Google claims that it looks at over 200 signals to determine which websites rank 1st, 2nd, 3rd… on its search engine results page (SERP) for a given search term. In an extraordinarily competitive market, you probably need to exhaust all resources. But, for most folks, the low-hanging fruit comes down to the following variables:
- Keywords in the URL (domain name, folder names, file path, file names)
- Keywords in the page title (<title>SEO Quotient</title>)
- Keywords in the link text (on a page, within the site, primary navigation, buttons, etc.)
- Keywords in the page and paragraph headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
- Keywords in the anchor text of the inbound links
Items 1 through 4 are what you can directly control because they are on-page SEO elements. You manage them through your code and your content management system. Inbound links, or backlinks, are typically performed by other people representing other websites and they are references to your web pages or citations of your material. You can think of inbound links (backlinks) similar to that of journalists referencing your website from their newspaper articles. For that reason, I call it online public relations, online PR, or OPR. In many cases, keywords in the anchor text of the inbound links represent THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR that Google takes into consideration. Indeed, it is the basis of its algorithm.
The correlation between top SEO factors and the 7 C’s of Online Marketing is:
- Keywords in the URL (Code)
- Keywords in the page title (Code)
- Keywords in the link text (Code/Content)
- Keywords in the page and paragraph headings (C0de/Content)
- Keywords in the anchor text of the inbound links (Credibility)