Recently a 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.

Sistrix analyzed the influence of 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.

Here is what they found out:

1) Keywords in the title tag seem to be important for high rankings on Google. It is also important that the targeted keywords are mentioned in the body tag, although the title tag seems to be more important.

Note: This element is the MOST important factor in top SEO for years now, and Sistrix research just proved the same.

2) Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags seem to have an influence on the rankings while keywords in H1 headline tags don’t seem to have an effect.

Note: There was a time when the tag H1 had more influence than H2 or H3, but it seems as more and more webmasters started using H1 and spammed the results, Google rightly thought it fit to reduce the impact it has now in their rankings.

3) Using keywords in bold or strong tags seems to have a slight effect on the top rankings.

Note: A known feature. However don’t over do it. Bold only if it looks good and required.

4) Web pages that used the keywords in image file names often had higher rankings. The same seems to be true for keywords in image alt attributes.

Note: Keyword in alt tag was known, but using the keywords in image file names is something new. Great idea, and it does not cost much. Do it henceforth.

5) Websites that use the targeted keywords in the domain name often had high rankings. It might be that these sites get many inbound links with the domain name as the link text.

Note: A very debatable topic. I did a search on web marketing and found 50% of the top ten website did not have web marketing in the domain name. Point to be noted is that 50% had. Similarly if you ask 10 webmasters, some will say it has an impact, and some won’t agree on it. This is a never ending debate. However it’s “better” to have the keyword in the domain, but it should not look like a spammy domain. I have written an article on how to search a great domain name. I hope it will help you to get a good domain if you are just starting out.

Note the second point “It might be that these sites get many inbound links with the domain name as the link text.” That is the key and may be reason why we see domain with keywords top the search engine rankings.

6) Keywords in the file path don’t seem to have a positive effect on the Google rankings of the analyzed web sites. Web pages that use very few parameters in the URL (?id=123, etc.) or no parameters at all tend to get higher rankings than URLs that contain many parameters.

Note: I don’t agree with this research. One simple explanation is that Google bolds the keyword searched if its there in the URL path. If no importance was given to them they wouldn’t have bothered to bold and attract eyeballs on those listings. In fact it’s better to have a path like /keyword.html rather than ?id=123, as the keywords in the path will get bold and the site is likely to be visited. Parameters can be less, but it’s no harm to keep the keyword in the path. In fact many webmasters are re-writing their old page paths to reflect a static and keyword in the path.

7) The file size doesn’t seem to influence the ranking of a web page on Google although smaller sites tend to have slightly higher rankings.

Note: File size does matter in SEO. Google Adwords does take into account landing page load time (if file size is more, the load time increases) while evaluating the Quality Score of a keyword. In that case do you think Google will ignore the file size in their organic listings?

8 ) Its no surprise that the number of inbound links and the PageRank had a large influence on the page rankings on Google. The top result on Google has usually about four times as many links as result number 11.

Note: A very very well known factor. Get as many inbound links as possible. Read my article on link building tips and ideas.

Do you know any other elements that lead to high Google page rankings?

A successful SEO campaign has many factors that make it effective. You will need a website that is search engine friendly, has well written content, several back links from quality sites and an aged domain that spells “authority”. However, if you have taken care of all these aspects and not spared a single moment on the keywords that you should use, your effort will not serve its purpose. If you are unaware of how important keywords are, what keywords to target, don’t know how much competition is there while you try to get traffic/page rank via these keywords, you will not be able to grow your online business.

So, first things first – keywords are those phrases or bunch of words that web surfers use to find something online. Unless you list and use words that the web surfers are likely to use as their search term to find your products/services, you will not get visitors to your site and will be lost among the numerous other sites on the Internet.

There are various online tools that will help you to find the appropriate keywords for your niche. Some renowned tools used by several webmasters are:

Google Keyword Tool – A free to use tool that shows you the advertiser competition, search volume, estimated ad position and estimated average CPC for the particular search term.

Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – A free tool offered at Aaron Walls’ site that’s powered by Wordtracker. This tool shows daily search volumes, links these search volumes to related results from global search, offers links to Google AdWords price estimate tool, provides links to keyword research results from Google Trends, Yahoo! Suggest, Google Suggest, Keyword Discovery and Google Synonyms. There is much more information in addition to the above mentioned ones that this tool offers.

Trellian Keyword Discovery – This powerful tool brings together the keyword search statistics from more than 180 search engines over the world. It can help you find search phrases that web surfers use to come across products and services. You can also do keyword density analysis and know what search terms are bringing hits to your competitors’ sites. 

Wordtracker – Though it has the option of a free trial, you will need to pay a fairly reasonable subscription fee to use this tool for the optimum results. The subscription to Wordtracker will enable you to list the most popular and relevant keywords so that you can optimize the content of your website and improve your search campaigns (both PPC and organic). This tool will also help you to explore online markets, find opportunities in your niche and utilize them.

SEMRush.com – This paid tool will help you to conduct keyword research and have data required for advanced SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign.

KwBrowse – This tool helps you to find relevant keywords for a particular search term. It also shows an alphabetical keyword list and links to some companies that are relevant to the search term.

NicheBOT – This keyword research service uses several keyword sources such as Keyword Discovery, Google and Wordtracker to give the most comprehensive result. You will get access to more than 295 billion keywords that spans 243 countries and is made available in 41 languages.

Keyword Elite – This paid keyword research software will help you to research keywords that are widely searched but don’t have much competition.

Which keyword tool do you use?

SEO is important because this is one of the very important ways to get visitors to your site.

No Visitors = No Revenue.

That sums up a lot but still SEO is important for various other reasons.

1. It brings visitors, and so when for some reason your site has lost rankings,

2. It brings repeat visitors.

3. Since you have achieved top ranks, there will be many sites, blogs and directories that will link to your site. Many will do it for link exchange purpose – but anyway you get a link.

4. When you get links, visitors from other website come to your site. And if they are website owners you get more links.

5. SEO gives you an opportunity to learn. You learn what exactly to do to remain on top and in business.

6. SEO well done is ego satisfied too. Imagine working hard on a project for six months, and then seeing the site ranked well for the keywords you were targeting.

7. SEO gives you an opportunity to expand your business. More visitors, means more money to invest in the business or try new business. However please understand that sometimes more visitors does not necessarily mean more money.

8. SEO forces you to study your competition sitting right in your home/office. Agreed you can do it just like that, but if you are trying SEO, this is one of the major works you need to do. Sometimes we are forced to do certain things and it is good for us. Isn’t it?

9. Well done SEO may even help you to leave your full time boring job and start your own business. Did I forget to mention it brings more money than your salary?

10. And now this. SEO/SEM professionals get high salaries too.

Has SEO thought you anything? Why do you feel its important?

The success of your search engine marketing drive depends heavily on how successful you have been with your keyword research. However, your job doesn’t finish once your have researched for the appropriate keywords and listed them. You should also be able to use the results that such a research work has offered.

Keywords are the lifeline of any search engine marketing drive. You will not be able to sustain your online presence unless proper support is given by the keywords. As the choice of correct keywords will bring traffic to your website, you need to research and come up with those keywords that relate to your products/services. Otherwise, your website will not serve any purpose as nobody will visit it.

Choosing the appropriate keywords will help your site get indexed by the search engines in a favorable manner and your site “may” get good search engine rankings for those keywords. Why I am stressing on “may” is that there are many other factors that determine a good rank apart from the keywords. However to get the best results you should use the keywords in your:

•  site domain (…if possible. Of course if the domain is already booked or the site online, there isn’t much you can do about it.)
•  site’s page titles and headlines (very important)
•  content (important)
•  links, both internal and external (…using keywords in anchor text is important)
•  marketing newsletters and online press releases
•  meta tags, and
•  image alt tags

The following steps will help you to conduct keyword research in an effective manner:

Use Research Tools:  Though there are various tools that will help you to conduct keyword research, some of the most trusted ones are Wordtracker, Google’s Keyword Tool and the tool on Aaron Wall’s site named seobook.com. Using a combination of paid and free tools for keyword research could be a better choice as they can give you a wide range of keywords to research on.

Still, if you are starter and have a shoe-string budget, Google Keyword Suggestion Tool is one of the best available online and its free. Try it.

Wordtracker too has a free version available online, but has some limitations. You can try it here.

Get Specific:  Target specific phrases that people are likely to use while searching for your products/services. Remember that web surfers usually use key phrases that are a bunch of two or three words when they search for certain things online. Compared to the single keywords, these key phrases are less generic and can be easily targeted for your search engine marketing purposes.

For example “real estate” may not be a good keyword to optimize for your site. One its too competitive, two it may get visitors from places that you may not be interested in. However “Real Estate in Minneapolis” is a better keyword if your business is primarily focused in offering real estate services in Minneapolis.

Don’t Depend on Numbers:  Don’t believe the number of monthly searches for a particular keyword blindly. Though you should consider this data, pay more concentration to how a specific search phrase fares in terms of relative popularity. You should ensure that enough people will use that keyword when they think of your niche. If not, it won’t be worth your money, time and effort to target these search phrases.

Use Highly Relevant Terms:  As explained above, make sure that your keywords are highly relevant to help you achieve your final objective. If you are selling products or offering a service online, those keywords should be selected that call for an action – be it purchasing the product or ordering the service. Other objectives like getting subscriptions to newsletter and content publications will need more careful planning.

Learn From Your Competitors:  After short-listing of probable keywords, use them to search for competitors. Visit some of the top listed sites and see how their web pages are optimized for particular keywords. This will help you to plan better.

Keep these suggestions in mind in order to reap the most of your keyword research and search engine marketing campaign.