On Page Search Engine Optimization Factors - Do They Matter?
Let's hop into our Internet time machine and take a trip. Today
we're headed back in time to 2000 - in Internet time, that seems
like 100 years ago. You're an SEO expert and you want to write a
book on how to get to the top of search engines - what do you
talk about? Meta tags are definitely on the way out. Links help
but this is cutting edge stuff - not the basis of your book. So
you talk about keyword density. You say if you want to get
ranked highly for a specific term, you need to have that in your
title and you need to have it show up towards the top of your
page, and in other parts of the page and have your page be
keyword dense for your chosen topic. And I'm not talking about
1-3% keyword density - 100% keyword density for a word actually
worked for some phrases.
Ahh, the memories. The days when keyword density actually
mattered.
Back to late 2006. Keyword density is dead. DEAD! In fact the
question comes up if it's even important what content is
actually on your webpage or if it all depends on links.
Let's take some famous examples - first go to http://google.com and type in the
word failure. The first result you'll see is President George W.
Bush's bio. Go ahead and look at the page, and tell me how many
times the word failure shows up on the page. Yep - zero.
To be fair, let's go back to http://google.com again, now type in
waffles. The number one result you'll see here is John Kerry's
website. Go ahead and count the number of times you find the
word waffles on that page. Indeed - zero again.
So what's going on here? The reason George Bush's and John
Kerry's site are showing up so highly for failure and waffles is
because of anchor text. (This particular tactic actually has a
name - called GoogleBombing - but that's for a different day.) A
large number of websites, have links pointing to George Bush's
website with the word failure in the link.
So what should this tell us - first of all, stop worrying so
much about perfectly optimizing your website and start worrying
about what the websites linking to you say.
Now I should say that having the keyword you want to rank highly
for in your tag and having relevant content on that page does
definitely help, and if you're targeting a highly competitive
word, then you'll need to have relevant content on your page.
However, don't worry about having exact keyword densities for
your pages - they're not helping you, in fact they may be
hurting you since the search engines found out that ranking by
keyword density was easily abused so now they actually penalize
sites that are considered "overoptimized" or too keyword dense.
Just write naturally and leave it alone - that's what the search
engines want.
Instead, make sure the links pointing to your site tell your
story and say what your site is about. Instead of links that say
"click here", get links that say "widgets" or whatever your site
is about.
Before I finish here, I want to give you my favorite example for
"Google Bombing." Go to the home page of http://google.com. This time type in
French military victories and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky"
button. Nothing against, the French, but that's hilarious. Click
on the French military defeats link for a good laugh.
we're headed back in time to 2000 - in Internet time, that seems
like 100 years ago. You're an SEO expert and you want to write a
book on how to get to the top of search engines - what do you
talk about? Meta tags are definitely on the way out. Links help
but this is cutting edge stuff - not the basis of your book. So
you talk about keyword density. You say if you want to get
ranked highly for a specific term, you need to have that in your
title and you need to have it show up towards the top of your
page, and in other parts of the page and have your page be
keyword dense for your chosen topic. And I'm not talking about
1-3% keyword density - 100% keyword density for a word actually
worked for some phrases.
Ahh, the memories. The days when keyword density actually
mattered.
Back to late 2006. Keyword density is dead. DEAD! In fact the
question comes up if it's even important what content is
actually on your webpage or if it all depends on links.
Let's take some famous examples - first go to http://google.com and type in the
word failure. The first result you'll see is President George W.
Bush's bio. Go ahead and look at the page, and tell me how many
times the word failure shows up on the page. Yep - zero.
To be fair, let's go back to http://google.com again, now type in
waffles. The number one result you'll see here is John Kerry's
website. Go ahead and count the number of times you find the
word waffles on that page. Indeed - zero again.
So what's going on here? The reason George Bush's and John
Kerry's site are showing up so highly for failure and waffles is
because of anchor text. (This particular tactic actually has a
name - called GoogleBombing - but that's for a different day.) A
large number of websites, have links pointing to George Bush's
website with the word failure in the link.
So what should this tell us - first of all, stop worrying so
much about perfectly optimizing your website and start worrying
about what the websites linking to you say.
Now I should say that having the keyword you want to rank highly
for in your tag and having relevant content on that page does
definitely help, and if you're targeting a highly competitive
word, then you'll need to have relevant content on your page.
However, don't worry about having exact keyword densities for
your pages - they're not helping you, in fact they may be
hurting you since the search engines found out that ranking by
keyword density was easily abused so now they actually penalize
sites that are considered "overoptimized" or too keyword dense.
Just write naturally and leave it alone - that's what the search
engines want.
Instead, make sure the links pointing to your site tell your
story and say what your site is about. Instead of links that say
"click here", get links that say "widgets" or whatever your site
is about.
Before I finish here, I want to give you my favorite example for
"Google Bombing." Go to the home page of http://google.com. This time type in
French military victories and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky"
button. Nothing against, the French, but that's hilarious. Click
on the French military defeats link for a good laugh.
Author: Gary Ruplinger
About the author:
Gary Ruplinger is an SEO expert who wrote a free search engine optimization report on how to get top rankinsgs at
UltimateTrafficBlueprint.com. Also, see what his affiliate project x test revealed.
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