Good old Fashioned Ranking Tips

A great deal of today’s important ranking factors, are very similar to the ones that worked in 2005, 2006, 2007…...  In other words, a lot of the basics have been quite consistent.

However, it might be useful to have a look at some of the things that matter most and least in terms of ranking.  Let us start with the Important Things:

Title tags - This one’s a simple one, but an absolute must.  Good title tags have long been recognized as one of the single most important SEO elements of any web page.  What makes a good title tag?  A good title tag specific to each individual page is absolutely essential.  Beyond that, as Rand pointed out, having your ‘important terms’ appear early in your title tag also has a significant impact.

Anchor Text - Anchor text is the visible text of a link.  Having inbound links is the number one search factor but not all links are created the same.  For example, you have people linking to your page selling blue widgets.  If the text in their content reads “Fantastic Blue Widgets can be found here!” it makes a big difference in which words they link to your page.  If they link the words ‘Blue Widgets’, it’s going to do you a lot more good than if they just link the word ‘here’.

This is important to keep in mind with your own internal linking too.  Avoid using terms which say little about the link page content like ‘home’ and ‘here’ and ‘main’ when you link to your own pages.

Quantity of Domains Linking - This one is interesting.  If you have 10,000 inbound links and your competitor only has 7,000 inbound links but still seems to outrank you consistently, this could be the reason.  Number of links is important, but the number of unique domains those links are coming from is also very important.

Social Media/Mobile - The positive effects of Social and to some extent mobile media too can be hard to explain and justify.  The fact of the matter is; these are hugely important areas. Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are continuing to grow in users and these users can be very important to your business.  Effective social media management can be a tremendous source for generating traffic, and those all-important inbound links.

Here are some of the things that are not so important:

H1 Tags - A couple of years ago, making use of H1 and H2 tags on selected areas of your HTML code came into use. Search engine spiders interpreted H1 tags as a sign that ‘this text is important because it’s bigger’. Of course the use of CSS meant that you now can place H1 tags anywhere and everywhere on your page.

If having H1 Tags was ever an effective ranking tactic or strategy is a matter of opinion. However, while H1 tags are not going to hurt your site, they don’t seem to be much of a factor.

Keyword Density - This one might surprise you. Keyword density is often misunderstood and widely misused. It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target key phrase into the text of your target page.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms ‘blue beach widgets’ in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have ‘blue beach widgets’ repeated 50 times in the description.  I know you have seen these pages…  they look like:

“The Blue Beach Widget Company has the finest selection of blue beach widgets on the web.  Our blue beach widgets are so much better than our competitor’s blue beach widgets, that all of our blue beach widget customers all think our blue beach widgets are the best blue beach widgets ever. So if you need a blue beach widget, or have a friend that needs a blue beach widget, tell them to visit the blue beach widget emporium to find the best blue beach widgets in the blue beach widget business”

This sort of attempt of getting ranked high on Search Engines has to stop. It makes your site look cheap and totally unprofessional, and makes for some horrible web pages

W3C Validation - We have tried to explain this one a thousand times… but we say it again: if you want your site to validate W3C, by all means… do it.  If having code that passes W3C validation makes you sleep well at night you go get that done. We are all for having W3C valid code, if that is what is wanted.

In terms of SEO and search engine ranking, the simple reality is: IT DOESN’T MATTER.  It never has mattered and it never will matter.  Can it hurt you to have valid code?  Certainly not.  Should you pay a designer an extra 30% to design your web page to be 100% W3C compliant and valid? That’s up to you. But before you do, consider this: of the top 100 websites on-line, MAYBE 8 (and that is very generous) of them pass W3C validation.  Amazon doesn’t pass, e Bay doesn’t pass, Twitter doesn’t pass, and neither does Google, Yahoo or even Microsoft’s new Bing.

If your page shows well in all the browsers, if you don’t have broken links, in other words if your webpage looks like a webpage and can be read… that’s all you need. Search engines could not care less. W3C might help get you listed in some directories (maybe?),

We believe, the most common use for W3C Validation however is to inflate the price estimate for web designers, so that they can talk you into the their W3C Validation Money Honey Trap