How do Search Engines Determine Relevancy?
Search engines follow a set of rules, with the main rules
involving the location and frequency of keywords, and metatags
which are found in the HTML code of a web page. Search
engines will search for web pages which have keywords that match
keywords in your search. Pages with keywords appearing in
their titles are assumed to be more relevant than others to the
topic of your search. Search engines will also check to see
if the keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in a
headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume
that any page relevant to your search topic will mention those
words right from the beginning.
Frequency is another major factor in how search engines determine
relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords
appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with
a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web
pages.
Another factor looked at by search engines is the
"popularity" factor. This is becoming more and
more important. A search engine can tell which of the
indexed pages have a lot of links pointing at them. Just as
businessmen in your local community might exchange business cards
at a local Chamber of Commerce event, the Internet has an
equivalent, called "reciprocal links".
"You link to my page and I'll link to yours." More
and more, the ranking formulas look at not just who links to your
site, but also who links to THEM! Getting listed in
community directories, sponsoring community services, joining the
local Lion's Club, and getting mentioned in the newspaper--all
these are becoming more important to your ranking because they
have to do with NATURAL links between businesses rather than the
artificial manipulations of keywords. Google has learned to
use link analysis to accurately determine the pecking order of web
businesses and rank more successful businesses higher.
BACK 
|
