've got sites ranking very nicely in MSN that are about as link-deprived as it can get, but yet with looking at how some pages are ranking they'll probably move up when a few quality IBLs are added.

Meantime, IMHO those sites won't get any rankings in Google until there's a good number of links.

neuron

4:37 pm on Jul 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



How much are on page factors good for serps these days in the era of links being the most critical factor.
I would estimate that only about 20% of a page's ranking comes from on-page factors. I have seen SERPs where on-page opt make the difference between #1 and #2. Some people still think on-page SEO should be enough to make them rank #1. One of the nice things about on-page factors only playing a minor role in a page's ranking is that it allows good content to come to the front, because people tend to link to good content much more so than to poor content.

PageRank is around 25%, and anchor text is around 25%, and linking page/site topic may account for another 25% or so. Something like Title of the page linking to you could probably have a 0 to 5% value, as might the repetition or reoccurance of a keyterm of your anchor text somewhere else in the linking document, as might the strength of the linking site's overall thematic simularity.

Of course, these values may vary with the variation of other values, and of course, the SEs all count things differently.

silverbytes

1:30 am on Jul 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I think no one know certainly the answer. Google ranks #1 a site in my sector with pr2 while other pr5 sites are below them. That tells me links means nothing to google compared with other factors.
The Web is full of examples like that. I don't think their complex algo gives a 90% importance to links but again nobody can tell exactly.
Didn't noticed MSN or Yahoo links weight really.

Swebbie

3:45 am on Jul 24, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



MSN clearly value on-page factors much more so than Google for their SERPs. I have a couple of newer sites that have very few inbound links, and they rank on the first page at MSN for very competitive phrases.

I really think MSN is the search engine of the future. As a searcher, I'm finding much more relevant results there in the last 2 months or so than at G or Y. They big brains at Microsoft seem to have struck upon the best balance, if their SERPs are any indication these days.