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The Three SEO Factors That Really Matter
By Mike Tekula (c) 2009

Search for a list of SEO factors and you'll find that most
feature at least 50.

That's 50+ elements of your website that influence your ability
to rank in search engines. Sounds complicated, doesn't it?

Some SEO Consultants will tell you that ranking in search
engines is about applying a precise formula to these 50+
elements - about using "special proprietary techniques"
fine-tuned to search algorithms to boost your website above the
competition.

Not exactly.

There are actually more like 200+ signals that search engines
use when ranking websites.

Imagine trying to reverse-engineer something like that? Sounds
impossible, right?

That's because it is.

The good news: it doesn't matter.

You don't need to be a computer engineer to rank well in search
engines. Relieving, isn't it?

The truth is that everything boils down to three factors:

   1. Search-Friendly Pages

   2. Relevant Content

   3. A Trusted Website

All of those other factors and elements of SEO? They all fit
into one of these three basic categories.

You don't need to be a search scientist to understand the
basics of what's going on with these three factors and improve
them for your website.

1) Search-Friendly Pages
Essentially, this first factor has to do with the technical
aspects of how your website and pages work.

Search engines use crawlers (or "bots") to browse the web by
following links. As they browse, these crawlers scan the content
they see and store it in databases. These databases form the
search engine's web index - and when a user comes along and
enters a search phrase the index is scanned for pages that match.

The basic idea: you want to make sure your pages, and the
content that fills them, are visible to search engine crawlers.

There are a few things you should know about crawlers:

  * They don't support JavaScript - so that rollover menu,
    those drop-down links, etc, might not be visible to search
    engine crawlers.

  * They don't support Flash (mostly) - while there have been
    a few developments in this regard recently, Flash websites
    still aren't too search engine friendly
    (http://unstuckdigital.com/flash-seo/).

  * They can't "see" - sometimes designers use images instead
    of HTML text (usually because they want to use a certain
    font that isn't web-safe), and search engine crawlers can't
    read or index this text. Crawlers can only read code - and
    if your content isn't found there it's essentially invisible
    to search engines.

  * They skimp on resources - it takes a lot of energy and
    time (and money) to crawl the web (there are a lot of pages
    out there) so crawlers are usually programmed to be
    conservative with how far they'll dive into a page. If your
    web pages take a long time to load or feature a tremendous
    amount of content crawlers might leave without scanning/
    indexing everything.

There are some other things crawlers can't/won't do. To get a
sense of what they can see on your own website try
SEO-Browser.com (http://www.seo-browser.com/). This tool allows
you to enter the address of a web page and see it as search
crawlers see it.

The bottom line: you might have the best content in the world,
but if crawlers can't see it you won't rank for relevant
keywords.

2) Relevant Content
This factor is all about the words on your pages.

As we discussed above, the visible content on your pages is
stored and searched every time someone uses a search engine. If
the keyword or phrase entered doesn't occur on your page you
probably won't show up.

There are a few key places where you'll want to use the right
language on your pages:

  * Title tags
  * Headlines
  * Body copy
  * Anchor text (links pointing to internal pages)

As you browse the web you'll probably notice that lots of
webmasters have gotten a bit, shall we say, "overzealous" with
optimizing their content. Title tags stuffed to the brim with
dozens of keyword variations is common. Sometimes even the body
copy itself is stuffed with keywords in an attempt to boost
rankings.

You might be tempted to do this yourself to try and enhance your
chances of ranking for a given keyword.

Don't do it. Please.

Why not? Try reading a page that's been stuffed with keywords
this way. It's an awful experience, right? Certainly enough to
stop your reading flow and send you to another website, isn't
it?

Don't sacrifice your user's reading experience in the aim of
ranking for a given keyword. It's not worth it. All of the
traffic in the world won't mean a thing if the users who land
at your pages are turned off and leave. Your competitors are
just a few painless clicks away.

To learn about what keywords people use when they search for
your products/services/info try Google's AdWords Keyword Tool
(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) - enter
either your website address or a keyword and this tool will
return a list of related keywords including numbers on how many
people search for them.

The bottom line: it's rare to rank for a keyword that doesn't
occur on your pages so use the language your users do when they
search. Don't overdo it and stuff keywords, though, because
you'll annoy your visitors (and search engines don't like it
either - they might flag you as SPAM).

3) A Trusted Website
When you've got 1) search-friendly pages and 2) relevant
content it's still not time to sit back and let the search
traffic pour in.

The truth is that most of your competitors will have looked into
these factors already - they're kind of the "low hanging
fruit" of SEO, because they're not usually terribly difficult
to work out.

Trust is what sets you apart. It is by far the most important of
the three factors.

Before Google came onto the scene using PageRank (a measurement
of link popularity) to rank websites, search engines generally
based their rankings on the first two factors we've discussed.

What was the problem with that approach?

Webmasters are greedy. We can't help ourselves. We love
traffic.

Keyword stuffing was rampant, and rarely did webmasters stick to
the honest truth about what their website was relevant to. The
result: search results littered with SPAM and just about
anything with very little relevance.

The reason links were a better signal to Google was simple -
it's harder to game. While you can control the content/keywords
on your own website, it's a lot harder to control it on someone
else's. It's pretty tough to get someone to link to you
against their will.

The model simply worked - Google's results were better. The
other search engines quickly caught on and looked to signals of
trust for sorting through the SPAM.

Some signals that search engines use to determine whether they
can trust your website:

  * Inbound links - quality is more important than quantity
    here - that's why those "500 directory links for $49.95"
    deals are worthless. The easiest links to get are the least
    valuable/powerful. A single link from Google.com, for
    example, would outweigh tens of thousands of weaker links
    - that's how much quality matters.

  * Website age - if your website is new there's not much you
    can do about it without a Delorian and a working flux
    capacitor ("Marty, the website is in place - now we gotta
    go back to the future!"). A website that's been around for
    a while is simply more trusted by search engines.

  * Who you link to - it's not just about inbound links.
    Search engines also look at what websites you link to from
    your pages. If you're linking out to SPAMMY websites, they
    might consider you part of that "bad neighborhood" and
    penalize your website. Be careful who you vouch for.

There are other signals involved, but if you've got these three
trust factors working in your favor you're very likely to
dominate the competition.

The bottom line: search engines don't like getting burned by
ranking SPAMMY websites. They want to know they can trust your
website. Once you've got your on-page factors right (#1 and #2
above), you'll need to build trust signals before your website
will rank competitively.
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Mike Tekula is the Director of Marketing of Unstuck Digital - an
Internet Marketing company (http://unstuckdigital.com/) that
provides SEO Consulting (http://unstuckdigital.com/seo/) and
other custom-tailored services.
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