Hi DPs, I have a question for SEO experts. If you have a website about, let's say, funny pictures. How does Google determine which keyword your website show for?. If my website contain the keyword 'funny pictures' and the title contain the keyword 'funny pictures' is that enough? I am asking because my website haven't been in the SERP of the keyword 'funny pictures' even though it has the keyword in the title and the content of the website. It wasn't ranking for it until I did some SEO off page, then my website appeared for that keyword. Why didn't Google ranked my website before even though it had the same SEO factors minus the off page?. Can someone please explain ...
Even Google cannot accurately determine for which keywords it has indexed your website as it is purely dependent on the algorithm it makes use of.
There are a lot of factors that determine rankings for a webpage/site. 'Funny pictures' is a very competitive keyword and heaps of high authority websites are probably ranking for it. Depending on how old/new your website is along with how relevant the content is, what sites are linking to your site, how is the technical SEO done for that website, page speed etc. Google or any other search engine's algorithm will rank the website. Meta title and content alone won't cut it.
I know that Google it self can't determine the rank, I am asking about the algorithm, how does it pick which site to assign keyword for.
Not sure if there is a direct answer for that. However, what you can do is reverse engineer your competition, do off page SEO and ensure your on page SEO in on point! I am launching a program (with free resource materials) that covers how to get ahead of your competition. You can subscribe to it as its launching in two weeks and walks you through the process step-by-step. See my signature - Point is to not aim for the first position but to beat your competition
Google still consider the keyword but it has something to do more within the content in which represents the target keyword. Its not only the keyword but the message of the content will do.
Try to find long tail keywords because the keyword you choose "funny pictures" is very high in competition and will be very difficult to rank this in Google. So, try to find the keyword having medium competition and about 2000 searches per month.
The initial question suggests that Google filters keywords and decides whether it associates certain words with some sites and not with others. But this is not really the case. If you have a keyword in your page, it will be recognized by Google. However, the keywords may not appear very important to Google. If it appears an average number of times on a page, it is unimportant. If it appears seldom are frequently it becomes more important. Think of a Gaussian curve. An external link to such a page is a strong signal for Google which keywords are important in your context and which ones are not. If the source of the incoming link is also talking about your keyword, it is very likely that your keywords will be considered more important over others. For example if your page contains the word "alligator" while it has nothing to do with alligators at all, it will still rank for alligator if it is getting an external link from a source that has something to do with alligators.