February 21st, 2010
We need to talk about how a search engine works. It sends a robot out to read each page on your site. As it reads the page, it will evaluate it and try to figure out what it’s about. It won’t keep a copy of the page in the search index. It will only keep a score of specific words and phrases that it finds and deems important.
It’s not a human, so it can only guess, using calculations based on what it finds. What does it find and what is important? How would you determine what a page is about?
Tip Number One - Just say it!
I just looked at a potential client’s site. They wanted to know how much it would cost to SEO their site. As I looked at the front page, I wasn’t quite sure what the site was really about. I knew the general industry they were in, but not where they were located and this was a very location specific business.
How many time have you looked at a web page and not quite known what it was about? There were a lot of sales talk mumbo jumbo, but they didn’t tell you exactly what the product or service was.
Tip Number One – Just say it!
If people don’t know what your page is about, how do you expect search engines to know? You need to indicate, with no doubt, no ambiguity, what this page is about. You need to tell people and you need to tell search engines with focus and clarity.
You know what people take their cues from, because you a people. What do search engines take their cues from, not being as smart and nuanced as us humans?
Here are some ways they decide what the page is about:
This is not keyword density.
There’s a term, “keyword density”, that refers to how may times you use the keyword in relationship to how many other words there are on the page. It’s not really as valuable as it once was, but you need to keep it in mind. It does make sense that if you want to be found for a keyword that it should be on the page.
Something that matters a bit more is the use of heading tags. Those <h1> and <h2> tags that are usually used to make copy bigger and bolder. Google sees them in a different way. They are seen as giving the page organization. A heading defines a section of a page, so they must be important. If the heading has the keyword, then the page must be about that keyword. The trick here is that the style for the heading is usually way too big. Change the style sheet to make them look normal or at least reasonable, then use headings to control what’s important on the page.
“Anchor Text” is the actual text that you click on on a web page to take you to another place. You can click on images or text, but the text that you actually click on is called “anchor text”. I said that twice because it’s important. Think about this. When you click on a link that says “bicycle seats”, what do you expect to find at the target page? That’s right. So search engines, being stupider than a normal human, figure that the anchor text used somewhere else to link to YOUR page, must indicate what your page is about. That seems to be a pretty good indicator of what your site should be ranked for in the search engines.
It now becomes critical what anchor text people use to link to your site from their site. All you have to do is change the anchor text on their sites. Oh, wait. You can’t do that. It’s on THEIR site, not yours. You have no control over their site. You might be screwed.
This is where the post on Building Links comes in handy. There are ways to get links to your site and control what the anchor text says.
The next thing that a search engine will use to figure out what to rank your site for is the number of links to your site, to your page. They actually score each page, but they know that those pages are on your site, so your site might, probably will, get ranked higher than an individual page for a keyword. If you can just blast out a huge number of links to your site, that will help.
If you can just blast out a huge number of links to your site, that will help.
Unless it hurts. If you get 5 new links a week, that’s normal and reasonable. If you then get 4,597 links in one week, that’s a little odd. We need to look into that a little closely. You must be gaming the system somehow, so those links won’t count. You need to sit in the corner and take a time out while we figure this out. Now you’re crying like a little girl. There, there, now now.
The last factor that I want to cover here is the page rank of those pages that do link to you. Google is putting more weight into what they are calling “authority”. A few links from a high authority site is worth a lot more than a ton of links from a low authority site. I’m not sure how to tell which is which, but larger, established, long term sites will be higher on the authority spectrum. Try to get links from these kinds of sites.
All of these factors get thrown into a big ‘ol bucket of numbers and they score your page for different keywords or phrases. When someone searches on a specific keyword or phrase, the look at all of the pages that have scores for those keywords and compare them. Whatever page has the highest score at the moment gets the top ranking. Some keywords get thousands, or millions, of searches a day. Some keywords have thousands, or millions, of pages that mention them. How does your site compare?
If you search for “does wordpress cost money” or “how much does wordpress cost” or even “wordpress cost” and you will find a page on my site ranked number one. That is primarily because one site out there put a link to my page in their blogroll, so they link to my page on my site from every page on their site. This is great if I wanted the world to know that Wordpress is free, which I guess I do. I just want them to know that I’m awesome at SEO and web design also.
People do find me and I’m thankful for that. As long as I have enough stuff in the sidebars to get their attention and tell them that I do web development and SEO also, then I’m happy.
Anchor text is king. Long live the king.
Posted in sell on internet | by Conrad Walton | Please Comment »
Not only is Conrad masterful at web building he is also brilliant and very savvy in building business. Sea Glass is my passion and he gets it. 
Fair Winds and Calm Seas,
Deborah Leon
www.mermaidspurseseaglass.com
