How to Know What Google Uses to Determine Where your Web Pages Rank

How Does Google Use Keywords to Determine Relevance on Your Pages

All of us would like to rank our pages high in Google’s search results, and as time goes on, the factors that determine where your pages rank is constantly changing.

While SEO is at least partially a crap shoot, we can make very educated determinations regarding what we ought to do and ought not to do to our pages to try and get them to befound highly in Googles search results.

In a search world not so long ago and far away, you could get top rankings simply by stuffing as many of your primary keywords into your content as you could reasonable fit. Not any more. Google’s search algorithm has become smarter, and is able to discern a great deal more intent, and recognizes keyword stuffing instantly.

This is not to say you can’t do well by strategically inserting keywords in all of the right places. Indeed, you need to do this. You just have to do it naturally.

How keywords fit into your search rankings

Shaping your page content to focus on a particular keyword ranking is something of an art. Often the domain name might have little to nothing related to the keyword in question, and that’s one reason why keywords in domain names are no longer the signal they once were.

Today having the keyword in your URL, title tag, H1-5 headings and sprinkled judiciously throughout the content is the best way you can help your cause.

What keyword tactics to avoid

There are some ways you can shoot yourself in the foot in this respect as well. Keyword stuffing, that aforementioned relic of yesteryear, is one.

Another way is through the improper use of anchor text in your site’s backlinks. Having all the backlinks that appear for a particular page show up with the same anchor text, and all be followed links, is a sure red flag in this current algorithm. Strive for as natural a link profile as you can create, and vary your anchor text with natural phrases that would occur, such as a few “click here” and the like.