Archive for Relevancy
What is the Difference Between Link Popularity vs. Relevancy?
Posted by: | CommentsI was contacted recently by an online directory. The woman who phoned me began by telling me that they didn’t have a web designer listed in my area and they had 20-30 people every week who were looking for a web designer and were unable to find one. As I listened to this sad story tears started to form in my eyes as I began to realize that in the 21st century there are still people in the world who are having to go without a web designer.
Of course I quickly realized that this sob story was intended to soften me up in an attempt to sell me something, so I interjected by saying: “So you’re looking for someone to advertise on your website?”
“Oh no it’s not advertising,” she said, “We’re looking for one exclusive web designer in your area to handle all the enquiries we are getting…”
She went on to tell me that this fantastic opportunity would only cost me £1 per day and that they would be able to get me listed on the first page of search results in all the major search engines.
Now there’s one thing I don’t like and that is when people use a promise to try and sell you something knowing full well they cannot deliver on that promise.
“So if I go to Google and type in web design wiltshire, will I find your company?” I asked.
To my amusement she replied with one of the funniest lines I have ever heard in telephone marketing: “Oh no,” she said, “we don’t use Google anymore – we use Yahoo instead.”
Once I had stopped laughing I pointed out to her that nearly 60% of all internet searches were made through Google and if you were in business online you would not deliberately ‘stop using Google’. What she was saying of course was that it was harder to get a top ten listing in Google than it was with Yahoo.
Now the point of all this is that when she was busy making excuses for not being listed in Google she did say something rather interesting and that was that ‘Google does not always show you the websites that are the most relevant to your search phrase’.
Now this is quite interesting. Because Google uses a different formula from Yahoo and MSN when calculating search results, you get a different set of results from each search engine for the same search query.
MSN appear to give more weight to keywords than they do to link popularity, whereas Google places a high importance on the quality and quantity of incoming links but also takes into account a whole host of other factors.
The more success I had with getting top ten search engine results the more I advertised those successes on the SEO page of my website. Every so often I would check the results to see if I was still on the first page. What I began to notice was that on MSN the SEO page of my website was getting to number one for a phrase that I had listed on that page. For example, I built a website for an acupuncturist in Swindon, Wiltshire and wanted to advertise the fact that I had secured a number one slot in Google for the search phrase ‘acupuncture treatment wiltshire’, so I listed it on the SEO page of my website. A week or so later when I went to check the MSN rankings for the acupuncture site I noticed that the SEO page of my site was at number one for the search phrase ‘acupuncture treatment wiltshire’.
Now the problem with this of course is that the search phrase is not relevant to that website. So in terms of relevancy MSN has failed: it has not delivered the most relevant websites for that search phrase because it has put a web design company at the top instead of an acupuncture website. This is one of the pitfalls of placing too much emphasis on keywords.
But why was my site at the top instead of the acupuncture site (which was coming in at number 2 or 3)? Presumably because my site is more established, has more incoming links and a higher Page Rank. Presumably, although not definitely.
So do these problems occur with Google? The answer to that is yes and no.
Google does get irrelevant sites mixed up in it’s top ten from time to time but they are more likely to be there because of Page Rank than because of keywords. An article about SEO and linking strategies that I published on a high ranking website turned up in the top ten for a completely unrelated search phrase because I had mentioned that phrase once in the article. The reason was that Google placed more importance on the PR of the site the article was on than the keyword density of that particular phrase.
As Page Rank is based largely on link popularity the end result in this case was that link popularity
[Link popularity for your web site can be greatly improved if you follow the seven techniques discussed in this video.]
beat relevancy
[Find out why Google is "blind" to such topic as relevancy and how it can affect your link building and getting Google page 1]
hands-down. This is the main bone of contention that many webmasters have about Google: link popularity does not necessarily equate to relevancy and ultimately it is relevancy that is most important to the user.
Some may argue that a more popular site is more relevant. But if you were looking for a web designer in Marlborough you wouldn’t want to find a listing for a hotel in the top ten just because it had more incoming links and a higher page rank than the site of a local web designer and happened to have a link to another web designer at the bottom of the page.
Part of the problem of course is that whatever system is in place some people will try to cheat the system. That leads to companies like Google having to change the way they evaluate the web pages that their robots crawl. This inadvertently leads to some website owners finding that their sites have been devalued because they have accidentally done something with their site that is frowned upon by Google because it was once used by the cheats to artificially boost their search engine rankings.
Until such time as a telepathic search engine is invented it seems unlikely that such problems will be eliminated. Perhaps in the coming years some kind of global directory will be used in conjunction with domain name registration, whereby each website could be registered in a maximum of two categories (web design and SEO for example) and some kind of system could be used to make sure that websites could only show up in search results for search phrases related to those categories. It would probably be too expensive and labor intensive to implement but I’m sure if someone could find a way of making money from it we might well see it happen!
About the Author: Rob Butler is a web designer in Marlborough Wiltshire and specialises in securing top ten search engine rankings for small to medium sized companies.
Related articles by Zemanta
- SEO Content Writing For Search Engine Optimization (webmanmarketing.com)
- Link Building And Directory Submission Guide (webmanmarketing.com)
- Part II – Getting Your Site Indexed in Google (suescaletta.com)
- Top 5 SEO Tips for Beginners (ronmedlin.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=73e16a08-24ba-4440-86e0-d988452eee92)
The Advance Of Algorithms – New Keyword Optimization Rules
Posted by: | CommentsMaintaining and marketing a website can be a difficult task especially for those who are inexperienced or who have very little experience. SEO rules are constantly changing and even then, many SEO professionals disagree on the actual specifics required to optimize a website. This is in no small part due to the search engines themselves.
Major search engines like Google are constantly striving to ensure that sites at the top of their result pages offer invaluable information or service to their visitors. However, webmasters who are looking to make quick money while offering very little quality content are always finding new ways to beat the search engines at their own game. For this reason, search engines regularly change the methods they use to determine relevancy and importance of your site.
Evolving Search Engines
The first step you should take is to ensure that your website will do an effective job of turning visitors into money. The content needs to be optimized so that both search engine visitors and human visitors both deem it to be a useful website. Once upon a time, effective optimization entailed cramming content with as many keywords as possible and while this once generated good search engine results it invariably put visitors off. It is also now frowned upon and penalized as being spam by all of the major search engines.
The Evolution And Improvement Of Algorithms
Search engines use specific algorithms to determine the relevance of your website. The calculations from these algorithms determine where on the search engine result pages your website will appear. In order to keep the unscrupulous webmasters guessing and ensuring that results are always up to date, major search engines regularly update their algorithms.
Recent Advances
The result of some of the most recent changes has seen the impetus move away from optimizing websites for search engines and instead the algorithms are now geared to promote websites that give true value to visitors. They’re not only changing, they are evolving into more intelligent and accurate algorithms. While the use of keywords based around the relevant topic is still important, it is also important to ensure that visitors are your main priority.
Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization is now more heavily guarded. Those who include keywords too often will have their sites labeled as spam, whereas not enough instances of the appropriate keyword means you won’t receive the desired results. However, the algorithms have become particularly smart and as well as the keywords you want to target you should include other relevant keywords. Including inflexions of keywords is one excellent way to ensure that your site is deemed to be relevant. Inflexions are slight changes to your keyword. For example, inflexions of the keyword “advertising” include advertise, advertised, advertisement, etc…
Keyword Inclusion
Weight is also given to keywords that are included in certain sections of a page. These sections include the title tag, meta tags (only relevant to smaller search engines now), header tags, image alt tags and formatting tags (e.g. keywords in bold or italicized) of your text. With image alt tags and hyperlink title tags it is important that you don’t simply fill these with keywords because this will be ignored at best, and penalized at worst.
Natural Content Writing
One of the most effective ways to ensure that your site is keyword optimized properly is to write the content naturally first. Once you have done this, go through and ensure that any relevant keywords are included throughout the text. Only place them where they would appear naturally and remove them from anywhere where they appear awkward. Once you’ve written the content you should also check the remaining factors to ensure everything is ok.
SEO Keyword Checklist
Below is a keyword checklist to ensure that you have fully optimized your web pages to the current, generally accepted search engine algorithm rules.
URL: Get your primary keyword as close to the beginning of the URL as possible.
Title Tag: The title should be between 10 and 50 characters and include one or more keywords while still being descriptive.
Description Meta Tag: The description meta tag should be insightful and useful but it should also contain one or two of your more important keywords.
Keyword Meta Tag: It makes sense that you should include all of your keywords in the keyword meta tag. Do not include any words that don’t appear in the body of your text.
Keyword Density: Your content should be made up of all of your keywords and other text. A total keyword density (all keywords) of around 15% to 20% is the maximum you should aim for and anything less than 5% is unlikely to yield good results.Density for a single keyword should be between 1% and 7%. 1% seems too low, and 7% a little too high. Wherever possible aim for approx 5% with the primary keyword and 3% with secondary and subsequent keywords.
Header Tags: (e.g. H1 and H2 tags) More weight is given to keywords that appear within H1 tags, then H2 tags and so on.
Text Formatting Fonts: (e.g. strong, bold and underline) This may not offer much weight in algorithms, but generally if you bold the first instance of your keywords and the last instance of your primary keyword you should see some positive results.
Beginning Of Text: The closer you can get your keywords to the beginning of your page content the better. Try to include your primary keyword within the first sentence or two and also within the last paragraph.
Key-Phrases As Whole Phrases: If you are targeting Internet Marketing as a key phrase then do not split the words up if possible. Some effect is noticed if the words are split, but much more benefit is received by including the phrase as a whole.
Alt Text: Include your keyword at least once in the Alt tag of any images. Ensure that the text is relevant to the image and gives some information.
________________________________________
About the Author: WebWiseWords is a freelance copywriting service offering any style of writing on any topic. With a range of services geared primarily towards new media and online content, WebWiseWords is the copyrighter for your business. Matt Jackson, founder of WebWiseWords, is a professional copywriter offering a professional service. Whether your business or your website needs a website content copyrwriter, an SEO copywriter, a press release copywriter or a copywriter for any other purpose WebWiseWords can craft the words you want.
