Number of visitors to the site

Overview

It may sound a little like the quip about which came first the egg or chicken, but there is some evidence to suggest search engines like Google may look at visitor number when determining how to rank a site.

This controversial view has to some extent been confirmed by Google in a statement where they are looking to promote pages to you which your ‘friends’ find interesting.

Although we can’t influence this directly we can look at other supporting techniques that can achieve the same thing.

The importance of Number of visitors to the site

Right from the days of the first web pages and the first incarnation of the Google search engine, Google has been looking at ways it can provide the user with exactly the information they want to access.

Knowing how powerful the first few results on Google are has caused a complete industry to be set up to work out how to get to the top of Google.

Each time Google comes up with a new fool proof method to combat spam, Spammer come up with a new method to fight back.

More recently Google has started to not only look at the pages you use but also those of your friends and people with the same interest.

The logic is simple, if a lot of people are looking at these pages, they must be pages of good information.

Of course Google does not just rely on this idea but its gaining more weight.

Google uses a number of systems to do this and these include actively tracking a user’s net footprint.

By actively looking at all aspects of promotion not only will we see a direct benefit, but it may also have a double effect due to this over riding idea that more visitors a site has, the more relevant it is.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for Number of visitors to the site

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Number of visitors to the site for the phrase Euro 2012 on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

We could look at any phrase but it makes sense to look at a popular term. It’s also important to note that the internet is a fluid place and analysis on one day and with one search engine can be different on another day on another engine.

Looking at the top ten results all the sites were amongst the top 2000 most popular sites on the web.

This is not surprising due to the nature of the search term and the sorts of websites that would be covering a world class event of its type.

What was interesting was that although all the sites had a vast amount of visitors, the most popular site of the top ten was not in the top position.

From this we can deduce that although visitor numbers may have an effect it certainly does not dictate the whole story.

Keyword use in bold body text

Overview

Search engines like Google use the text visible on the screen as one of the factors used to determine how important a page is to a certain search phrase.

Bold body text as expected plays a role in this ranking.

In short if a section of text is tagged as bold or strong, search engines like Google assume this text is a more important part of the page.

History of Keyword use in bold body text

In the first versions of HTML the <b> tag was used to determine text which should be displayed as being bold.

With the evolution of HTML, a new tag was created to really replace the <b> tag. With regards to the website visitor both tag visually do the same thing, but on a higher level using the <strong> tag is more consistent with the aims of the tag.

Although both can still be used, the convention is now to use <strong> in all situation <b> is used.

Going forward Google may weight <strong> over the <b> tag although currently they are treated the same.

As with all signals Google sees as important, this tag has been used to spam in the past and ‘over doing’ the SEO on the b and strong tags can backfire.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for Keyword use in bold body text

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Optimising the body text for the phrase April Jones on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

Looking at the top ten results the following can be seen

Search term: “April Jones”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2 0
Keyword density: 0% to 10%

Search term: “April”
Number of keywords: 0 to 4
Keyword density: 0% to 5%

Search term: “Jones”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 5%

Keywords “April” or “Jones”
Number of keywords: 0 to 6
Keyword density: 0% to 5%

Generally you would look to get as high in the above range as possible without going over the largest figure. If you were to work though the above you would quickly discover if you tried to hit the top of the range for ‘April Jones’ you may not be able to hit the individual elements within the long tail search term.

In this instance the best way forward would be work out ‘your best fit’, wait for Google to index to page again and re evaluate that that point.

Top level domain of web site

Overview

When most people think of larger websites it’s no coincidence that most people expect to see a .com

Not only was .com was one of the first types of domain available it’s also known as a Top level domain.

For years a .com often secured a good ranking due to its status but when country based domains (i.e. .co.uk) started to grow in popularity Search engine started to see this new level of domain potentially being more relevant for local search result.

As a general rule a Top level domain is more relevant for those companies how have an international presence.

The importance of Top level domain of web site

Originally domain prices were very expensive and it’s only in recent years that the costs have come down to very affordable levels.

This means domains are often bought now on the basis on what search engine optimisation benefits it can bring to the company owning the site.

Indeed there is some evidence to suggest that search engines like Google may well prefer a .co.uk over a .com for site which wants to list well on the Google UK search engine results.

As a general rule, if the domain name is really important to you, this may be a primary consideration over the extension of the domain, although in high competition searches you may find without matching the domain to the extension, you may not be able to reach your goals with regards to search engine optimisation.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for Top level domain of web site

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Age of web sites for the phrase NatWest Online on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

Looking at the top ten results it’s a clean sweep for the .com domain extension, but this does not tell the whole story.

NatWest has two aspects which skews the results in this particular search.

Firstly it is an international company; a lot of its business is conducted outside of the UK. It is likely that it has an higher than usual interest from the rest of the world (which is more likely to include .com websites)

Secondary most of the sites reporting on and linking to NatWest related material are likely to be large financial website, which again would have a .com bias.

For other searches that are more local in nature you would expect to see a larger quantity of .co.uk sites in the top ten.

Keyword use in IMG ALT attributes

Overview

The original HTML standard has always been geared with the idea of linking text documents together, but even from the earliest days there has been support for displaying images.

In the starting days of the internet effective download speed were very slow and even pages containing text may take many seconds to display.

When people started using images download times increased drastically and often the browsers allowed you to ‘turn off images’.

For web pages that realised on graphics to be usable, this presented a real issue. Fortunately images had always had the ability to contain a text description about what the image was about.

Now known as the IMG ALT tag it’s not only used for the above instances, but also is now a great component in making web pages accessible to users with a visual impairment.

In addition because search engines like Google cannot see images, they also look at this tag with regards to understanding images.

History of Keyword use in IMG ALT attributes

As soon as spammer learnt that search engines like Google looked at the IMG ALT text with regards to ranking, it initially became a great way to cheap you page to the top of Google.

Quickly Google has constantly looked for way to reduce this effect and initially discounted IMG ALT text substantially.

With Google starting to move back to on page content as its primary route for looking at SERPS, IMG ALT text has once again become more important.

But there is a big but…

With all the search engine optimisation techniques spoken about on this site, if you use too many tricks to try and increase you SERP, Google is likely to see an un natural page and penalise accordingly.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for the <h2> to <h6> tags

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Optimising the body text for the phrase Gary Barlow on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

Looking at the top ten results the following can be seen

Search term: “Gary Barlow”
Number of keywords: 0 to 19
Keyword density: 0% to 83%

Search term: “Gary”
Number of keywords: 0 to 19
Keyword density: 0% to 41%

Search term: “Barlow”
Number of keywords: 0 to 19
Keyword density: 0% to 41%

Keywords “Gary” or “Barlow”
of keywords: 0 to 38
Keyword density: 0% to 41%

Generally you would look to get as high in the above range as possible without going over the largest figure. If you were to work though the above you would quickly discover if you tried to hit the top of the range for ‘Gary Barlow’ you may not be able to hit the individual elements within the long tail search term.

In this instance the best way forward would be work out ‘your best fit’, wait for Google to index again and re evaluate that that point.

Keyword use in H2-H6 headline texts

Overview

Along with the <h1> html tag the <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5> and <H6> are termed heading tags and as such have a great impact on search engine optimisation.

Unlike the <h1> tag there are no real restrictions of use and can be used as many times as makes sense on a page.

As with any search engine optimisation technique if its overdone it may be picked up by search engines like Google as false and you may find your ranking for the page is affected.

History of the <h1> tag

The <h2> to <H6> tag are some of the core HTML tags which have been within HTML pages since day one.

The h tags (excluding h1) are designed to head paragraphs of text and can be used multiple times on a page without any negative impact.

Although the h1 tag is considered the most important and by default is rendered extra large to show its importance, the other tags are also seen to have the same impact but on a smaller scale.

For pages where H1 optimisation can’t completely get the job done, H2 through to H6 optimisation offers a great alternative.

Google places weight on any text in a heading tag as normally this area would summarise the text below and therefore it is reasonable for Google to take this into account while deciding page rank in its index. (SERPS)

As with all signals Google sees as important, this tag has been used to spam in the past and ‘over doing’ the SEO on the h tags can backfire.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for the <h2> to <h6> tags

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Optimising the body text for the phrase Kim Kardashian on 17th December 2012 on Google UK

Looking at the top ten results the following can be seen

Search term: “Kim Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 13
Keyword density: 0% to 30%

Search term: “Kim”
Number of keywords: 0 to 14
Keyword density: 0% to 15%

Search term: “Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 14
Keyword density: 0% to 16%

Search term: “Kim Kardashian” , “Kim” or “Kardashian”
Number of keywords: 0 to 27
Keyword density: 0% to 16%

Generally you would look to get as high in the above range as possible without going over the largest figure. If you were to work though the above you would quickly discover if you tried to hit the top of the range for ‘Kim Kardashian’ you may not be able to hit the individual elements within the long tail search term.

In this instance the best way forward would be work out ‘your best fit’, wait for Google to index again and re evaluate that that point.

Server speed

Overview

As the style and content of websites have developed server speed has become a consideration in search engine optimisation.

With Google in particular their mission has to been to provide the information you are looking for quickly and accurately.

To this end they have stated that slow loading websites may not be listed as well as quicker loading ones.

The importance of server speed

With Google stating that it will actively discriminate against slow loading sites, it does not take a degree in search engine optimisation to understand the impact a slow server can have on the performance of your website.

There are two parts to this idea that you need to consider. The first is the idea that search engines like Google are a primary traffic driver. Or in other words if your site is slower than the other sites Google is listing for your search term, you may not appear as well as you should.

A secondary affect will be for visitors to your site. If it’s slow will you miss out on conversions…

As a general rule any page that pages more than a couple of seconds to load is going to be an issue. Below this figure the problem decreases…

Google has a number of tools which allow you to check the speed of your site; it’s worth checking you sites periodically for this as content management systems are prone to this issue.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for keyword in the domain name

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Age of web sites for the phrase Gangnam Style on 14th December 2012 on Google UK

As expected most of the top 10 pages for this search term had server load time of around 1 second or below.

Three of the top ten sites had load times is excess of five seconds, which shows that although load times are important there are always exceptions that break the rules.

In each case all three sites were very well respected sites whose other ranking factors made up for the struggling server technology.

This also proves the other aspect of Search Engine Optimisation with the idea that there is no magic bullet which will give an instant number one spot. To successfully implement search engine optimisation you must look fully at all the factors and make the best compromise on that basis.

Mentions on social sites

Overview

In the last ten years there has been a vital social change in the form of social networks.

First started as a way to connect people, they have changed to include such things as social gaming and more recently have been seen as trusted and rapid sources of news.

Google now treats links from these sources as a gauge of popularity and as such should not be ignored with regards to search engine optimisation.

The importance of mentions on social sites

The importance Google and to some extent other search engines put in these social signals is due to the wide acceptance of social media in general.

Due to the sheer scale of membership of these social networks means if a proportion of the network tweets or mentions a story, search engines like Google can take the story as not only being serious but because a large proportion of people are all saying the same thing it to some ways is considered more ‘tamper’ proof.

Before you buy thousands of twitter tweets for your site, the other thing to realise is that search engines like Google take social signals as one of a number of factors and as such if the social signals looks manipulated, not only that you may find that inbound links are discounted, but search engines like Google may decide you are trying to bend the rules too far and remove your site from the index.

As with all search engine optimisation advice, it is important to look at the whole picture and implement accordingly.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for keyword in the domain name

The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Age of web sites for the phrase Whitney Houston on 14th December 2012 on Google UK

As expected most of the top 10 pages for this search term had thousands of mentions. But as with the other aspects of search engine optimisation, pure numbers does not tell the whole story.

In general terms the sites which did better had a better spread of social signals that were not restricted to a single or couple of site.

This fits in nicely with our assumption that Google looks at a wide range of sources, and on this basis if we were able to run the same enquiry over the entire spectrum of social media sites we would probably see the same sort of demographic.

For companies with large budgets, having identities on multiple social sites makes sense but for though on small or no budgets the conclusion must be that social signal most of the time will have a limited impact.

Keyword use in page URL

Overview

Keyword use in page URL is a technique much in the same vein as Keyword use in domain name.

There is currently no evidence that Google is penalising sites which place keywords in the URL of the webpage, but this should be reviewed over time with regards to how important this ranking factor will be going forward.

The importance of keywords in the domain name

The below is an extract from the article which details the history if keyword in Domain name. Much of the below can apply to keyword use in URL but as with domain name should be reviewed in light of the recent Google EMD update.

Originally it took a lot of money, time and effort to create a website.

During this period people who had invested in a domain name which matched what they did was seen to have benefits and reinforce the likely content a website would have.

In short the domain name could give Google a good ranking signal.

Over the last decade the cost of publishing to the web has dropped drastically and for little or no money it’s now possible to publish on the web.

This has lead to a gold rush for people registering domain names with the express purpose of gaining valuable Google rank.

After a recent Algorithm update Google has started to weed out some of these no value domain in an attempt to increase the quality of its search results.

Although Exact matches may be dead for domain names (this is still disputed by Google though) a close match is still a viable alternative..

Therefore when analysing the competition it’s important to stay within the acceptable range as not to be penalised.

Google proof your search engine optimisation for keyword in the domain name

While it is true that no one outside of Google knows the mechanism for determining rank in its search engine listing, we do know Google likes the top ten pages for a given phrase for a reason, and it is this fact we can use to formulate our strategy.
The reason for looking at the top ten as a whole is that it allows us to remove the ‘freak’ results of any one website.

Age of web sites for the phrase Prince William on 10th December 2012 on Google UK

Looking at the top ten sites for this phrase

Search term: “prince william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 67%

Search term: “prince”
of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

Search term: “william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 2
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

Keywords “prince” or “william”
Number of keywords: 0 to 4
Keyword density: 0% to 33%

In an ideal world you would look to hit in the high range of the above, but as you can see this would cause one or more to go outside the ideal range and in this instance you would have to gauge the most important phrases and sub phrases of the key phrase you were trying to optimise for.

Keyword use in domain name

Overview

Exact Domain Matching has hit the headlines recently as Google has tried to crack down on this latest trick spammers use to bend the Google search results.

Although Exact Domain Matching may now not work as it once did, domains which feature a close match still work and it could be argued that a close match can now take the place where Exact matches once stood.