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Although there are thousands of variables that have a bearing on SEO results, only a few are absolutely critical for your success. In this article, you are going to learn about the ten most critical factors that have an effect on SEO. These factors are mostly in order of importance, but their importance can change from time to time.
- Domain Name – Ideally, your domain name should contain your main keyword. If you want to rank for “golf swing guide”, you would want to try to buy GolfSwingGuide.com.
- Domain Extension – Generally, domains that end with .com rank better than domains with any other extension. Domains with .net and .org also rank well. Other domain extensions have a harder time ranking on the first page, so they should be avoided for the most part.
- Title Tag – The title tag of each page is very important. You should use keywords in your title tag, but remember that the title is also the text that appears clickable in the search engine results. It should contain keywords, but it should also be interesting and it should make sense to readers.
- Anchor Text – The text used to link to a page is extremely important. If you want to rank for “golf swing guide”, then you should try to make sure most of the links to your site use that text for the link. Just make sure not to use the exact same keyword phrase 100% of the time, as this can look unnatural to Google and may hurt your rankings.
- Backlinks – Links are still extremely important. The quantity and quality of the links to your site have a big impact, so you should try to focus on getting as much quality, relevant backlinks as possible.
- Link Diversity – It is also important that you have links from a wide variety of domains. You cannot build 100 pages on Squidoo.com and expect to get the same result as building one page on each of 100 different sites.
Let's go in little detail:
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the text that is used to link from one web page to another. Whenever you create a link to a page, the text you use to describe that link is the anchor text. It is actually a very important component in search engine optimization, and Google gives anchor text a tremendous amount of weight.
This is what a link looks like in HTML:
<a href=”http://www.celebrityspud.com”>Celebrity</a>
When it appears on a web page, it looks like this:
Celebrity
The anchor text in this link is “Celebrity”. You want to make sure that most of the links that point to your pages use keywords that relate to that page. This helps tell Google what your page is about. Think about it for a moment. Let’s say you want to link to a page that gives you the latest baseball scores for the Yankees. You would probably use something like “Yankees Baseball Scores” as the anchor text. After all, you would want people to know what the link was about, right?
That is what the anchor text does. It tells users (and search engines) what a page is about. Google uses the anchor text used to describe a page as a clue to what that page is about. It helps create relevancy. If you want Google to know what your page is about, you should use appropriate keywords in the anchor text you use when you get links.
Just remember that you should not use the exact same keyword for every backlink you get. This looks unnatural, and Google may penalize your page. Instead, divide your anchor text up between three different, but similar keywords. Use your main keyword about 50% of the time, and split the rest up evenly between 2-3 other keywords. This will make things seem more natural, and you won’t risk being penalized.
What are Keywords?
Keywords are a critical component of search engine optimization. Every search performed on a search engine uses keywords. Let’s say you wanted to buy a green widget. You might go to a search engine and search for “green widget” or “buy green widgets”. These are keywords.
If you want to rank well, you must choose the right keywords. If you write an article without doing keyword research, you’re basically just throwing mud at the wall and hoping something sticks. This is not a good use of your time. It’s a much better idea to do some preliminary keyword research first, so you have a much better chance of ranking well for a keyword that will actually receive some traffic.
Certain keywords receive more searches than others. You need to choose keywords that will bring enough traffic to make it worth the work optimizing for them, but that also have little enough competition for it to be realistic for you to expect to rank well for them. It is extremely unlikely that you could rank on the first page of Google for the keyword “golf”, which has 374,000,000 matches on Google, but you might be able to rank on the first page for “golf swing tips”, which has about 107,000 exact matches on Google.
Keyword research should be the very first step in any SEO campaign. If you’re trying to optimize your site without choosing keywords carefully, you are just wasting time. Choose keywords that have little competition and adequate traffic, and you will be able to get traffic much faster and easier than if you simply try to rank for very competitive keywords or fail to do any research before you start.
You don’t need any special software to do keyword research, although it can certainly make it faster and easier. Google has its own keyword research tool that is perfectly adequate, and you can trust the results much more than other avenues, because the data comes straight from Google itself.
Creating Effective Title Tags
The title of a web page is one of the most important factors with regards to search engine optimization. If you’re knew to SEO, you may not realize that the title of your article is not necessarily the same as the title of the web page.
When I talk about title tags, I’m referring to the part of an HTML document that lies between the following tags:
<title></title>
The title of the document is found in the head section. When you search Google, the text that you see in the results that is clickable is the title tag for that page. This means you must not only create a title tag that search engines will love, you must also create one that users will be attracted to and be compelled to click.
Many people assume they should use their keyword as their page title. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First of all, using the keyword on its own usually won’t entice people to click your listing and visit your site if you rank. Secondly, using only the keyword phrase opens you up to potentially being hit with an over-optimization penalty. That, combined with other ranking factors, could end up looking unnatural, and it could make Google trust your page less.
A title should have two important factors:
- Your main keyword for the page, along with a few other words
- Text that will entice people to click
Let’s say your main keyword phrase is “buy golf clubs”. You would want to add a few additional words to the tag in order to avoid a potential over-optimization penalty, but this would also have the added benefit of making the title more enticing to users.
Here is an example:
<title>Buy Golf Clubs – The Number One Source to Purchase Golf Clubs Online</title>
Not only is the title a bit more enticing than just “buy golf clubs”, it also avoids being too well-optimized, and it also includes another keyword phrase, “purchase golf clubs online”. Since some people might use the word purchase instead of buy, this will also help you potentially get traffic from those people, too.
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