Google basics

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

OK is it fair to say that for good SEO design the following are still
important.

1) keyphrase in url
2) keyphrase in file name
3) incoming anchor text containing anchor text
4) meta title containing keyphrase
5) meta description containing keyphrase
6) text plenty of it with keywords in places that still allows to read well
7) <h1> tags with keyphrase
8) <alt> containing keyphrase
9) naming convention of images to contain keyphrase

have I 1) missed anything and 2) anyone hazard a guess as to which order
they should priority be given. I guess this is directed to a degree at SEO
Dave or Sam, as having read their posts recently they have strong opposing
views, but please all ideas are welcome.

Matt

Matt Paines wrote:

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

OK is it fair to say that for good SEO design the following are still
important.

1) keyphrase in url

Still appears to be.

2) keyphrase in file name

Not for me.

3) incoming anchor text containing anchor text

If it isn't being abused yes.

4) meta title containing keyphrase

Very important but keep the number of words low

5) meta description containing keyphrase

Same as 4 but not as important (Most of my sites google ignores my meta
description line completely and takes the words straight off the page)

6) text plenty of it with keywords in places that still allows to read well

Keyword spamming could now be hampering rankings but it's my own
personal feelings, not official in any way. I only go up to 10%

7) <h1> tags with keyphrase

Yes before Florida, no idea at the moment.

8) <alt> containing keyphrase

yes if the images are linked to something.

9) naming convention of images to contain keyphrase

Abused seems to hamper ratings.

Top 4 Priority imo:


4.
6.
3.
8. (with link)


--

Simon Day
Free desktop wallpapers of Torbay at: http://www.simonday.com

Matt Paines wrote:

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

OK is it fair to say that for good SEO design the following are still
important.

1) keyphrase in url
2) keyphrase in file name
3) incoming anchor text containing anchor text
4) meta title containing keyphrase
5) meta description containing keyphrase
6) text plenty of it with keywords in places that still allows to read well
7) <h1> tags with keyphrase
8) <alt> containing keyphrase
9) naming convention of images to contain keyphrase

have I 1) missed anything and 2) anyone hazard a guess as to which order
they should priority be given. I guess this is directed to a degree at SEO
Dave or Sam, as having read their posts recently they have strong opposing
views, but please all ideas are welcome.

Matt

What you say is interesting and I myself have a few experiments going on
right now testing this. But with google not doing the mini updates any
longer (haven't done one since nov 29) we'll have to wait till this
months big dance to find out. There's one thing I'm ignorant about and
that is keyword density. I never had to worry about it because my
particular search is one where only the 2 exact keywords will work for
getting any business. It's the one bummer part of the search I'm in and
it's really limiting. Having my site show up at similiar or elated
phrases doesn't do a thing for getting new business for my site. I've
tried it countless numbers of times with the same net effect
unfortunateley. But I've taken a few of my sites and knocked the keyword
down to no more than 5 times max (url, title, header, content, link)-
that's one time for each of them. I even did one site with less just
title, header and link. So keeping my fingers crossed. But I have sites
that have 10 pages and I only changed one inside page this way. Do you
think google will sense the keywords still being a lot on all the other
pages of the site that haven't been knocked down yet and that all the
pages need to be modified not just one internal page?

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 20:40:26 -0000, "Matt Paines"
<sales (AT) ebusiness-strategies (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

Hi,

Prior to this months update I was working with this order in mind-

1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page
1a. PR - The anchor text etc... from a high PR page worth more than a
low (all help though).
2. Title
3. <h1><h2><h3><h4>
4. Keywords in domain name or file name.
5. <b> or <strong>
6. Keyword within the body text
6a. Keyword within the body text surrounded by <i> or <u> (no evidence
on this, just feels right).

If I had to put a percentage on them-

1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 45% -50%
1a. PR - The anchor text etc... from a high PR page worth more than a
low (all help though).
2. Title 30%
3. <h1><h2><h3><h4> 10%
4. Keywords in domain name or file name. 5%
5. <b> or <strong> 1%
6. Keyword within the body text 3%
6a. Keyword within the body text surrounded by <i> or <u> (no evidence
on this, just feels right). 1%

Don't take the percentages to seriously though. I look on them as the
maximum you can get from a particular factor towards a SERP. So if you
got 10 links from PR7 pages and 100 links of varying PR with your
exact keyword in the anchor text I'd put that close to the max 45-50%
for that factor. For a low competition SERP that would probably be
enough for top 3 without any on page optimisation, but might not get
you in the top 30 for a competitive SERP.

Basically 50% off page 50% on page.

It's too early to be confident of the new order, but I'm working with
this in mind right now-

1. Title 30%
2. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 25% - 30%
2a. PR - The anchor text etc... from a high PR page worth more than a
low (all help though).
3. <h1><h2><h3><h4> 15%
4. Keyword within the body text 15%
4a. Keyword within the body text surrounded by <i> or <u> (no evidence
on this, just feels right) 1%
5. Keywords in domain name or file name. 5%
6. <b> or <strong> 5%

I think the benefit has been spread out more to make spamming,
especially blog comment spamming and any remaining guestbook spamming
harder and less effective. Putting more emphasis on content rather
than anchor text/PR.

Basically 30% off page 70% on page.

Things that are irrelevant-

1. ALT text of non linking images (if they don't link it don't count).
2. Keyword and description meta tags (description can still be used,
but it doesn't boost the pages SERPs).

It's also reasonable to believe something near the top of the page is
considered more important than something at the bottom.

Take into account it's very early days with the new algo, so I could
be way off. This is my initial thinking that fits for most of what I
see so far.

have I 1) missed anything and 2) anyone hazard a guess as to which order
they should priority be given. I guess this is directed to a degree at SEO
Dave or Sam, as having read their posts recently they have strong opposing
views, but please all ideas are welcome.

Matt

I see no convincing evidence of a filter at this time, but a lot of
very poor research (like scroogle or -googlegoo searches) to try to
back the filter hypothesis up. Scroogle ( -googlegoo search) does not
show last months SERPs.

do these two searches side by side-

allinanchor: keyword
keyword -bunchacrap

They are much closer than

keyword -bunchacrap being equal to last months keyword standard
search.

I follow my SERPs religiously and keyword -bunchacrap is not last
months SERPs.

David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 16/11/2003)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123...-optimization/
Free SEO Mailing List
http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=3290

SEO Dave:

1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 45% -50%

If I was Google, I would ignore or even penalize keywords in the Alt text,
since this is practically invisible content that's so obviously being
abused bij SEO's.

--
René Pijlman

Wat wil jij leren? http://www.leren.nl

Rene Pijlman wrote:

SEO Dave:
1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 45% -50%

If I was Google, I would ignore or even penalize keywords in the Alt
text, since this is practically invisible content that's so obviously
being abused bij SEO's.

Alt-text in links are perfectly valid HTML markup. As soon as Google
would be penalizing or ignoring perfectly valid markup, they would do
wrong.

Rene Pijlman wrote:

SEO Dave:
1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 45% -50%

If I was Google, I would ignore or even penalize keywords in the Alt text,
since this is practically invisible content that's so obviously being
abused bij SEO's.

--
René Pijlman

I think I agree with you about this because how many people use their pc

with images turned off? Not many. I ahppen to be one of the few who do
but I'm in the minority.

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

OK is it fair to say that for good SEO design the following are still
important.

1) keyphrase in url
2) keyphrase in file name
3) incoming anchor text containing anchor text
4) meta title containing keyphrase
5) meta description containing keyphrase
6) text plenty of it with keywords in places that still allows to read
well
7) <h1> tags with keyphrase
8) <alt> containing keyphrase
9) naming convention of images to contain keyphrase

have I 1) missed anything and 2) anyone hazard a guess as to which
order
they should priority be given. I guess this is directed to a degree at SEO
Dave or Sam, as having read their posts recently they have strong opposing
views, but please all ideas are welcome.

what im waiting for is a SE that gives preference to XHTML accessible sites
that use proper formatting for forms, links, quotes etc...

ho hum

mark

Matt Paines wrote:

Perhaps for us mere mortals can anyone outline some basics. I only ask
because some of the basic principles that I have been working to have no
relevance any more with Google.

OK is it fair to say that for good SEO design the following are still
important.

1) keyphrase in url
2) keyphrase in file name
3) incoming anchor text containing anchor text
4) meta title containing keyphrase
5) meta description containing keyphrase
6) text plenty of it with keywords in places that still allows to read well
7) <h1> tags with keyphrase
8) <alt> containing keyphrase
9) naming convention of images to contain keyphrase

have I 1) missed anything and 2) anyone hazard a guess as to which order
they should priority be given. I guess this is directed to a degree at SEO
Dave or Sam, as having read their posts recently they have strong opposing
views, but please all ideas are welcome.

Matt

Just realized I haven't answered the question you asked at my other post
so will do so now.

This is what I consider the most important in order of importance:

1. Key word(s) in meta title tag, in link anchor text, and text content
of the page.
I don't see how these three things can be seperated in order of
importance as they are all equally as important in getting high page
listing. You don't need a lot of keywords on the page for this to work
either. One in the meta title tag, at least one in the text content and
at least one in the link anchor text will work but I prefer going with 2
or 3 in the text content and 6 to 8 in the link anchor text. Although
with the florida thing that might change unless it goes back and it
turns out to have been just a computer glitch.

2. Incoming links (back links). Get them wherever you can and figure
this is a never ending ongoing 16 hour a day job like it or not. Even if
you trade links with legitimate sites their pr can drop for any number
of reasons and if theirs drops so will yours to some degree. I still
like memberlists, guestbooks, blog comments, link lists, and buying a
zillion urls and link afrming if you can afford it and have all the time
in the world.

Really number 1 and 2 are equally as important since without back links
your site will be nowhere but without proper use of keywords even a high
pr site will be nowhere. It's really a combonation of the two things and
everything else number 3 on down is just minor tweaking compared to the
above two things.

I also want to say that if I were Google I'd find a way to only have
back links coming from legitimate sites exchanging links and fan site
links (one way links like when you have www.yahoo.com on your site). I'd
do away with memberlists, guestbook, blog comment, and link lists sites
as back links. Would stop a lot of spam and irrlevant sites showing up.
But hey, as lomg as google let's us get away with it I will take full
advantage of it.

3. All the minor little things like headers <h1-4> if they are really
better that is. I have sites just using font=6 and a bold tag that seem
to work just as well. Also I haven't found alt image anchor text links
to be any better than regular anchor text links even though many seo's
say it works better for them. A link is a link is a link as far as I'm
concerned. I also have strong doubts about incoming links from external
sites using keywords in the anchor text as having any special powers to
help your site. I think it's a myth and doesn't do anything to help a
site's listing and instead just creates lots of irrelevant url's showing
up at searches. As far as I'm concerned all Google wants to see if your
url address when it comes to incoming links from external sources.

That's my fix on SEO and so far I've been pretty succesful with it.

Rene Pijlman <reply.in.the.newsgroup (AT) my (DOT) address.is.invalid> wrote in
news:sjstsvg6vlqjmobvjthkk7p1ggltm6r7me (AT) 4ax (DOT) com:

SEO Dave:
1. Anchor or ALT text of links to a page 45% -50%

If I was Google, I would ignore or even penalize keywords in the Alt
text, since this is practically invisible content that's so obviously
being abused bij SEO's.

Can't see penalising for using ALT happening.

If any kind of proof got out, Google would be lining itself up for legal
problems: there is legislation on making sites accessible, and ALT text
is an important part of providing accessibility for blind users.

I don't think google would want to be accused of making the web harder
for screen reader users, even without the legal implications.

As for ignoring ALT on anchor link images, when so many sites have image
button menus, that would mean they would be relying much more on
pagerank and in-page factors to judge relevance, and we know how
difficult those are to manipulate ;-)

Image link ALT text is actually relatively hard to make spammy without
looking crappy, given that the ALT pops up on mouseover in IE, so users
do tend to notice it.

I have had clients ask me to remove keywords from menu ALT text because
they don't like the wording (even though I do work pretty hard on
phrasing things attractively). Getting the brand right is more
important to them than a few extra visitors, which is fair enough.

If the site makes the wrong impression, all the visitors in the world
won't help it make sales.

Victoria
--
Clare Associates Ltd
http://www.clareassoc.co.uk/
01822 835802
--