New Google rankings study

"The German company Sistrix analyzed the web page elements of top ranked pages in Google to find out which elements lead to high Google rankings. They analyzed 10,000 random keywords, and for every keyword, they analyzed the top 100 Google search results."

Another recent study re-confirms the information that we provide in our weekly free Internet marketing class at the Small Business Development Center in Houston! (We always enjoy getting confirmation of our approach from other authorities!)

The study analyzed the following web page elements: web page title, web page body, headline tags, bold and strong tags, image file names, images alt text, domain name, path, parameters, file size, inbound links and PageRank. All were found to have an influence on rankings.

While the article did not emphasize this point, it seems relevant to point out the importance of finding and using the right keywords. The study focused on what you do with the words in the construction of the web site in order to gain the most impact, but did not stress the importance of finding and using the right words to begin with.

This might be a harder fact to study and report on, but the importance lies in understanding the thought processes of the people that you are trying to attract to your site. Optimization is a matter of finding the "edge" over your competition in every small way possible and making use of that in constructing your site. Begin by understanding your target audience, then use the information presented in this report to communicate to the search engines in the most effective way!

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine - New York Times

Here is an article that everyone interested in search engine optimization should read and think about. I took away from this several thoughts about how to improve my own optimization, which I will point out below, but you should read and think about this article from the perspective of your own practices and experiences to see what you can glean from it.

"Recently, a search for “French Revolution” returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like “French Revolution” rather than pages that simply had both words."

This description leads me to believe that the specificity with which we place keyword phrases on our pages will become more important in ranking. We talk about this every time we cover use of keyword phrases in our clinic, but this tweak seems to make those lessons more important! It also emphasizes the importance of finding those "low ranking" or little used phrases to include in the site, because this tweak can cause them to float right to the top on any particular search.

"... Google’s formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto."

This seems to say that links will become more important, particularly links that are related to your site from what we refer to as a "neighborhood" on the web. One indication of a neighborhood relationship is that a number of sites all link to similar sites. This is one of the things that we know Google takes into account when looking fr relationships between sites. It seems that it may be more important in the future.

"... Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them."

This point tells us that we have some special opportunities whenever something on our site is related to current news. If there is a surge in searches for a topic that is related to something on your site, it may be much more important that you have some fresh content pertaining to that topic. In other words, you can't rely on having been prescient and having information already on your site. Google looks like it will add emphasis to sites that have new content relating to the topic!

"Once Google corrals its myriad signals, it feeds them into formulas it calls classifiers that try to infer useful information about the type of search, in order to send the user to the most helpful pages."

I am not sure what to make of this comment except that what Google is doing with its algorithm is very complex and fluid, meaning that making the optimal use of techniques requires continual updating!

The influence of semantic indexing on your search engine rankings

"Semantic indexing means that search engines try to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages."

Semantic indexing is something that webmasters and developers should understand in order to more effectively utilize the keyword research that should underlie all site development efforts. Semantic indexing is another technique that search engines use to try to "understand" better what particular web pages are "about".

The technique is built on associations between words that the search engines find in their crawling of the web. Words that are frequently found together on pages are taken to bear some meaningful relationship to one another. Simple, but effective and reasonable!

How do you make us of this knowledge to improve your site? Consider it when creating your focus for your pages and the keyword emphasis on the page. Consider it also when you create your links within your site for site navigation. And, finally, consider it whenever you look for related sites with which to exchange links. Finding sites with the same words on them that characterize your site will help you join "web neighborhoods" that are relevant to your business.

U.S. Search Engine Rankings, April 2007

"Google continued to build on its lead in U.S. search market share, claiming nearly half of all searches conducted in April..."

New data shows that Google continues to dominate the search market. Experience within our class indicates that Google typically produces 80% or more of the search traffic that class participants get to their sites. This consistently exceeds the figures reported by these surveys.

One point reported in the survey may help to explain this phenomenon. When data was broken down by industry segment, and the traffic produced by Google compared to the traffic produced by search engines, Google's reported share rose dramatically.

In any event, the message is clear, "To compete effectively, you must focus your SEO efforts on Google!" Our weekly free Internet Marketing Clinic is your best tool for learning how to do this.