Google Ranking decoded?
The topic of search engine optimisation (SEO) and google rankings seems to be front of mind this week. Two of my clients have mentioned the need to do it, revise it or improve on it.
Agencies are now setting up specifically to advise on SEO and of course this is a license for a long term relationship with customers who have to keep coming back for more as the Google algorithm changes over time [invest now….?!]
Anyway, nice article from the SEOmoz Blog about the key factors involved A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm Revealed .
The main parts are: Key Words, Domain Strength, Inbound LInks, User Data and Content Quality.
Well we could have guessed that…. but here are some things that you can use to check your website is up to scratch on these basic hygiene factors. For the technically minded the Search Enging Ranking Factors article provides the techhie fix. (or send it to your web designers).
KW Usage Factors:
- KW in title tag
- KW in header tags
- KW in document text
- KW in internal links pointing to the page
- KW in domain and/or URL
Domain Strength
- Registration history
- Domain age
- Strength of links pointing to the domain
- Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
- Historical use & links pattern to domain
Inbound Link Score
- Age of links
- Quality of domains sending links
- Quality of pages sending links
- Anchor text of links
- Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
- Subject matter of linking pages/sites
User Data
- Historical CTR to page in SERPs
- Time users spend on page
- Search requests for URL/domain
- Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)
Content Quality Score
- Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
- Provided by Google raters (remember Henk?)
- Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc
Leading to…GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain
Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1)
+ (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated &
Manual Penalties)