Despite what some people might believe, there is no hidden secret to securing relevance on leading search engines.
Here are three of the main factors you need to consider:
Optimised content
Web pages that are ‘optimised’ have been written or altered to make them highly relevant for certain search terms, eg, ‘accountants in Belfast’.
If your website is clearly laid out with well defined keyphrases in the text then search engines will assign a better rank to your pages
Google’s search engine looks at all aspects of the page’s content and then determines if it is a good match with the search term entered. If your website is clearly laid out with well defined keyphrases in the text then search engines will assign a better rank to your pages.
Title tags
Closely related to on-site content is the factor of using correct title tags. The title tag is simply the title you give to the page and it’s this information that search engines will also use to help determine the pages’ relevance.
Linking
The third dominant factor for website relevance is link popularity. When Google were developing their new search engine they realised that link popularity and link quality were very reliable criteria for determining the value of a web site. Google’s search engine works by counting inbound links to your site and assigning scores to each link. Think of it as casting a vote of confidence in a link.
The number and quality of these links will have a significant impact on your site’s ranking. So if your website has only gained a few links from poorly ranked websites then you will tend be outranked by rival high raking sites. If, on the other hand, your site has acquired a large volume of links from authority sites like Wikipedia or BBC then Google will view your site as having more value.
Website and web page relevance really does matter to the visibility and success of many companies and organisations. In highly competitive sectors like retail, travel, health, finance and legal services, being relevant and achieving a first page ranking on Google can give a company the leading edge in a tough economic terrain.
