Top Five SEO Factors – Defined

I LOVE getting comments on my blog posts. It makes me feel validated as a human being. They love me. They really love me! (I need to get out more.)

When I got the comment below on one of the last posts, I realized, “Oh, yeah… I need to explain this stuff, huh?” I keep forgetting that.

All of the five would have been wonderfully informative IF I knew the DEFINITION OF EACH TERM. For those as dumb as me, what is an H1 Headline Tag? How about Internal Link Anchor Text? I was so excited to be led to the most important five and then I dropped from the cliff when I couldn’t understand what you were telling me. Eeeek~

Read the entire article at:
http://www.waltonwebdesigner.com/2010/02/25/search-engine-ranking-factors-seomoz.html#comments

So here’s what those mean, and more importantly, what they mean to you.

1. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
The number one says “Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag”. This one is easy and important. The title is a technical bit of information on a web page. It’s displayed in the browser window, up there at the top.

You can see where it actually is on a web page by doing the “view source” in your browser to look at the code behind the page. Look at all that gibberish. Look towards the top of the gibberish. There will be a bit of information that says “<title>This Text Is Whatever Your Title Is And Where Your Keywords Should Be</title>”. That’s the title and what this says is that your keywords should be inside of those “title tags”.

You can control the title in many different ways in many different systems. In WordPress, the title of your page or post becomes the title, following the name of your site. In Etsy, the title of your product becomes the title, followed by your shop name. You’ll have to look at your own site and figure out how this works.

What you should do is make sure that your keywords are in that title. If that means adding it to the name of your product or your post, then do it. Experiment until you know how to make it work.

2. Keyword Use as the First Word(s) of the Title Tag
The second most important factor is having those keywords as the FIRST words in the title. I’ve actually heard the they should be after the initial word, but I can’t prove that. The trick is to get them in the title towards the beginning of the title.

Since Etsy seller Warmth left the comment, let’s look at one of her products on Etsy.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22247701

The title of the page is “Jilly-from the Easter Mice Felt Mouse Collection by Warmth”. I’m guessing her keywords are “felt mice”, so I would reword this product, so the title changes, to “Felt Mice Collection: Jilly, from the Easter Mice by Warmth.” See how the keywords are first now and it still make sense to real people?

3. Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name
Third factor is having your keyword in your domain name. If you have a domain name, then it counts to have the keyword in it. If you’re on Etsy, the domain name is “etsy.com”, so unless you are targeting “etsy guide” or something, you’re out of luck on that one.

4.Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag
Fourth refers to an “H1 headline”. The H1 tag is one of 5 levels of headline. They are named H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5. They correspond to levels of importance and usually have some formatting attached to them, like they are larger and bolder. If you don’t know what these are or you can’t actually touch the content of your page to put them in, you’re out of luck on that too. If you’re using WordPress, you can actually put in <h1>the text you want to highlight</h1> into the HTML edit field on your post.

5. Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page
“Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text on the Page” means that when you link from one page to another on your site, which is an “internal link,” you should use your keywords in the link. If you link to other web sites, those are “external links”. The “Anchor text” is the actual text that you use in to link with. So if your keywords are “felt mice”, then you should use the words “felt mice” to link to other pages on your site.

If you are using Etsy, this is difficult. About all you have for links are the ones from your shop page to your product pages. If you have your keywords in your product names, these links will already have your keywords in them.