How long can a text link be if it should improve your rankings?
November 6, 2008 by admin
The words that are used in the links to your website have an effect on the search engine rankings of your website for these keywords. For example, if very many websites use the word “blue widget” to link to your website, it is likely that your website will get a high ranking on Google for the keyword “blue widget”.
How many keywords does Google consider?
It’s absolutely certain that Google considers the words in the links to your site. The question is, how many words or characters does Google count in a link? Is there an optimal length for text links? Blogger Shaun Anderson did a test to find the answer.
The test set-up
Shaun Anderson created a long text link with 50 nonsense words. Each of the nonsense words was 6 characters long. For example, he might have used a link like this:
wergsd woivsd mliwdc woiuby 3245sc plorxc werxcd …
Then he added that link to the home page of a website that has good rankings on Google.
After some time, Shaun did a search for a keyword that the linked website ranked number one for and added the nonsense words to the search. By doing so, Google would only list the site in the search results if links to the site contained the nonsense word.
For example, if a website has a number one ranking for “buy used cars in dallas” then the website will only be returned by Google for “buy used cars in dallas wergsd” if Google has indexed a link with the text “wergsd” that points to the website.
The result: the perfect length seems to be 55 characters
Out of the 50 words in the link text, Google counted eight. Everything after the eighth word was ignored. Eight words that consist of six characters make 48 characters. The seven spaces between these six words add up to a total of 55 characters.
What does this mean for your website?
You should make sure that the important keywords come in the first 55 characters of the links that point to your website.
As many websites use the title of a web page to link to it, you should also consider the way you write your web page titles. If your important keywords are at the beginning of your web page titles, chances are that these keywords will also be used in the links to your site.
If you want to know if your web page titles are correct and if you also want to know if all other elements of your web page are ready for a top 10 ranking on Google, you should analyze your website now.
Official Google statement: how to get high rankings
October 31, 2008 by admin
This month, the Google Webmaster blog published an article in which Google’s Maile Ohye officially explained what it takes to get a high ranking in Google’s search result pages.
The blog article confirms that the methods that are used by Complete SEO to get high rankings are correct. But read it for yourself:
Inbound links are important but content is even more important
Google’s Maile Ohye writes the following about inbound links in his article:
“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance.”
Nothing new here. If many related websites link to your site, and if these links look natural, this will help you rankings on Google a lot.
However, links are not the most important ranking factor. Maile Ohye gives a concrete example:
“Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.
As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking. “
The website’s content is mentioned as one of the strongest ranking factors. The inbound links are additional. That makes sense. The content of your website tells Google what your website is about.
If you want to get a high ranking for the keyword “used cars in dallas” but your web pages are about microwave ovens then you won’t get high rankings for that keyword.
For that reason, it is very important that you optimize your web pages for the keywords for which you want to get high rankings before you try to get links from other sites.
Google analyzes over 200 ranking factors
According to the article in Google’s blog, Google analyzes more than 200 signals (we call them ‘ranking factors’) to specify the position of a web page in the search results:
“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”
It’s a simple two-step process
Getting high rankings on Google is a simple two-step process:
- You must optimize your web page contents so that Google can find out what your website is about. Optimize your web pages for your keywords so that Google knows that your website is relevant to these keywords and your topic.
- Other websites must confirm that your website is about that topic. That’s what inbound links are for.
It’s as simple as that. If your website passes Google’s analysis of all ranking factors, it will get a top 10 ranking.