Alan Eustace, a Google VP of search engineering, announced last year that there are now over 200 signals that Google uses to determine document relevance for a searcher. Unfortunately, he didn’t go on to explain them all…

With this number of factors and constantly updating algorithms, it’s tricky when I want to explain to a site owner when training or consulting which really matter. So here are five laws of effective SEO I have defined to assess strategic focus on SEO - hopefully it’s easier to remember five laws than 200!

I’ve also created a new SEO Gallery showing examples of SEO best practice from UK companies - you may want to check out the advanced SEO techniques being used.

1. The more pages on your site that are indexed by Google, the more visitors you will get.

Every page on your site is an opportunity to attract visitors interested in your content and services. So make sure your index inclusion is 100% and Google’s robots can find ALL of your relevant content. If you’re international, display it for different country versions of Google.

2. If you create more pages with unique keyphrase rich content, you will get more qualified visitors, leads and sales.

Make sure you use keyword tools to perform a gap analysis, identify target keyphrases and where you can’t optimise existing pages, create new content themed around your target keyphrases.

Don’t forget that more pages can lead to visitor confusion, so you need a sound navigation scheme and clear positioning messages throughout your site.

Another implication of this law is that every new page has an opportunity to attract visitors thanks to the long-tail effect, provided the creator knows the ranking factors and principles of SEO – so SEO style guides and training of content owners is vital. You can’t just leave everything to SEO specialists.

This training doesn’t have to be that involved – I’m just talking sensible URL naming, unique titles and meta descriptions and use of keyphrases in headings and links.

I find that not everyone is aware of the great tools available for assessing performance, so have compiled a list of the best keyphrase analysis tools for SEO. It’s a shame the old-favourite Overture is no longer performing, although it seems Yahoo! will revive it.

3. If you create more quality internal links, you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales.

I think everyone knows about the importance of external backlinks, but internal links have an important role to play in attracting visitors using your target keyphrases - particularly those from high PageRank pages which contain the right anchor text within the hyperlink.

I have been collecting together some examples in an SEO Best Practice Gallery. Common examples are sitemaps, footer links, related product links, sub-categories menus including breadcrumbs, and body copy links particularly near the start of a document – again, content owners need to be educated to include those.

Of course, it can be tricky implementing changes within an existing site design and navigation scheme, but you have more control of these links than external links.

4. If you create more quality external links, you will get more quality visitors, leads and sales.

Most SEOs agree this is the most important factor in competitive markets. So, a proactive approach to link-building is needed with the aim of gaining links with good relevance about a topic that deeplink into relevant themed pages.

Great content will also lead to more natural links, but it will only get you so far. You need to be proactive also. The challenges of who owns and pays for this must be overcome – is it a PR activity or a marketing activity?

5. If you spam, you will be found out eventually.

So don’t spam. You need to ensure that an ethical approach to SEO is used. You need to work through with an agency how ethical you are, since there are many shades of grey.

Put another way, you need to work out which colour SEO hat you wear – if you or your design agency are purists who wear a ‘pearly white hat’ then you won’t succeed with SEO, although you will have the warm glow of being totally ethical. Choose which colour hat you wear – these posts on ‘what is black hat SEO?‘ help explain that.

Dave Chaffey
www.davechaffey.com

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion over the PageRank score found within Google’s Toolbar. So I thought I explain why I, and many other SEOs/SEM reporters would love to see the PageRank score disappear from the Google Toolbar.

Back in the good old days, SEOs used to do whatever they could to increase their PageRank. If you had a high PageRank, typically a 7 or higher - you were set. You could literally rank for almost anything, if you also followed that up with good, on-page SEO work. That quickly went away, I believe, with the florida update of November/December 2003. In any event, SEOs used to wait for the toolbar PageRank to update, to see how they did in getting links from high PageRank sites. If they did a good job with that, they would see their PR increase and immediately see their rankings improve. SEOs were able to see an update coming, when the various Google Data Centers didn’t match each other. Google rankings would change on some data centers, the link counts would change and the PageRank would change. Hence, the term, the Google Dance. Those days are pretty much over. Google is now changing almost daily. Google’s current link count is almost useless at the time being. Google’s data centers are frequently updating.

Ever since then, top SEOs and even Google engineers have been pushing to explain that PageRank is not as important as it once was. In fact, some go to extremes to declare Google PageRank Lunacy, in Sweden, we had a Google representative tell us that the link command was not so useful, later we had someone quote Google as saying PageRank is for Entertainment Purposes Only, which was then refuted by GoogleGuy. We had two other posts that discussed GoogleGuy Once Again Responds to Link Command and Why Does Google Show Old PageRank Values?

All that understood, it is clear that many would like to see the PageRank score go away from the Google toolbar. I am confident, this won’t happen soon. I would say that most engineers would probably like to see it go away. But the marketing folks probably would not. I am not talking for Google her, I am just throwing out my feelings on it.

So we see that people are or were obsessed with PageRank, and rightly so. Hence why SEOs and reporters and even some Googlers wanted to tell people to not live and die by it. Some were extreme in their message, but for good reason.

So what is the bottom line at this time on PageRank found within the toolbar?

As Matt Cutts wrote back in his more about PageRank post:

At some point we take our internal PageRanks, put them on a 0-10 scale, and export them so that they’re visible to Google Toolbar users. If you’re splitting hairs about the exact date that backlinks were taken from, you’re probably suffering from “B.O.” (backlink obsession) and should stop and go do something else for a bit until the backlink obsession passes.

PageRank in the toolbar does show you something about the site. But we are far past the days where a Google PageRank update in the toolbar would have almost an immediate impact on your rankings in Google. This is important and you should not obsess over it. It is an indicator of the quality of links you have to your site, but the indicator is old and is not real time - so you need to understand this.

I hope that explains some of the questions out there on Toolbar PageRank, why SEOs fight about it and what it really is at this point in time.

London, United Kingdom - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - February 1, 2007 - For the 16th consecutive month, Google remains the most-visited web site in France, according to digital age measurement service, comScore Networks, during the month of December.

With the largest index of websites available on the World Wide Web and the industry’s most advanced search technology, Google Inc. delivers the fastest and easiest way to find relevant information on the Internet. Google’s technological innovations have earned the company numerous industry awards and citations, including two Webby Awards; two WIRED magazine Readers Raves Awards; Best Internet Innovation and Technical Excellence Award from PC Magazine; Best Search Engine on the Internet from Yahoo! Internet Life; Top Ten Best Cybertech from TIME magazine; and Editor’s Pick from CNET. A growing number of companies worldwide, including Yahoo! and its international properties, Sony Corporation and its global affiliates, AOL/Netscape, and Cisco Systems, rely on Google to power search on their websites. A privately held company based in Mountain View, Calif., Google’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Capital.