Search Engine Rankings Criteria...

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Hi all

I try to get the hang of search engine ranking. What are the criteria they use to decide which sites rank where?

My understanding so far (and please correct me if I'm wrong);

Firstly, the different search engines uses different criteria, but I believe there are some criteria they all use.

1) Relevant keyword and keyword phrases.
There are a few keyword hotspots that are important
a. In the domain name,
b. In the title tags,
c. In the meta descriptions,
d. In the title of your pages,
e. In the headings and sub headings,
f. In your content,
g. in the links,
h. image tags
i. body content

2) High quality, relevant content
with correct keyword density (at least 5 related keywords or keyword phrases per page?)

3) The popularity of your site
The more traffic, the higher your site's ranking?

4) Links from high ranking related sites
these sites must have related keyword focuses?
the popularity of these links count as well?

5) Trustworthiness?
don't fully understand this one...

Then a confusing point;
There seems to be a debate about the value of Page Rank. Some say it doesn't mean much, others say it does. The way I understand is that one of the factors in determining the PR, is the amount of quality links. But it is also my understanding so far that it is not so much the amount of links that matter, but rather the popularity of these links. Ex. A link (to my site) from a quality site (with same keyword focus) that get clicked on often (is very popular), will count more towards your rankings as say 30 other links (from non related sites) that are not popular. Is this correct?
If this is correct, then PR in itself does not count so much?

Just to be sure, what are the difference between a inbound link and a backlink?

And: Outbound links from my site to another, good or bad for ranking?

Please, is my understanding correct so far?
What other criteria is important to look at?

I'm looking forward to your replies.
#website design #criteria #engine #rankings #search #search engine rankings
  • You have the basic understanding down for this, but you need to remember that you should focus on your users, not the search engines!
  • Oh... and for back links, it doesn't matter if the sites are related to yours or not!
  • The search engine most people worry about is google, simply b/c it seems to drive the most traffic. I know I have 1st page ranking in multiple search engines for the same terms, and the traffic google sends my way DWARFS yahoo, bing, etc.

    You've got most of the on-page optimization stuff down. Another factor google seems to like is age of your site, though there's really nothing you can do about that.

    As to how much importance google gives to age vs on-page factors vs anything else, nobody really knows. Out of the on-page stuff you listed, having the KW in the domain name seems to make the biggest difference (at least for right now). I wouldn't worry about KW density too much - make sure your KW is in there a time or two, then just make the content good and relevant to the KW. You'll get all the other related KWs and such as you need that way.

    The one factor you can (seemingly) actually change is your backlinks.

    A few points to consider:

    -As iAmNameLess said, relevancy of your backlinks means nothing. If your site is about weight loss, a PR3 backlink from another site about weight loss is worth just as much as a PR3 backlink from a site about putting in hardwood floors.

    -The higher the PR of the backlink, the better. There are some stats going around that says a PRX backlink is worth so many PRY backlinks. For example, one thing I read was that a PR3 backlink was supposedly worth something like 500+ PR0 backlinks. I have no idea if this is true or not.

    -The more varied the backlinks, the better, though it's not completely necessary. I got one of my sites to mid first page of google simply by posting 5-10 articles to 5-6 different articles directories every single day for some 6 weeks straight. I had some other stuff in there as well (links from other blogs, newsletters, some social bookmarking), but nothing crazy. The majority of my backlinking was from the ADs, and it got me first page.

    -The key to backlinking is consistency. A lot of people say that you can't build too many backlinks too fast or google will sandbox you. That's bull. If that's the case, a site like facebook would have never been able to explode the way it did, and it would have sandboxed. What google doesn't want to see if the site get 20 backlinks in month 1, 75 backlinks in month 2, 7000 backlinks in month 3, and 25 backlinks in month 4. They'll see the spike and know something was up, and you tried to buck the system somehow. However, if you were to build a consistent 1000 backlinks per month, every single month, then google doesn't really have a reason to sandbox your site, even if it is brand new.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      You've got the basics down so far. too much information can lead to overload
      it's also important to focus on your users really and give them quality information that will keep them coming back.
      google is the big guy but other search engines matter too.
      • [1] reply
  • The first thing that you need to know is that most of the major search engines utilize an algorithm to determine where a website ranks then you can increase ranking by various methods such as
    • [1] reply
    • @gilmore

      You look like you know EXACTLY what you're talking about and doing! A lot of people are more worried about getting backlinks... From here and there - DoNoFollow - High PR - Low PR... Whatever.

      Ranking is sooooo much easier when you've got perfect ON-SITE SEO! And you plan is a good one!
      • [1] reply
  • There are a number of other factors, only some of which you control. They include domain age, load time of site (if its slow it will rank lower) etc...
  • Thanks for sharing the tips
  • Google has its robot to crawl all the pages on the web.. Higher is the quality of the page, more likely to get PR for that page..!! These are algorithms each set for the respective search engine..!!
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