Google Algorithm Cracked
Posted by Mert Erkal on Sep 29, 2010 in Search Engine Optimization | 2 comments
Apart from blogging, I spend most of my time revealing the secrets of search engines. I have quite a lot of SEO customers who are willing to rank high on their desired keywords especially on Google. I must admit, this is the most difficult challenge I have ever taken in my business life. Especially nowadays it is much more difficult than before to rank high on Google. Throughout the time I found a way to crack Google’s ranking algorithm, which is ever changing.
We know that Google uses about 200 ranking factors to determine the position of a web page in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). However, Google does not reveal the list of ranking factors and how exactly they are weighted.
Which factors are important to Google when ranking a web site?
Google revealed some factors that affect the position of a web page in Google’s search results in the past:
- the presence of a keyword in the HTML title tag
- the presence of a keyword in the HTML body copy
- keywords in bold typeface
- keywords in header tags
- the presence of a keyword in anchor text in links to a page
- the PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)
- the PageRank of the entire domain
- the loading speed of the web site
These eight factors are amongst the 200 factors that Google uses to rank a website. However, it does not make sense to add your search terms to every element on your website. It’s also important that the density or frequency of the search term in the web page elements is correct. If a search term appears in every possible element on a page, it is possible that Google will penalize the page.
How Can You Crack Google’s Ever-Changing Secret Ranking Algorithm?
Actually it is a lot easier then you might think. The web pages that are listed on Google’s first result page for your search terms obviously have all the ranking elements that are needed to get a top 10 position on Google for that search term. If you want to be listed for the same search term, it is better to analyze the top ranked pages. Here are some of the questions to be asked when analyzing those pages:
- In which page elements do they use the search term?
- How many links do the top ranked pages have?
- How many of these links contain the search term?
- How often should you use the search term in the different web page elements and the links?
Analyzing the top 10 pages will help you to greatly improve the rankings of your own web pages for your search terms. I use IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer to analyze the top 10 ranked pages and my customers web pages. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer analyzes all elements of the top 10 ranked pages and it compares the results to your own web page. It will tell you exactly how to change your own pages so that they will be listed on Google’s first result page. Good luck!
Great post, I’ve always been curious about what factors are the most important with Google’s ranking. And as a webmaster this is pure gold. Most of those tips are for on page SEO, so I can easily and quickly go back to tweak my posts. Many thanks!
There is one more important factor which is important for ranking high in the SERP’s and that is LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing. This basically means that there are important keywords and phrases relating to the topic of a page, which Google says are also important.
By combining your tips above, adding a quality linkbuilding battleplan and using LSI, any page will remain high in the SERP’s for a very long time.
Thanks for this great article.
Andy