What do search engines look for?
Search Engines use many different criteria to rank a site and these change from time to time. Google ranking algorithms are a closely guarded secret so that no-one can claim to break the system to gain an unfair advantage. Indeed, trying to fool or trick Google will result in penalisation and a sharp drop in rakings.
The information gathered here is a combination of our own successes and advice freely available on the internet. Although there are no guarantees on any likely search engine positions, Blue Cube SEO methods will help your site achieve a stable search engine ranking.
Keyword Selection
The selection of Keywords is vital to reflect the products available online and to also reflect what users are searching for on the internet.
Keyword Theme
It’s a known fact that the distribution of Keywords throughout the site is vital to confirm the website theme to Google.
Keyword Density
- Keyword density refers to the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page.
- The preferred keyword density ratio varies from search engine to search engine.
Keyword Frequency
- Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page.
- The theory is that the more times a keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page, the more relevance a search engine is likely to give the page for a search with those keywords.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a web page. The general recommendation is to place important keywords at, or near, the start of a web page, sentence, TITLE or META tag.
Keyword Proximity
Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.
META Description and Keyword Tags
- Although less important to Google for ranking purposes, the Meta Description is used by many Search Engines to display information online about the product or service.
- Again each page needs to have separate Descriptions and Keywords to differentiate the products and services and make it easier to catalogue and therefore rank.
- Even though Google will probably write their own description – they may mark it down if it doesn’t clearly reflect the keyword theme.
Robots Tag
The Robots.txt file is placed at the start of the page code to tell the SEs quickly about the page and to also re-visit on a weekly or monthly basis.
Link Popularity
Building links to and from a website can help a website increase both the targeted traffic it receives and its search engine placement.
Link popularity is an important factor, that in the case of some search engines, determines your ranking.
A search engine, such as Google, will calculate your placement, by looking at what types of websites link to your website, the sites that your website links to and the interlinking of pages throughout your own website.
The Advantages of Link Popularity are:
- Increase in overall exposure across the World Wide Web;
- Increased rankings in search engines;
- Increased traffic to website.
Site Map
Adding a Site Map page reaffirms the structure of the site, aids navigation for those that use site maps and also registers well with Google.
Landing Pages
- A landing page is a keyword rich page targeting only 1 or 2 keywords. For instance, if the Keyword is ‘Car Insurance’ – the page will have the keyword repeated as the Title, headline and all the copy needs to reference the phrase ‘Car Insurance’ with maximum Keyword Density.
- The Meta Description and Keywords associated with the page need to echo this too.
External/Back Links
It is essential to create links from directories such as DMOZ.org and other relevant sites with high Google rankings back to the product websites – it demonstrates that they find the site credible and this then in turn imparts some of their Google ranking to the site.
Google Page Rank
We would aim to achieve PR improvements and to achieve a PR of 4 or 5 ranking over time.
