Top Five Search Engine Optimization Factors

Factor #2

By Guest Author Bev Mapes, Top Of The List

If you read last month’s newsletter article about organic search engine optimization, you’ll recall the number one factor that helps websites achieve high placement in search engines is keyword focused anchor text in inbound links. You may also see these links referred to as back-links. This article focuses on the number two factor, while each of our next three newsletters will address the remaining top factors.

According to 71% of the experts surveyed in a recent nationwide survey, the number two factor that influences search engine optimization is:

External link popularity. If you thought we could move on to something else besides those incoming links to your site, it’s time to re-think the issue. Not only is the anchor text of top importance in those links, but the quality and quantity of the inbound links to your site (called “link popularity”) is second in importance to the anchor text.

Quantity refers to “how many links” are coming into your site, so in general, the more the better. If quality and quantity were separated in this popularity factor, we personally feel quality is the clear winner. We’ve seen websites with less than 200 quality inbound links placing at the top of the list on extremely competitive queries, and farther down the list are websites with over 1,000,000 non-quality inbound links. While many factors are involved in placement, this is too large of a difference to ignore when it comes to quantity vs. quality. Some links simply do not carry as much “link juice” as other links do.

What makes a quality link? Search engine algorithms evaluate over 50 different factors about an incoming page link to determine quality, and thus how much “link juice” it will pass along to the website to which it links. Here are just a few of those factors:

• PageRank – In simple terms, PageRank is a “vote” from 0 to 10 which is assigned to every web page on the Internet. Pages linking to your site that have been assigned a higher PageRank, result in a higher quality link. This is sort of a snowball effect, since PageRank of any page is improved by all of the factors we are covering in this series of articles on SEO.
• Relevance – When the site linking to your site includes similar words and terms – meaning it is relevant that your two websites are linking – it increases the value of the link. For example, a tire dealer site that links to an automotive repair site would result in a more relevant link than if that tire dealer site linked to a day spa.
• The hierarchical page location of the inbound link on the external site – An easy way to measure this is in terms of “number of clicks” from the home page where the link resides. A link to your site from another site’s home page, or a page just one or two clicks away from the home page, is almost always more powerful than a link buried deeper into the site.

While almost all links to your site that come from external sources help your site, the popularity of the external website is the second of the top factors that can influence your site's search engine placement on appropriate queries.

Top Of The List Search Engine Marketing, is a Grand Rapids based SEO firm working with Micro Visions Information Technology Consultants. We offer SEO packages and stand-alone link campaigns which continually focus on the number two optimization factor – obtaining popular external links. The results help clients achieve top organic search engine placement on highly competitive terms, and drive target market traffic to their websites like never before.

Be sure to check back next month to learn the third most important search engine optimization factor, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 today if you’d like to begin optimizing your website.

Read last month's article for SEO Factor #1.

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