SEO Ranking Factors Explained with examples (TechShu.com & Jeetbo.com)

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This is a free version, we have a paid version which has many

examples, detailing on the factors, how to do it and everything

you want to know about the factors. Also the paid version has

few more factors which I generally don’t share otherwise.

Request for a paid version of the document, it will also contain

some more documents like “SEO/Web marketing planning

document”, “SEO/Web marketing costing documents”, “Page

optimization document”, “some of our proposals” and few

more. The costing of our paid document pack is $950. This is

complete practical premium stuff. We will be disclosing it one

by one at Jeetbo.com, paid membership.

Free version: SEO ranking factors v1.0

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How Google ranks websites How Google ranks websites? We have divided the checklist into 2 parts:

1. Value of the page: What you are saying on the page (in terms of content and keywords) and others are saying in

terms of the page (in terms of link). Each link is considered a vote to the page. So if a lot of quality websites are

linking to your page then this page is recommended by many and thus Google will rank you higher. So focus on 2

things, getting the right content on the page & getting other quality websites link to your page.

2. Value of the site: What are you saying on different pages of the site? What is the theme of the site? Theme in

terms of content and keywords. And how many websites are linking to different pages of the website

(recommendation for different pages of the site).

Forget data think Signals

You may get few thousand links (vote) in a month and even then don’t rank. It is not about data only, it is also about signal.

In my words, it’s not only about how much money you have in your account but also about how you made the money. If all

the money was a sudden gain and it becomes suspicious. The same goes with Google, if you gain popularity, if you gain

content in a sudden manner you can come under scanner. Also all the sudden popularity in terms of content and link may

be discounted.

Signals are available on social media, content changes, links, link changes, traffic, user experience and many more. So

keep focusing on doing good.

Forget Google, think “Spreading” and “Standing out”

http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html explains how you can make your product talk-able and win.

You also need to integrate with all the networks like Facebook, twitter etc to help people spread your message, idea.

Technical innovation can make you

Adding the new link manually to the Facebook? Adding the same message to facebook and twitter? Doing a reputation

management manually by searching? Do it automatically using proper scripts. Have the pages under proper CMS, let the

CMS work on your command.

Getting Started

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http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html

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1. Value of the Page (55%) a. On-page value (20%, 16+ parameters explained): A good % of Ranking Algorithms depends

on what is said on the target page (theme for the page). For each keyword we assign a target page. Here

is the checklist for the internal pages and homepage. We generally take homepage and a sample of 5 to

10 pages for the checklists.

i. URL of the page: Are there keywords in the URLs, is it search engine friendly?

1. Category: Setup

2. Important Level: 5/5 (It is going hot these days)

3. Do’s: Have proper categories example, /services/mobile-development/samples.html, have

the keywords separated with dashes. Having the keywords help in getting better ranking.

Check the CMSes used to render all the pages. Then can be various tools that are being

used for it.

4. Don’ts: Don’t use underscore. Don’t have long urls for important pages that will be referred

regularly like contact, you shall have domain.com/contact/, domain.com/pricing/

domain.com/services/ etc. Don’t have too long a url for the pages as it looks spammy.

Have less than 3 hypens in the url.

5. Quality check: Check all the major target URLs. Check different CMSes that are used like

blog, forums, cms, cart etc to see if these are rendering proper urls.

6. Progress check: See how many URLs are fixed.

ii. Keywords in Title:

1. Category: Monthly

2. Important Level: 5/5 (It is the most important part)

3. Do’s: Limit it to 60. Have the most important keywords towards the beginning, only way

you can achieve the most optimized title is by knowing all the keywords assigned to the

page. Make it comma separated, try to make a sentence, have brand name, target less

number of keywords for each page. You can have the local place name if it is local

targeted. Keep the important keywords towards the start.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make it look spammy. Don’t have the same keywords repeated. It should

make sense.

5. Quality check: Check the webmaster consoles and see the duplicate titles. Also make sure

that the targeted pages have proper title. Check for over optimization.

6. Progress check: See how many Titles are fixed. Some of the pages may go through many

changes, so we can keep a track of that too.

iii. Keywords in Meta description:


2. Important Level: 3/5 (It doesn’t affect ranking but helps in better CTR)

3. Do’s: Limit it to 154 characters. Good Meta Descriptions can help us better Click through

Rates in Search Engine Result pages, which helps in better ranking. If a certain site

clicked more from results in search engines, search engines give more value to it.

Example, when people see Wikipedia in the result pages they click on it even when it is

ranking very low as people like Wikipedia. Thus Search Engines promote Wikipedia above

others. You can have email id, phone numbers in Meta description, and show your

strength under the Meta description. See the keywords that are bringing traffic to a page

and search with the keyword to see if the description that appears in the search engine is

proper.

4. Don’ts: Don’t Stuff it with keywords.

Let’s look at the factors now

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5. Quality check: Check the webmaster consoles and see the duplicate Meta description.

Also make sure that the targeted pages have proper title.

6. Progress check: See how many Meta Descriptions are fixed. Some of the pages may go

through many changes, so we can keep a track of that too.

iv. Keywords in Meta keywords.


2. Important Level: 1/5 (It doesn’t affect ranking but helps in making pages unique)

3. Do’s: Limit it to 3 to 10 keywords. It can make the pages unique and help search engine

pick up the right page for a keyword.

4. Don’ts: Don’t Stuff it with keywords.

5. Quality check: Check the webmaster consoles and see the duplicate Meta keywords. Also

make sure that the targeted pages have proper title.

6. Progress check: See how many Meta Descriptions are fixed. Some of the pages may go

through many changes, so we can keep a track of that too.

v. No index, No follow, No archive checks.


2. Important Level: 1/5 (It doesn’t affect ranking but it can prevent from indexing)

3. Do’s: Only the pages that are not good shall be put into no index. No follow tags can be

put on per link basis like in the comment section.

4. Don’ts: Use it sparingly. Use robots.txt and other prevention methods rather.

5. Quality check: Check the top pages and see if all the main pages are ok. Also check if all

the system that is taking care of user generate content checks for links (Linking to bad urls

can be really bad)

6. Progress check: See the systems fixed.

vi. Content ratio: Do the pages have enough content. Content to template ratio.


2. Important Level: 5/5 (It matters a lot for search engines like Yahoo and Bing, so can’t

ignore it)

3. Do’s: There are pages that require very less content as people don’t want to read, in such

cases use show/hide options to add the content. Content should be relevant with proper

keywords.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make it for search engines focus users first. Once the article is done for

users you may like to give it to a SEO expert who also understands branding to make it

Search Engine optimized.

5. Quality check: Check the content ratio check for all the important pages.

6. Progress check: See the pages where the content is added.

vii. Keyword density (5% to 20%, one word density ... 1% – 6% two word density)


2. Important Level: 2/5 (It is good to have the keywords in proper density)

3. Do’s: Have the main 5 keywords in proper density.

4. Don’ts: Don’t go above 20% density for any keyword, I will suggest it to keep it even lower

at 3 to 10%.

5. Quality check: Check the keyword density to avoid over optimization penalty.

6. Progress check: See the pages where the keyword density is added.

viii. Is page structure ok (H1, H2, H3). Template should be separated from content clearly. H1,

H2 and other heading can have some variations of the keywords.

1. Category: Monthly & Setup

2. Important Level: 5/5

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3. Do’s: Have it in this format. When we say keyphrase, it means a sentence of phrase

containing the keyphrase

4. Don’ts: Don’t have heading tags on the template. Heading tags should be a part of the

content.

5. Quality check: Check important pages and see the document structure. You can use web

developer firefox plugin. Also see for over optimization.

6. Progress check: See the pages where we have checked the document structure.

ix. Are the main keywords appearing in top 100 characters?



3. Do’s: Advisable to have the main keywords in the first paragraphs.

4. Don’ts: Don’t have to force it for all the pages.

5. Quality check: See if the keywords are there in top 100 characters. See if it is possible to

add it there. Also see for over optimization.

6. Progress check: See the pages are checked for it.

x. Keywords in image name.



3. Do’s: Have the right keywords in the images. Images can also rank really well and bring a

lot of traffic. Also it helps in getting better ranks.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make it look spammy. You can add bigger images to the page and have it

with the right name but you don’t have to rename each and every image with keyword.

5. Quality check: Check the images on important pages and see if those can be renamed

and contain right keywords. Also see for over optimization.

6. Progress check: See the pages that are fixed.

xi. Keywords in alt text.



3. Do’s: Have the main keywords in the alt tags. This helps in ranking.

4. Don’ts: Don’t spam it for all the images, just have it for some of the images which are big

in size. Focus on the keywords which are not a part of the template.

5. Quality check: Check the images on important pages and see if those can have keyword

based alt tags and contain right keywords. Also see for over optimization.


xii. Keywords in anchor text that is linking to other pages. Outgoing links should be on topic &

descriptive.


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3. Do’s: The anchor text is very scan-able part of the page. In case if we are linking to

different pages of the site inside content (and template, template sparingly) then it is

advisable to use the anchor text with proper keywords.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make it spammy and keep the usability in mind while doing it.

5. Quality check: See the possible of such anchor text.

6. Progress check: See how many pages were checked and how many anchor texts were

added.

xiii. No follow links to external sites that are added by end users like Blog comments. Link only

to good sites. Linking to good site can improve ranking.



3. Do’s: Check the outgoing links from all the important pages (and if possible all the pages).

There are applications like Xenu that can produce the list of external links from the site.

Add nofollow to all the links that are going to irrelevant sites.

4. Don’ts: It is my personal advice not to add nofollow to good sites. After web is about

referring visitors to right pages why go un-organic by doing such things.

5. Quality check.

6. Progress check.

xiv. Freshness of the page, content change on the pages.



3. Do’s: Have the main 5 keywords in proper density.

4. Don’ts: Don’t go above 20% density for any keyword, I will suggest it to keep it even lower

at 3 to 10%.

5. Quality check: Check the keyword density to avoid over optimization penalty.


xv. Making the text bold, italics with keyword



3. Do’s: Have the main 5 keywords in bold or italics as a phrase combined with some of the

keywords.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make the text too ugly and spammy.

5. Quality check: Over optimization check and possibility of doing it further.

6. Progress check: See the pages where the bold and italics are added.

xvi. How far is this page from the homepage:



3. Do’s: Important targeted pages for major keywords should be as close as possible to the

homepage.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make the text too ugly and spammy.



xvii. Links to the internal and external pages.



3. Do’s: Linking to credible external and internal pages with right anchor text can improve the

credibility of the page.

4. Don’ts: Don’t link to bad sites. Don’t link to irrelevant websites.

5. Quality check: Check for the external and internal links.

6. Progress check: See the pages that are checked for this.

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xviii. Bad things to check (2+ Points):

1. Invisible text: Adding text that is not visible to the website visitors

2. Cloaking: A different version of the page to the visitors and search engines.

xix. Others as and when it comes

b. Off-page value (20%, 3+ points): Next big factor is what is said about the page by other internal

pages and other websites (links to the page).

i. Links from internal pages.



3. Do’s: Search in Google with “site:domain.com keyword” to see the other pages that has

good value for the keyword. Then link to the target page from these pages with right

anchor text. Also Search Engines checks the text near the link to understand the

relevancy of the link.

4. Don’ts: Don’t make it look spammy with a complex network of links.



ii. Links from external pages.



3. Do’s: Allow twitter, fb, digg, stumble upon sharing options. Also getting the links to the

main targeted pages from relevant external pages is very important.

4. Don’ts: Look at the rate that you bring in the links, also the source. Don’t go too

aggressive, maintain a good rate. Don’t get it from same type of sites like directory

submission etc.



iii. Anchor text, theme of the site, IP of the site, hub pages etc – True value of a link (See the

document that calculates and true value of a link)



3. Do’s: Getting the links from the right page, right site and right placement is important.

4. Don’ts: Don’t look at the quantity but the quality. Search Engines are moving towards this

direction.



iv. Bad things to do (9+ points):

1. Less anchor text diversification: Getting most of the keywords with the same anchor text.

2. With the same C Class IP network

3. Majorly getting links for link exchange websites.

4. Buy links from the sites that are known for paid links.

5. Getting most of the links to the homepage.

6. Getting a lot of links within a short time.

7. Not having non-commercial anchor text link “click here”, “url of the page” etc

8. Updating the anchor text of the old links quite often.

9. Short life of the links. Search engines value links that stay for long.

c. User satisfaction point for the page (15%): How users are reacting to the page. Make users

visit more pages on the site, help them stay more time on the site.

i. There can be various checks on usability and readability of the page content.

ii. Scan-ability of content.

iii. Having videos and other tools to involve visitors.

iv. Call to actions.

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v. More time visitors spend on website, more pages visited, better for ranking.

vi. Newsletter, games

2. Value of the Site (45%) a. Onsite value (10%): What is said on the overall site (content theme for all the pages), most of it is one

time and quarterly checks. No need for progressive check on a monthly basis. Just adding Dos and Don’ts.

i. Keyword in domain. This is quite hot.


2. Do’s: This helps a lot. You can always a brand website and a website related to the

services. In case of a games site if you have keywords like games in the domain, nothing

better than that. Search Engine gives huge importance to this.

3. Don’ts: Don’t make it look spammy with many hypens and keywords. Keep it brandable

with the right keyword in it. Example: GamesSuccess.com instead of Free-Online-Games-

Success.com

ii. Supplemental ratio.


2. Do’s: Having good pages are important. You can find it out by using site:domain.com –

site:domain.com/* to the total pages in the supplemental index. Supplemental indexes are

less valued pages in simple words. You can improve it by adding more content, getting

more links, providing unique title, meta tags etc. Make sure to remove unwanted pages

like comment pages for blogs, category pages for blogs etc.

3. Don’ts: Don’t worry too much about supplemental. Make sure

iii. How often does the site add new pages? Old page vs new page ratio.


2. Do’s: Always advisable to add new pages to the site.

3. Don’ts: Don’t add too many pages that don’t offer high quality content.

iv. Value addition/Non-Affiliates:


2. Do’s: It is important that the site offers something unique to the visitor. Affiliate type sites

are not liked by Search Engines.

3. Don’ts: Don’t scrape content, change a bit and make large sites. A lot of people do that

and it might get short term success also but in long run it will have problems.

v. Canonical issues (WWW vs Non WWW, index page, http vs https, ? mark)


2. Do’s: It is important to represent the content by one URL rather than many URLs. It

divides the link strength. Use htaccess, 301 other redirection methods to consolidate the

URL to one. Also one can use canonical tag to make life easier.

3. Don’ts: Don’t go crazy about it, search engines are smart, it does understand about this

problem, so invest time after fixing up the other important works.

vi. 404 error pages to give right headers. 404 pages to have a link to sitemap. Right headers


2. Do’s: It is very important that the pages gives out the right headers. A proper page should

give a 200 ok header and non-exist URL should give a 404 headers. Search Engines use

the headers to understand the page rendering. You can use HTTP Live header Firefox

plugin or any other application (there are plenty of such application, web based and

others). Also it can help if the 404 custom page has a link to the sitemap.

3. Don’ts:

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vii. Robots.txt


2. Do’s: Have the XML sitemap link and to block the unwanted pages from it. Do give a

validation checks for different type of URLs.

3. Don’ts: Don’t go too crazy about it .

viii. Title, meta description, meta data duplication across the site.


2. Do’s: Checking different

3. Don’ts: Don’t make it look spammy with a complex network of links

ix. Broken link checks. For internal and external links.


2. Do’s: Broken links sends negative signals. Give it a check using xenu. Also check the

web master console to see the old URLs that has link juice. Each

3. Don’ts: Don’t take it lightly.

x. Is Google analytics installed for better tracking.


2. Do’s: Analytics helps us get more data. Also I feel it sends some good and bad signals to

the search engines. May be in the initial phase if we buy a paid one than Google analytics

it may send a positive signal.

3. Don’ts:

xi. Domain age


2. Do’s: Older the better. It is also about the growth rate.

3. Don’ts: Don’t buy old domains to get the age stuff as when the owner changes, SEs get

the signal. Also the old domains come with perception.

xii. Dedicated IP


2. Do’s: Sites with Dedicated are presumed to be more serious about their business

3. Don’ts:

xiii. Sites that are hosted with your site, IP to domain


2. Do’s: It is important to check the domains that are hosted on the same IP, just to see the

neighbourhood.

3. Don’ts: It’s not that critical, so chill.

xiv. Address, phone number, email id, Fax etc


2. Do’s: It improves credibility, so having all the important information on contact us is

important. Google promotes credible businesses.

3. Don’ts: Don’t too many addresses to make it confusing.

xv. Page Loading time


2. Do’s: Improve loading time as faster websites are liked by people and thus search

engines.

3. Don’ts:

xvi. Server down time


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2. Do’s: It is important to check server down time. There are many tools to check for server

down time.

3. Don’ts:

xvii. Are all pages reachable in 3 to 4 clicks from homepage. Using a proper navigation to

achieve it.


2. Do’s: The pages that are buried deep can’t get easy crawling.

3. Don’ts:

xviii. Bad things to do (4+ things):

1. Muliple site with same content. Generally links get diversified across pages.

2. Duplicate content. (Using robots.txt remove all duplicate content like category)

3. Stealing images and content from other sites without taking permission. Always try to cost

the images under your sub-domain to get the maximum benefit.

4. Don’ use words that are used by spammers like links, drug names, adult keywords etc.

xix. We will add more as and when we get the parameters

b. Offsite value (10%): What is said about the overall site across the web (links to the site).

i. Is it listed in DMOZ? And some of the other directories where there is a proper review.


2. Do’s: Good review directories add a good vote.

3. Don’ts: Don’t submit if the site is not fully ready.

ii. Does it have a Wikipedia entry?


2. Do’s: Getting a listing there is a good as they have an amazing review .

3. Don’ts: It is an art, read about it, start slow, add some content and then add more. Don’t

try to add if the website is very small. Also add using a valid login who contributes

properly.

iii. Linking to FB, Twitter and Linkedin


2. Do’s: We need to link to FB, twitter and LinkedIN and get links from there. Now Google

understands who is talking about you. If good people are taking about your site then that

also add value.

3. Don’ts:

iv. Getting links back from FB, Twitter and Linkedin – Build reputation for Fb, T and L and

bring the reputation to the website, can be hot


2. Do’s: Get links back from these sites to bring the value up.

3. Don’ts:

c. User satisfaction point for the site (15%): How users are reacting to overall site.

i. Proper navigation

ii. Search

d. Local Value for the site (10%): Which locality is the website targeting?

i. Hosting details, is it hosted locally?


2. Do’s: If the target market is US the host it in US. It affects the local search.

3. Don’ts:

ii. Contact addresses, phone number


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2. Do’s: For Local value, have local phone numbers.

3. Don’ts: Don’t list your toll free number as search engine’s can’t understand the local

value.

iii. Writing style


2. Do’s: On US websites don’t have UK style of writing.

3. Don’ts:

iv. Local listing


2. Do’s: List it with many Local sites. There is a huge list available on net.

3. Don’ts:

v. Registration with LBC (Local business center) of Google, Yahoo & Bing


2. Do’s: It is very important. Have the local number, keep it updated, have proper coupons

etc.

3. Don’ts:

vi. Will add more as and when we get it.

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Success Mantra: Getting the Strategy and Marketing mix right as per the requirement see different marketing channels table here.

Proper monitoring on a monthly basis for quality and direction. Often with time we get better understanding of the

project and it may require the change of strategy.

Get the traffic and ranking in the initial months to retain the client, they hardly care about other stuffs.

Different marketing Channels:

Search Engine Organic

Getting ranks for many keywords in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

In Long run it pays well from branding and traffic aspects. It should be avoided in long run as else you will lose the race.

It takes really long depending on the competition. We advice to invest on keywords with low competition and high search.

Search Engine paid (On Search Engines) - PPC

Advertising on search engines is based on pay per click and bidding. Good to get visibility and initial traffic to build traffic

It is good to start the relationship and sell different good later. The initial profit will be low but relationship is build here.

Margin of Profit can be low. Also it takes time to understand the keywords that works. We need to invest on the buying keywords over the research keywords.

Content Network Paid - PPC

Where the ad is placed on different website based on the content match. Good as a targeted interrupt advertising.

Cost is low and for some of the product interrupt marketing can work really well.

Sometime it may not work well for some of the business.

Other paid Ads BuySellAds and other places where we can get the sites ready for putting ads.

Easy to start Unpredictable.

Affiliate marketing Onsite

Where you provide a place on your website to refer people to. Money is paid for leads, bring visitors, sales ... generally on sales or leads.

Can bring in good results making you independent of search engines. Good for websites with good products.

Need a system in place

Affiliate marketing on different site

There are places like CJ, Clickbank, affiliate networks where people are selling affiliate products.

No need for a system, very easy to setup. Get ready made affiliates.

Low profits.

Community building & User generated content

Having places on site where you can convert a visitor to marketing agents using participation and different engagement models. User generated content can bring in a lot of extra traffic.

Need proper systems in place. Takes time to build the right traffic. It is an art.

Social Media Facebook, twitter where people can get connected and share the information.

It can make the business and communication really viral.

Tough to move at times.

Referral traffic Getting listed on right pages (esp the one that is ranking well) can bring in a lot of traffic.

It helps in ranking as well Finding the pages is tough.

Broker sites, agents

Places like trip-advisor for hotel industry where

Shall not be avoid in long run

Buy leads There are sites

Who is talking about you

About you, your products and your industry ... see twitter, facebook, google alerts, forums etc

It is important to listen to customer from ORM point of view. Also helps in sales

Time taking job.

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Different ways of building links: 1. Directory Submission

2. Article Submission

3. Classified Submission

4. Meet up Submission

5. Coupon Submission

6. RSS Submission

7. Blog submission

8. Forum Participation

9. PPT submission

10. Video submission

11. eBook submission

12. Blogging and Commenting

13. Campaigns to bring better links

14. Natural links when people mention about the business and website because of quality.

Have queries? Since this document is in the development process, some of the sections may not be well defined. Please

contact me for further information:

Email: [email protected] Phone: +919830271197)

mailto:[email protected]

SEO Ranking Factors Explained with examples (TechShu.com & Jeetbo.com)

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Transcript of SEO Ranking Factors Explained with examples (TechShu.com & Jeetbo.com)