Keyword Research
What Is Relevant?
According to Google
 

People in general know nothing about the algorithm that runs the search engines. Many of you don't know what an algorithm is. I really count myself among that group even though I know it has something to do with statistical analysis.

The information about using the search engines to their best advantage (optimization) is really only derived by the author's personal experience and an effort to predict what the "robots" will do next. No one has access to behind the scenes knowledge.

The formula that calculates who is listed at the top of the search results keeps changing. As people find new ways to "cheat" to improve their website ranking, methods of calculating relevance also change. What made your website #1 yesterday might not be a factor today.

The internet is constantly growing. Therefore, that means the number of matching search results goes up. This factor in itself is enough to cause you to lose rank for specific keywords.

Backlinks -- The Most Important Factor For Search Engine Results?

Ask most experts this question and the resounding answer is YES! However, not all backlinks carry the most weight. A backlink ha two important parts.

The importance of the website linking to you -- A page's importance is rated in PR (Page Rank) which is a number value assigned to a website, on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 being the best.

How the link to your website appears to the search engine -- The search engine cannot read images so the use of an image (even your logo) as a link to your site does not register.

As long as there are words in the link, the search engine will be able to read it. However, words like "Click Here" make the link relatively useless.

If you use a high traffic keyword phrase, the search engine will get your URL and any of the associated terms. You control the words you use for the anchor text. The more places link to you with relevant terms in the anchor test, the better the chances of a high listing for those keywords.

What Else Moves Me To The Top?

Yes, it is important to have a term for which users searched but that is not all there is to it. Some of the other factors are: page keyword density, page title, and font size.

Basic Rules

If a keyword is listed in the meta tags, it should appear in the page body.

The text in the title of the page should appear on the page.

Bold, italicized, underlines, and heading text are considered more important and therefore give you more relevance.

The title of the page holds the most weight with keywords.

Make sure keywords are in the Meta Tag, title and page body.