There are over 200 factors or “signals” (some listed below if you fancy a bit of DIY SEO) which Google can use to determine where your page should list in the search engine results (SERPs).
How may of these factors are used when scoring your website or web page is based on your competition and your website theme along with how complex your website is.
Here is a list of some of those factors based on our research and knowledge within the industry and we would like to stress that this is from our knowledge.
The SEO rules listed below are not listed by any relevance as at the end of the day that exercise is down to you along with your type of website and competition.
Please note that when we refer to the word keyword it can mean either one word or multiple words that are always together when users search the Internet for a particular product or service, i.e. “SEO” is a keyword as is “SEO Company”.
Domain name factors
Main keyword in domain name
This helps and can add points but it’s not as important as it used to be.Top level domain name extensions (TLD)
What sort of domain extension you have can get you points without doing anything.What you need to do is have a TLD that is based in your country or the country you are aiming at, i.e. co.uk for UK companies or for people searching in the UK.
Internet users also look at the extensions of a domain in the search results and many will click on links that they think are in their own country.
Try to avoid domains like .uk.com, as these are hard for your customers to remember and seem not to rank well for searches based on the country your aiming for.
Age of domain
Old websites do well, older websites are more trusted if they stay within the same topics or themes.New websites are not so trusted and can end up in the Google sandbox, it can take up to 6 months (typically 3) to get out of the sandbox if you have a good website.
In some cases we have seen it take up to 1 year to get out of the sandbox, this can depend on your type of website and theme.
| Google Sandbox – The Single-Biggest SEO Ranking Factor for New Sites Google is clearly fighting spam by sacrificing SERP newness for higher SERP quality. | ||
THE GOOGLE SANDBOX The sandbox is alive and well.In March 2004, Google implemented a new filter, now referred to as “The Sandbox”. This new “effect” took months to notice and quantify. The sandbox is also referred to as an “aging delay”. Two aging delays have been suggested – one for link weight, and one for competitive term ranking. The sand box only applies to highly COMPETITIVE terms, revolving around money, such as the words attorney, loans, viagra, real estate, etc. The more lucrative the keyword, the longer the wait. Yahoo has a sandbox, as well. Opinion seems to indicate that the Yahoo aging delay is not quite as long as the Google Aging Delay. MSN appears to have no sandbox. New sites with new pages, targeting competitive terms, can rank well very quickly (weeks) for those terms. | HOW IT WORKS If you subscribe to the spam reduction theory, Google’s thinking was, NO NEW SITES get good ranking, until they prove themselves. Spammers generate thousands of new pages daily, along with millions of new links to go with them. This penalty is new-site based. Long-standing sites have no trouble ranking new pages.Link Weight Aging Delay Google WITHHOLDS “link juice” on new sites, by deprecating the new links, for 2-8 months. If the domain and backlinks have existed for a certain length of time (6 months?), then maybe you are OK, and escape from the sandbox. Over time, the newly generated links are given weight, and eventually the sandbox effect is lifted.Competitive Term Aging Delay Google WITHHOLDS high ranking ability on new sites, for highly commercial keywords, such as loans, real estate, viagra, etc. Eventually, the new site will rank well for the competitive keywords, and the sandbox effect is lifted. Six months is mentioned most frequently. | SOLUTIONS Two methods are currently being used to get around the Sandbox penalty for new sites. One method is to join the Google Ad Words or Adsense program, in which case your pages get spidered in MINUTES. Your site will be checked initially with an algo or human “smell test”. If you smell good, you’re in. Good rankings will follow (provided of course, that you have good on-page SEO, and a few good backlinks). I speculate that if you are a Google partner (“approved”), then you are not going to be penalized, unless you subsequently “go bad”. The second method is to buy an old domain, just for it’s longevity, and old backlinks. Many have bought up old domain names for this purpose. This may work right now, but the rules will soon change again. They always do. |
URL factors
Main keyword in URL
This is a must and scores big points, use hyphens or underscores to separate words.However Google can see the separate words even if they are all joined up.
Not to many words as that can be classed as spam, (max 5) with a max of 3 hyphens or underscores and use one or the other, not both.
URL length
Keep this to a minimal but try to use your main keyword or even what someone might key in as a search term, i.e. “Google_SEO.asp”.Caution should be used as if it’s to long you could raise a flag for spam.
Less than 50 characters is a better idea.
Meta tag factors
Description Meta tag
Still in use and is often displayed as the search result text.Must show theme with a max of 200 characters and no special characters.
The description must be unique to each page.
Keywords Meta tag
Apparently not used by Google, but we still use it as “G” are not the only search engine out there, could be used if the bot has problems working out what your real keyword are, Max 10 keywords words and every word must be on your page.Robots Meta tag
Only needed if you want to stop your page being indexedOR
If you don’t want the description from the open directory project to be used then use the robots tag with NOODP
Author Meta tag
Have seen this used by other search engines, so pop it in with the name of the author of the web page.Copyright Meta tag
Have seen it used by other search engines, use it for any copyright info and normally you just put the company name or domain name in.Web page content factors
Main keyword in the title tag
This is a must and scores massive points, use | to separate keywordsFirst or second word using the main keyword is best
Title tag 5 to 60 characters max, also max 3 special characters, unique for each page.
Latent Semantic Indexing
This is one of the biggest factors when writing content for your web page.Latent Semantic Indexing is really synonyms, but based on user browsing habits rather then synonyms from a dictionary.
A lot of time can be taken up writing content that includes other related words to the main keywords of your web page.
i.e. people who search for “labels” also looked at sites that provide “stickers”
Therefore Google will relate the word stickers to labels meaning that if you have a web page with both words on then you are more related than a page with only one of the words.
Extra caution should be used with this, it’s easy to over do and end up being marked down for spamming.
Keyword density in body text
Aim between 10% to 30% of total words in you total content.Some keywords are sensitive to the total amount, other keywords are sensitive based on topic or theme so % threshold varies.
Individual keyword density in body
2% to 10% Max depending on the total amount of text or content on your pageKeywords inside H1, H2, H3 tags
These must be used correctly, Not to many, but does depend on theme and topic.H1 at the top of page using main keyword followed by H2 but only if needed then H3 if required.
Keyword font size
This must be used correctly based on your page layout as putting in large text inside normal size text can make the website look messy and put your visitors off.Idea is to use in headings where you have already used H1, H2 and H3 tags.
Keyword font weight
This is a must and is a good idea around the beginning of a sentence where you keywords are highlighted by using bold or strong, Google treats bold and strong as almost the same thing so you should use either based on what looks best for your web page.Italic can also be used and scores points if used in the correct way, normally used when quoting what someone has said or a slogan of some sort.
Keyword proximity
It’s best to place your main keywords at or around the beginning of a page, usually best when within the first 20 words.Keyword prominence
This would be a mixture of keyword proximity, keyword font weight and keyword font size.Keyword stemming
Used to try and match words that might be keyed in during a search.i.e. Google, Google’s, Googled etc
Page freshness
Google loves fresh pages, ones that are updated over time, have new content added.This must be done very carefully as some pages should never really change and some pages should only have small changes done every now and then.
Home page should not really change unless you have a new service to offer, have a small news section on it, or have things like special offers displayed, otherwise this could cost you in your listing or a loss of some of your main keywords.
Other pages like About Us, Contact Us, Terms and conditions should also only be updated for good reason.
Info pages, product pages, news pages, special offer pages etc, should always be updated on a regular basis.
Depending on the page in question, updates should be once a week or once a month otherwise Google may have trouble keeping up with you and will cause visitors to “bounce” which is a bad thing.
Frequent updates will lead to frequent spidering which in turn leads to a newer search engine cache.
Content changes
As above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.
Content changes
As above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.
Hyperlink factors
Keywords as anchor text
Using keywords as anchor text can score big points but not as many as it used to.This can be used for one keyword or phrase that is related to the landing page.
Keywords in hyperlink title tag
This scores big points if done right and can also help users navigate your site.Use main keyword from the landing page and try to make a very small sentence or remark of what to find on that landing page.
Never change the tags once made as points will be lost, after all why would you need to.
Internal page links
Make sure that all links are valid as broken or dead links can make you lose big points.External page links
Make sure all external links are valid, check once a week to make sure they still link to the same page and that the page is still valid.Try to link to related web pages or related websites as this will help with scoring.
Make sure that any website you link to is not classed as spam or could later on be classed as spam, as linking to a spam or banned site will cause your site to loose massive points to the point where you receive a subtle ban or even get your site banned as well.
Be careful, websites you link to can go bad and unfortunately its your responsibility to police this otherwise there bad behavior will effect your scoring.
Never link to the following:
And try to make sure that these types of sites don’t link to you with the exception of directories but again only if they are highly related to what you do and are in good standing.
Efficient link structure
Make sure that all pages can been retrieved within 2 to 3 clicks and make sure pages are no further than 4 clicks away from the home page or from the home page of a particular sub directory, this is dependent on your website structure.Link stability
Try to keep your links within your site permerant, avoid changing page names or swapping links between pages or having links which only appear for a short time then disappear.Points are lost for “link churn” and “link rot”
New links
Good idea if Google trusts your site and that they link to related content or to a new service you may offer.Trusted sites with new pages get indexed faster and rank well but be careful not to cause theme bleeding or site bleeding, and if the links are external that they don’t link to useless websites.
Image factors
Keywords in alt text tag
This should only describe what the graphic is, so its best to have graphic’s related to your main keywords for that page then your be able to put you main keyword within these tags which then give big points.Never change the tags once made unless you change your image as points will be lost, after all why would you need to.
Website structure
Website directory layout
Try to use sub folders that are based on the main keyword.Inside those folders make sure content is only related to the same theme of that part of the website, keeping your site in a silo structure adds points and helps the search engine index your pages better.
Having pages link to other unrelated topics or unrelated directory folders will cause theme bleeding and can cause search engines not to rank you correctly for your given topic.
Page theme and silo structure
Pages should only link to other pages which are related to the theme or topic on that page, some links can go to other pages but they should have their own menu and point to some of your main pages like the “Home page”, “Contact Us” etc.Content on the page should be theme based and should only “talk” about the topic at hand and not travel off on some sort of tangent.
Pages with theme score highly and websites with theme score even higher.
Web page file size
Try to make sure your pages are less than 100k in size the best size is less than 40k per page but it does depend on theme and topic but generally the smaller the page the faster it loads which to Google is a good idea.How many websites have you clicked on, waited a few seconds then went to another site because it didn’t load fast enough.