Google SEO And Their 80/20 Rule

By: David Callan
Search engine optimisation or optimization (with a 'z' or is that 'zee' if your from across 'the pond') techniques are constantly evolving. This evolution is in response to the evolution of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google in particular has come to be seen as the most sophisticated and advanced search engine as it is armed with an array of anti-spam technology. Google's increasing use of anti-spam features has meant that optimising websites for Google has become much harder and it's now not just a case of opening your websites source files in notepad, adding some keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. In fact in my opinion and I'm sure others will agree with me, this type of optimisation, commonly referred to as onpage optimisation will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for any keywords which are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for.

This 80% corresponds to offpage optimization. Offpage optimization is all to do with the amount of links pointing to your site and its pages, the actual linking text (anchor text) of these links and the quality of the pages which the links are on. Offpage optimisation is now for sure the overwhelmingly dominating factor which decides where a site will rank in Google. That then is what I mean by the 80/20 rule, I'm not talking about the pareto rule which means that in anything a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are trivial, I'm not sure that applies to SEO. What is the logic behind this then, why does Google give so much 'weight' (80%) to offpage optimization efforts and so little (20%) to onpage optimisation. Well simply put it is all about the quality of their results. Whereas onpage optimisation is completely controlled by the webmaster and can thus be abused by an unscrupulous one, offpage optimisation is something that is not controlled by anyone as such by rather by other webmasters, websites and indeed the Internet in general. This means that it is much harder to conduct any underhanded or spammy offpage optimisation methods in the hope of gaining an unfair advantage for a website in the Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), this does not mean it is impossible though. Let's elaborate for a paragraph or two just why offpage elements such as incoming links are deemed by Google to be such a good measure of relevancy, thus making offpage optimisation the most effective method of optimisation by far. Take the anchor text of incoming links for instance, if Google sees a link from SITE A to SITE B with the actual linking text being the words 'data recovery london', then SITE B has just become more relavent and thus more likely to appear higher in the rankings when someone searches for 'data recovery london'. SITE B has no control over SITE A (in most cases.) and Google knows this. Google can then look at the link text and say to itself, why would SITE A link to SITE B with the specific words 'data recovery london' if SITE B wasn't 'about' 'data recovery london', there is no answer so Google must deem SITE B to be 'about' 'data recovery london'.

I said 'in most cases' above because often webmasters have multiple sites and would crosslink them with keyword rich anchor text, but there is only so many sites and crosslinks any webmaster can manage, again Google knows this and so as the number of backlinks and occurrences of keyword rich anchor text grows (and with that grows the unlikelihood of anything unnatural like crosslinking going on) so to does the relevancy of the site which all the backlinks point to. Imagine hundreds or thousands of sites all linking to a website X with variations of 'data recovery london' type phrases as the linking text, well then Google can be pretty dam sure that website X is 'about' 'data recovery london' and feel confident about returning it in the top 10 results. This is why they place so much importance (80%) on offpage ranking factors such as links; they are simply the most reliable way of checking what a site is about and indeed how well it covers what it is about. This reliance on hard to cheat offpage factors is what produces the quality search results we all know, love and use everyday. The moral of the story from an SEO point of view then is to spend less time on those little website tweaks which you think might make a big difference (but won't) and work hard on what really counts, what really counts is how the web 'sees' your website, the more quality (keyword rich) incoming links your website has the better the webs 'view' will be and therefore the better Google's view of your website will be. What Google thinks of your website is very important, as they 'look after' websites which they like.

About Author: Article by David Callan. David is the leading search engine consultant with AKA Marketing.com's Search Engine Optimisation team. AKA Marketing.com provide full SEO services as well as telephone based consulting for those preferring the DIY approach.

7 Simple SEO Techniques

By: KEITH ROBINSON
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably the least understood aspect of Web design and marketing. It’s a world of secret sauce, voodoo and complicated algorithms. The are few facts, no guarantees and lots of wishing on a star when it comes to SEO, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, you could pay an SEO consultant to optimize your site for you. You could pay someone to recommend keywords and submit your site to popular search engines. You could do all of these things and more and still, there will be no guarantee that it will help your rankings. More importantly, there is no guarantee it will drive the visitors you want and need to make your site successful. Rankings are important, but it’s relevant visits—those that turn visitors into customers—that really matter.

While a vast industry of consulting, technology and services have grown around the promise of a SEO silver bullet, the saying, "There is no silver bullet," is ultimately true. While SEO has its complications, it is simpler than it has been made to be. Simple ways you can optimize your site for search exist that are little more than well-applied common sense, a plan and some know-how. When it comes to SEO, and driving relevant visits, you’ll get the most bang for your buck by getting your content in order, having your site built the right way and taking the time to manage it and keep it fresh.

Content is - and always will be the king: The most important thing you can do to assure your site is optimized for search is to provide great, relevant content. Put (very) simply, the best kind of Web content is relevant to your customers’ (and potential customers’) needs, and written with the Web in mind.Search engines are all about indexing content. Without content, no amount of SEO trickery is going to help you in the long run, nor should it. By helping engines help people who are looking for information, you’re not only providing a service and making the Web an easier place to be, you’ll be helping increase your ranking and relevancy with search engines. When you’ve got good, current and relevant content people want to read—you’ve got something others may also want to link to.

Inbound Links Matter Most: When it comes to SEO, the most important factor as it relates to ranking in a search engine, is how many inbound links you have and the quality of those inbound links—other highly ranked sites linking to your site are worth more that lower ranked sites. If you can provide content people want to link to, you’ll move up in the rankings. Again, it comes back to content, but it’s more than that. You should be actively soliciting links to your content. I don’t mean the (usually less than useful) typical link exchange techniques. I mean getting the word out that you’ve published something worth noting and keeping interest in your content high by keeping it always fresh and up-to-date. Content can be hard to get right, but when you do, and when you’ve got people interested and linking to you, you’re relevant visits, the visits that actually matter, will go way up.

Proper Page [and code] Structure: This one may be tricky for those who don’t know HTML, but in essence it’s not that complicated. A properly coded and structured page will be easier to index. By using lean, clean, standard and semantic (i.e. meaningful) markup, you literally make a hierarchical map of your content and your site for a crawler to follow. This structure begins with proper titles (and therefore title tags) for your content, as well as keyword rich headings and well organized paragraphs. It can be a bit complicated and it does take some work to ensure your code is designed the right way. Quality code—from design to production—can make a huge difference in how your site is indexed. While there is an abundance of cut-rate code jockeys available, a development team with the skills to build the code with elegance will pay significant dividends both the site’s overall technical and search performance. Hiring Web developers who know and understand Web standards and best practices would be a good place to start.

On Keywords: It can be a challenge to determine which keywords to use in your content to ensure higher rankings. However, this doesn’t have to be something you pay a consultant to sort out for you. If you are willing to do a bit of research on your own, you can do quite a bit of this yourself.Note that when it comes to placing keywords, the titles of your pages and the content itself should be where you put your effort. Spamming (yes—spamming) a search engine with huge lists of keywords doesn’t help much – and may well get you blacklisted. As well, the keywords meta tag isn’t all that important anymore, a common myth of SEO. It helps, just not that much.

In order to leverage keywords for SEO, first, you’ll want to understand the goals of your site as they relate to search. For example, prioritize what you want people to find on your site, as well as what they might be looking for. It is important to consider the Web site from the perspective of the user, as they ultimately determine what’s valuable, and the words or relational terms they use to search on are most important. Many plug and play statistical software packages are available, providing information on what users are searching for. Once you’ve got those goals down and you have an understanding of your customers and how they use the Web, chances are you can make a pretty good guess as to some keywords and keyword phrases. You can then plug those keywords into tools like Suggestion Tool (www.suggestiontool.com) or Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) to see how they match up to actual searches.

Images: Without help a search engine cannot index image or multimedia content. For that reason, and many others, a general rule of thumb would be to style textual content, such as navigation and headings, with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of using an image for text. When it comes to informational and decorative images on a Web page, proper coding of the ALT attribute is key. This is a good place to add a keyword rich description of the image. This doesn’t help a ton when it comes to SEO, but it does help some and has other benefits in terms of usability and accessibility.

SplashPages and HomePages: Make sure that the top-level pages of your site have enough links on them to allow a crawler or spider to get down into the content of your site. If you’ve thought about having a Flash or image only splash page—think again—you’ll effectively be cutting the search engines off at the very beginning. If you’re curious as to what a crawler actually sees when going through your site, try using a search engine spider simulator (www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php). If nothing shows up, you’ve got some work to do.

How to Optimize Your Website's Tag

Titles: All your pages should contain a relevant title, which is to say that the title of your page should always contain the keywords most relevant to your site. The keywords should appear at the beginning of the title tag. Be careful not to use too many keywords in the title as Google may see this as spamming and ban your site. See below for an example of a good title tag: Celtic Wedding Rings and Irish Wedding Bands from Celtic-weddingrings.com

You will notice that I placed the keywords at the beginning and then placed the site name at the end. Keyword placement is the thing here, the keywords usually out wieght the domain name. Even though our domain name carries the keywords in it, I still prefer to use what search words I think our user will use first. With one of the previous updates to google's algorythm, nicknamed Jagger (Nov 2005), it is rumoured that less relevance is placed on metatags and titles. However, I still think they are very important as identifiers for your users as this is the text that will appear in the search results.

Descriptions: Descriptions are not necessarily going to help your site get ranked any higher; however, it is still a good idea to add a relevant description as this is what will appear as a summary in the search results, thus helping the user decide which site is most relevant to him/her. There is no harm in implementing some of your top keywords into the description so the user can see that your site is relevant to his/her search. A good example of a description tag is: Specializing in selling quality celtic wedding rings & irish wedding bands

Again, refrain from too much marketing blurb as this is not usually considered important. Keep it short and relevant with a nice use of the keywords you favour.

Keywords: This is no longer an important tag with regard to Google's ranking system, however it is still advisable to implement the top 5 keywords of your site as they will be used for other search engines. Plus, although Google pay less attention to this tag it does not mean they ignore it all together. A good example of a keyword tag is: celtic rings, wedding bands, irish engagement ring

As you can see, I have not used repeated words as this can be treated as spam. Think of the five most important words (or set of words) that people will use to find your product. It is vital that you do not exceed this amount. Various SEO's will give you different amounts to abide by, but this is the figure I use and have never been penalized.

Alt Tags: These are tricky little things and should be used with caution. Over use of alt tags will be noticed. Choose 2 or 3 relevant images per page and assign them tags that contain no more than one keyword. A good example of an appropriate alt tag is: Welcome to Celtic Wedding Rings
Make sure that the ALT description is correct for that image and makes sense. It is a terrible thing to be penalized for something so trivial so avoid any chance of that happening by sticking to the rules.