Seo Ranking Factors – The Top 10 That Really Do Make a Difference

February 5th, 2010 | by BillEgan |

Learn seo to find out how you can easily identify which issues are hurting your website and discover how you can quickly implement changes to your website to get better keyword rankings, more visitors and more sales!

Factor 1: The Global Link Popularity Of Your Website

What is Global Link Popularity?

This refers to the overall link authority of the website. This is calculated based on:

The total volume of external of links
The quality of these links
The diversity of these links

Focus on Link Quality vs. Quantity

Total volume is not as important as quality. Quality is determined by following factors:

The page rank of the page that the link comes from
The rank of the home page on that site
Keywords used in anchor text in the external link

What this means is that a few good quality links from high authority sites will give you a higher global link authority that simple having lots of links from low authority sites.

For example this would include sites from domains including .gov or .edu or those with a high page rank (5 or greater).

Factor 2: Keywords Used In The Anchor Text Of External Links

Anchor text is the visible hyperlinked text on the page. This is the second most important factor in getting a high ranking on Google.

For example, “SEO Software solution” contains the hyperlink http://www.interleado.com/

And “SEO Workbench”contains the hyperlink

http://www.interleado.com/website-marketing-software/internet-marketing-tool-demo.html

In the above example the anchor text = “SEO software” and “Seo Workbench”

Normally anchor text should be a keyword abbreviation of what the visitor will see by clicking on the link.

Search engines give significant weight to the presence of keywords in the anchor text of external and internal links. External link anchor text is more important since by implication a site is saying that a visitor can finds information about the relevant keyword by visiting your site.

You should be aware that it is it is better to include keywords only in the anchor text rather than have embedded common words.

For example “seo software” is better as anchor text with a hyperlink rather than “Read more about seo software here”

Factor 3: Keyword Used in Meta Tags

You can use this meta tag analyser to see what your meta tags look like for any give URL.

For example if I run it on Interleado’s home page I get the following report:

Additional information is also displayed including:

Page rank
Web page summary including size and load time
Display of the SERP organic listing for that page
Keywords by frequency in anchor tags
Keywords found in image alt tags
Keyword density
URL’s on page plus frequency

Tips For Optimizing Keywords In The Title Tag:

Do not exceed 50 characters (including spaces)
Keep your important keywords as far left as possible
Write your Title tag for your audience first and the search engines second
Include your company name
Include keyword phrases
Avoid title tag duplication
Use a divider such as the “|” symbol to separate key phrases
Write a title tag as if it is a header for a Google adword

Tips For Optimizing Keywords In The Description Tag:

You will get the most benefit from this tag if you have a unique description for every page and you keep the description to under 150 words. For each unique description, pick 4-5 keywords and work them into the description.

Remember this is the tag that will be displayed with the search engine results returned after a keyword search is done. Therefore use it mainly to persuade visitors to click on the page.

Lets look at an example:

Take the URL:

http://www.interleado.com/search-engine-marketing-company.php

This returns the following result from a Google search .

Title tag contains the most important keyword “seo software” at the beginning and the next most important “Online Reputation Management” after that.

The length of the title tag is 64 character with spaces (any longer and it will be truncated)

The Description contains “Interleado” at the beginning but is too long since after 165 character it is truncated.

You will get the most benefit from this tag if you have a unique description for every page and you keep the description to less than 165 words. For each unique description, pick 4-5 keywords and work them into the description.

I would recommend ignoring the Keyword tag as it is no longer regarded as an important factor by Google.

Factor 4: Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name

For example if I search for “Interleado”, I get 6,750 results. High on the list is this result:

That is why most company’s corporate website can be easily found by searching for the company name.

Factor 5: Keyword Used in the H1 Headline Tag

If the top of your page has a headline in a H1 style, the search engine very specifically sees that as the headline for the page.

The search engines will read your H1 tags (Preferably in bold) and if you can use keywords in them, you’re providing additional emphasis that should be a factor in enhancing the keyword visibility with search engines.

Factor 6: Keyword Used in on Page Internal Link Anchor Text

The principles are exactly the same as for external link anchor text

Factor 7: Keyword Used In First 65 Words On Page

Again to gain prominence you can use any of the following techniques:

Bold
Font size
Internal Anchor text

Factor 8: Keyword Used in the Subdomain Name

For example:

http://www.keyword.interleado.com

Factor 9: Keyword Used in the Page URL

For example:

http://www.interleado.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/06/how-to-learn-seo/

Factor 10: Keyword Used in the Headline Tags H2,H3,H4 etc.

Putting keywords in a headline tag is where you should start every page.

What’s the first thing you look at on a page? The headline right?

Well so do search engines, putting extra emphasis through a H1, H2, H3 or H4 html tag will tell the search engine that the keywords enclosed in these tags are more important than the others.

Some other writing styles that add emphasis are: