How do keywords work?

[steveto]

i really dont understand google's algorythm..if you have a site and want to use keywords....do you have to write all keywords on the index page so the website can organically work its way to the top of the searches or can you break it up into domain.com/page1 domain.com/page2 and so on...with each page containing 1 or more articles

i guess an example would be using the keyword "web hosting" you will see something like webhostinggeeks and webhostingstuff (both coms) When you view the site(s), there is hardly any text on each of the homepages, but there are links to articles within the site. So when you type in a keyword, does google pull up the PAGE that is most relevant OR does it pull up the SITE that is most relevant?

Then it makes me ask the question why people put up websites where you seem to be scrolling for eons to get to the bottom all full of text? Why do something like that? It's so annoying. If you make it fit into your browser and split it up, not only is it cleaner, but easier to navigate and more efficient to break up...

[DomainMagnate]

It would pull up a page that is most relevant.

Some do it because the more text you have the more keywords you may compete and rank for in google, however it might indeed do harm

[myst woman]

you can fit it inside the frame if you put the button to view all as one page right? is this a design question or a seo density effect question? Both?

[steveto]

Well..to make my question more clear. I am wondering how a site's homepage could come up so high organically and have almost NO text on the homepage...only link to articles within its directory structure. Now these articles do have keywords in them, so would it not make sense that THOSE pages would come up and not the homepage. That is why I asked if google and others pull up the most relevant page OR site.

I also can't wrap my head around PR because 1 quality incoming link can increase your PR my 2-4 automatically. That's insane. I am thinking you get a dithering effect if crap links are linked back to you....Is it better to have 500 quality sites linking to you or would you rather have 5 million links from god knows where?

I also have a domain..I regged it in '98 and it was offline until late late 2007..there are NO incoming links and the page is parked and has been parked at sedo/parked since. It's got a PR1. How the hell does this happen? There was NEVER a site and the only text on it are just ads.

[big-chad]

I am wondering how a site's homepage could come up so high organically and have almost NO text on the homepage...only link to articles within its directory structure. Now these articles do have keywords in them, so would it not make sense that THOSE pages would come up and not the homepage. That is why I asked if google and others pull up the most relevant page OR site.

Google gives you points for linking those key words. I would guess that the words you rank high for in SERP are the words that are linked, is this correct?

[cleverlyslick]

Well..to make my question more clear. I am wondering how a site's homepage could come up so high organically and have almost NO text on the homepage....

if the site is interesting enought for users,even if it has no text,they will link it somewhere else to share with others for example myspace or facebook,some people post it on digg or twitters,and then your site can take off from there even if it has no text.

[dburk]

Hi stevto,

The first thing you need to know is that search engines rank pages not sites. Each page has it's own score and may be returned in SERP if it is indexed.

The most important factor in ranking returned results is relevance to your keyword. The more relevant the search engine's algorithm finds your page the higher it will rank in the index.

When two pages have roughly the same relevance they prioritize by authority. Authority is influenced by other related sites that link to you. The more Authority those linking pages have for the searched keyword the more that passes to your page.

PR or PageRank is simply a score that measures the relative link popularity a page has compared to all other pages on the web. It's a quantitative number NOT a qualitative number so it has very little influence in SEO. When all other factors (relevance and authorty) are equal, the PR of a page may be the tie breaker, but will not out weigh authority or relevance.

So, as you can see, the key thing to focus on is relevance, followed by authority. I would recommend that you check out the SEO Guide that Google has put out, it's an excellent primer from a reliable source.

[steveto]

Take webhostinggeeks for example that show up first for big key word web hosting two words. They really have links on the page and host rankings...

"Google gives you points for linking those key words. I would guess that the words you rank high for in SERP are the words that are linked, is this correct?"

How do I check this....I am not too clear on this SERP thing.

Thanks dburk..nice answer..I'll go check it out!

[big-chad]

"Google gives you points for linking those key words. I would guess that the words you rank high for in SERP are the words that are linked, is this correct?"

How do I check this....I am not too clear on this SERP thing.

Go to google and type in your linked out key words. Where does your site pop up in the natural results page? #1, #2? #10?

Also, per your previous comment Google will pull the most "optimized" page which is not necessarily the most relevant page.

[grace5]

I wouldn't worry over PR as its really not worth it.

A link is a link regardless as long as it is not some deep directory
EXP:.
domain .com/direct1/direct2/direct3/youruselesslink.html

Build links to your best pages and then you can have a great listing for a home page that has little text

[rush123456]

i really dont understand google's algorythm..if you have a site and want to use keywords....do you have to write all keywords on the index page so the website can organically work its way to the top of the searches or can you break it up into domain.com/page1 domain.com/page2 and so on...with each page containing 1 or more articles

i guess an example would be using the keyword "web hosting" you will see something like webhostinggeeks and webhostingstuff (both coms) When you view the site(s), there is hardly any text on each of the homepages, but there are links to articles within the site. So when you type in a keyword, does google pull up the PAGE that is most relevant OR does it pull up the SITE that is most relevant?

Then it makes me ask the question why people put up websites where you seem to be scrolling for eons to get to the bottom all full of text? Why do something like that? It's so annoying. If you make it fit into your browser and split it up, not only is it cleaner, but easier to navigate and more efficient to break up...

Gooles algorithm is never declared by google. It doesnot allow any o its employees to tell it out. People based on their inferences write it down over the web. Right now it is said that google considers age of the domain I dont really know how true it is.

Coming to the next thing you dont need to write down all the keywords on the index page. People start of with long tails in the beginning and as they see results they cut the tails and go along with complex keywords. Here the complex keyword would be "webhosting" and long tail would be something like " cheap webhosting europe "

The SEO who works for webhostinggeeks.com is a good friend of mine so I very well know how it goes on There are some articles in the site and all it needs to be done is to maintain a 6-7% of keyword density with that if your meta tags.


I am sorry I am not very much sure with the things you asked in the last paragraph. If you could be more clear I can help you out!!

[webmxp]

this are few words the best describe the content of your website or any website. these keywords are frequently selected by the search engine.

[grace5]

High traffic and low competetion = niches words that are easier to rank for.

Web hosting has lots of traffic,but you will NEVER rank for that word as there are thousands of high tech sites that are very good at SEO that holds those positions.

But if you look at best web hosting reviews VS web hosting reviews
you will see the difference one word will make

Results 1 - 10 of about *7,990 for allintitle:best web hosting reviews
Results 1 - 10 of about 104,000 for allintitle: web hosting reviews

(allintitle: shows those sites that have the keywords listed in title and are trying to seo for that keyword)

The trick is (of course) to finds those words that are being searched for that have low comp.

*7,990 is pretty tough comp for someone just starting out so I would look for a good hosting niche