Place them in the order you think they should be

Compar just put this list down - so I thought lets see who thinks what - I was going to do a poll for each but that meant 15 threads so I decided not - unless Shawn can think of something......Shawn?

 

I honestly tried to make revisions to compar's list and couldn't. maybe making #2 and 3 tied?

 

I agree.
That is a very good list with as good as a guess as any.
As far as SERP ranking goes at least.

I might put a little more importance on content, internal linking, and description meta tags, just for userability, and usefulness to make the searcher actually click your result page/title, stay at your site, and appreciate the work you put into it (read: come back), but if this is strictly SERP ranking than it's fine with me.

 

Oh go on be brave

Rank them and why

 

Wow! I didn't think anyone would be that impressed with my list.

I literally wrote them down as I thought of them -- it was late at night. But if you would like them more or less in order of importance how is this:

1. Number of backlinks -- using good anchor text.
1a. Backlinks from relevant sites -- this may not be important today, but undoubtedly will be in the future.
1b. Number of inbound links not reported as backlinks -- any link is a good link. The fact that Google doesn't report it as a backlink only means that it is less than PR4. But google knows about them and uses them for relevancy calculations.
1c. Alt Tags -- while these should be used with all images the only ones that influence the SEs are the alt tags used with image links. In this case the alt tags is the anchor text -- an absolute must when images are used as links.
2. Page Title -- most important on-page item
3. Proper & appropriate use of <h> tags on page.
4.. Page content -- several paragraph of well written text describing the page or site and incorporating your keywords.
5. Internal navigation --both the users and the SEs have to be able to follow this.
6. Freshness of content -- the SEs love fresh content. Web site maintenance and revision should be a perpetual project.
7. Number of pages in site -- more is usually considered better albeit there are some very successful small sites.
8. Allintitle:
9. Allintext:
10. AllinURL:
11. Stemming
NOTE: Item 8 to 11 above are not within the control of the site owner, but maybe useful for analysis.
12. Number of outbound links -- many people worry about PR dilution or bleeding. This is more myth than fact. In fact out bound links to "authority" sites may increase the relevance of your site in the SE's eyes.
13. Meta tags -- Description tags should always be well written and meta keyword tags can be included for the SEs who use them. It is doubtful that any other meta tags have any utility when it come to the SEs.
14. PageRank -- I left this last on purpose. Today it is the most over hyped most misunderstood of all the elements. It is the mathematical sharing of the PR value of all the interlinked sites any page is involved with. It has no direct relationship to the relevance of the page to any search term. And has little if any effect on SERP placement.

Now, what is not on the list is the first step and most important step in all of these SEO practices -- KeyWord Research. If you don't use keywords that people are actually searching on your work is in vain. It is dead easy to be first in the SERPs for a term that nobody uses. But if you want traffic you must use popular and hence competitive keyword.

Shawn's Keywords Suggestion Tool is a great place to start this research.

I'm sure there are thing's I've missed. If anyone wants to add to the list please do so.

 

Great list, Bob.

I agree that PR is pretty much "window dressing" anymore. After all, you could put up a brand new one page site and get one backlink from a PR9 site and, technically, end up with a PR8 for the new site.

In my recent research I found more often than not low PR sites were out-ranking a lot of high PR sites for the same keywords and probably rightly so.

 

Yes, excellent list - thanks very much for sharing.

How would KW density and prominence fit into all of this - it does not seem to matter much these days - my #1 competitor is density >10% and ranks #1

BTW - anyone care to critique my site - all comments much appreciated

I have more PR4+ backlinks than #1, rank well for allinanchor (which started this excellent discussion) use H1/2 tags - have good prominence but rank 20+ (for google uk and +140 for .com)

Any thoughts? Zoo has already suggested backlinks but if I check linkpopularity.com or alltheweb I still have more...

and the site is www.teneric.co.uk

thanks

 

I have never worried about, or measured, keyword density. It would be included in item item 4 of my second list. But while you obviously want to use your keywords -- 2 or 3 phrases per page -- in your text, the text should be written for the users not the search engines. I always felt that keyword density was an artifical and unnecessary measure.

Keywords, of course, should be used in the title and in the headers enclosed by <h> tags.

I'll take a quick look at your site. But here's what strikes me. If you are satisfied that your site is well optimized for item 2 to 14 in my list then there is only one thing left to do -- add backlinks.

The SEs and Google in particular is not a perfect world. But we know that you can drive a site in the SERPs with backlinks. So rather than analyze to death and stand your ground because you think you have more, less or the same as the site that ranks ahead of you, just drop your pride and build more backlinks.

 

Have you done any keyword research on the term "how to write a business plan" ? I don't know about the UK, but in North America "how to" books and and titles are very popular?

I don't see any obvious problems with your site, but Google reports only 57 backlinks. Get another 100.

Write an article for my InfoPool about using the Internet in researching and writing a business plan and I'll give you give you a couple of links. I just did that for another author, and he was so impressed he negotiated a run of the site linking deal with me. There are lots of ways to get links. But you have to get links.

 

Change your title and your H1

Go to Shawns keyword suggestion and type in

Business plans

on the left, Wordtracker, you have business plans 3000 odd/day and Overture at 3000+ for business plan

Type in

Business plan

and Wordtarcker shows up

business plan 24++
business plans 22++

so target business plan

Change your title to Business Plan Business Plans - that is all

Move your image from the left hand side to the right of the H1 heading which should read

Business Plan Business Plans by [image with alt of business plan and a link to the page below of business plan]

On the next blue line write

Business Plan, Business Plans, write a business plan yourself

or something like that and link the business plan or business plans each to a page oulining how, that has a title of the same eg business plan as the link

Link using the same words those pages by your site map and link them back to the index page in the same way

Then do as the others say

 

Foxy/ compar

Thanks very much for your time on this.

I'm going to implement foxy's suggestions and write that article for you.

I really appreciate your help and I'll let you know how the rankings go

 

Foxy

Can you have a quick look to check I did it ok.

I have linked:

business plan to business-plan-template.html
business plans to sample-business-plans.html
write a business plan yourself to bplanx.html (which is titled write a business plan)

are these correct or should I link business plan to the home page - the 3 pages above are secondary KW combos - should I use these or the combos in my initial links ?

The logo is back to the home page

For both of you - would you like a link to your pages? PM me with the page or just list it
thanks again

 

leeds1,

If you run your site through the Keyword Analysis Tool (below in my sig) it will give you a better idea of how you stack up with you competitors (top ten).

Size of site DOES matter! If you are a smaller site, you have to compensate for that by beating competitors with many more backlinks then they have.

Caryl

 

Wow McDar you excel yourself.

First the datacentre tool and now this.

I can see I have a lot of work to do

I was *only* trying to get up in google.co.uk but I see what I need to do

Any chance of doing to analysis on .co.uk ?

Thanks again

 

Actually, I was just thinking along those lines this morning! Albeit was to adding the international datacenters to the Datacenter Tool.

But I will consider your suggestion as well.

If you have not seen it yet, there is a very long thread in the "All other Tools" area of this forum, where we are discussing the results from the Keyword Analysis Tool and currently are running an experiment to test a theory.

A nice tool that Shawn didn't write -- hard to believe...

 

Thanks very much Caryl

I would be very interested as sometimes I am struggling to work out why I am not as high as the competition

Let us know when it comes online

 

Yep it sure looks better

What is difficult [only because we are tempted ourselves] is keeping the set order that you establish eg business plan [in the anchor] goes to business plan [allinurl] business plan [the title] business plan [the header] business plan [in the text] etc etc

and keep to Compars list - keep Mcdars and Compars back link strategy and I'll take up that offer of back link to

Weber BBQs

Thanks

 

Well foxy - the results are in and are very interesting.

for google UK we moved up just under a page for both terms (business plan/ plans)

on .com we stayed the same for plans and dropped 17 for plan ?!

All other terms remained about the same on .co.uk but dropped a couple of places on dotcom

Work that out!

Thanks a lot and I'll work on the links.

 

Give it a few days now/perhaps a week and then I will look again - remind me and I will look at the actual pages again.

Work on those back links and we will see

Nice stuff

 

I've been motoring on the backlinks and have just run digitalpoints KW tracker and...

the results are slightly better on .com and stable on .co.uk

I've also unspammed my internal linking structure a little (as I had business plan in the anchor pointing to my home page a lot so I cut that down)