The latest findings come from the newly released Google SEO Ranking Factors – Rank Correlation Report for Bing UK. This latest research from Searchmetrics (part of the Search Engine Optimization Group) ranks websites from across the internet based on their use of keywords in their titles, Meta tags and anchor text links, and also includes a new study of the relevance and performance of the top 50 sites in the Bing index.
The rankings are based on five key factors: the importance of the keyword in a site’s title tag, the popularity of keyword phrases in the website, how closely related the keyword phrase is to other words in a site’s content, how many search engine spiders are currently crawling the site, and the percentage of links pointing to the site’s homepage. These factors were examined and ranked across various industries. The results include the following key points:
“Keyword-related to the website’s content” was the most important factor when ranking on Bing. It also ranked top for search engine spiders, with a higher percent of links pointing to the homepage and pages that have an anchor text link. This suggests that search engine spiders are attracted to relevant content rather than random keywords.
The next most important factor was “Rank Correlation” between sites in the same industry. The higher the page rank for a site, the more relevant that site’s content becomes to search engine spiders. For example, if a website with one of the highest search engine rankings for “home” is placed next to a site with the same keyword, but a lower ranking for “furniture,” the latter will appear in the search results after less than half of one percent of searches using the keyword “furniture.”
In terms of relevancy, ranking on Bing also ranked higher than the results of the previous study, based on the percentage of relevant and keyword-rich keywords. Although the percentage of relevant words in a site’s content has been found to be low, it does rank higher than the previous study because it includes more of these words in its anchor text links and title tag.
The study shows that websites that use both meta tags and anchor texts are more popular. It also demonstrates that some of the websites with low search engine rankings used keywords more often in their site design and layout than those sites with high rankings.
The meta tag has long been recognized as a highly effective method to encourage sites to appear high in search results, but SEO experts believe that it may not always be necessary for sites to include meta tags. Meta tags do not necessarily need to be unique in the sense that each site would have its own meta tag. For example, sites that include the words “shop”advertiser” in the meta tag could get the same result as a site that uses the term “piano.”
In terms of keywords, meta tags have been found to be a strong indicator that a site contains a keyword or two, as well as to have strong relevancy to search engines. For example, a site that use the term “home” as its meta tag and includes a high relevancy percentage of keywords that are related to the keyword, such as “piano,” may get more clicks, although this is not a guarantee that the site actually contains the actual keyword. The relevancy factor can be useful, however, in determining which of the sites should be ranked higher.
The use of anchor text links on a site is another way to increase rankings on Bing. Anchor texts on the links on a site are often placed within hyperlinks that lead to related pages on the site, but there are other sites that include links to the same page that includes the anchor text, creating a link network and providing more traffic to a site.
Other methods that are not commonly used on sites such as Bing include the addition of more text to the site and adding images. For example, a site that contains a number of pages where pictures of furniture or home decor items can be found can gain more exposure by including these images on the site. and the links to these pages. Some SEO experts believe that images should never be used for marketing purposes, but there are other SEO experts who believe images are important for building link popularity and thus ranking.
Many people are unaware that a website can actually gain more exposure by linking to a site of their choice than by posting a link on the first page of Bing. There are several search engines that provide links to a website through other search engines. For example, Google’s PageRank uses the PageRank of a website as an indexing tool. By using other search engines, a site may gain more search engine traffic and, in some cases, higher rankings.