This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions
using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, "Yikes, that's kind
of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!" But then I
remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I
was going to write about. A second look at the questions made me think that
you guys would probably be interested in the answers to many of them, so it
worked out perfectly.
Most of these questions have been answered in greater detail in various
articles that I've written, so if you'd like more info on any of them, I've
linked to the relevant ones for your convenience.
Thanks to Umair R., who submitted these questions.
1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so,
what are the steps?
If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and
has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in
order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for
relevant phrases, but no magic formula.
See "The Art of SEO" article for more on this.
2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and
positioning?
PR
Yes, real PageRank (PR), that kind that only Google knows, about plays a
very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are
relevant to it. But toolbar PageRank is another matter entirely. What you
see there doesn't correlate very well to where your page will show up in the
search results.
See: "Getting Into Google."
(Scroll down to the "Google Still Loves Its PageRank" part.)
The number of incoming links
Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not
only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A
handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far
outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.
See the High Rankings Link Building Forum.
Keyword density
Not in that there's some special percentage that you need to aim for.
Certainly it's helpful to have the keyword phrases that you'd like to show
up being used within the content of your page. But that's just common sense,
if you ask me. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your
keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?
See the various threads on keyword density on the High Rankings Forum.
Page response time
This is important only because if it takes too long to load, it might not be
properly (or completely) indexed.
Bounce rate
It's doubtful that this matters, because there's no way for Google to know
the bounce rate of every site. And it wouldn't be fair for them to only
count the bounce rates of those sites that have Google Analytics installed,
so my guess is that this is not a factor.
See various High Rankings forum threads.
Time on site
Like the above answer, they don't know this number unless the site has
Google Analytics installed. That said, they may sometimes incorporate the
old trick of seeing if a searcher clicks to another site in the search
results after clicking one result, and how long it took them to click
another. In other words, if they find that lots of people who clicked to one
site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) always end up back at Google
to try another site, then perhaps that first site wasn't a great answer to
the search query after all.
Domain page / page age
From what I can tell, this can often be a factor. But it doesn't seem to be
as prominent a factor as it was a few years ago.
3. Is there any special technique for content writing?
There's no special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional
marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very
quickly if you do. In addition, the tried and true SEO copyediting
techniques in my "Nitty-gritty of Writing for Search Engines" may come in
handy if you're not sure how to integrate your keyword phrases into your
professionally written content.
4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?
There's not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a
page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.
5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful
can it be for PageRank and positions?
It's typically not harmful at all because it's usually done before a browser
(or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your
dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to
them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There
are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than
others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.
See "Diagnosing the SEO Health of Your Website":
6. If a webpage is ranking top for a specific keyword, if we make
textual changes in that webpage, is there any chance that we lose the
rankings?
Any changes you make to a page's content can affect how relevant the search
engines believe it to be for any particular search query. That doesn't mean
it definitely will change the search results, but it could. The only way to
know is to try it and see. Usually, if you're rewriting your page to be more
useful to your site visitors and you don't remove all the instances of the
keyword phrase, you should be fine. Because nothing is permanent with SEO,
if you don't like what you see you can tweak it until you do.
7. Is it possible to be #1 for 20 high-volume searched keywords on
Google for a particular domain?
Of course. Every website has lots of pages contained within it, each of
which has the ability to be relevant for a number of keyword phrases.
However, it's important to note that what you see as the #1 result may not
be what everyone else sees. A better question to ask would be, "Is it
possible to get search engine traffic for 20 high-volume searched keywords?"
See "5 Reasons Why Rankings Are a Poor Measure of Success."
8. How many good-quality links does a webpage require to be in #1
position at Google?
See the previous answer about the number of links as well as the article on
rankings referenced above.
9. Is link building an ongoing process forever in order to maintain the
top positions?
Like most of the answers I've been providing, it depends. An awesome website
that is different from its competitors and that is continually developing
innovative content will consistently generate high-quality links. But the
site that is the same as its competitors with no real added value will most
likely end up having to beg for links for its entire existence.
10. Is there any other significant factor for SEO apart from those
mentioned above?
Yes, there are thousands of other factors! I'd suggest reading all the
articles referenced here, as well as past issues of this newsletter. Also,
become a regular member of the High Rankings SEO Forum. Keep studying, but
more than that, keep trying different things on your own sites - learn what
works and what doesn't that way.
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
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