13 Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO)4.3 How do search engines rank web pages?
This section is a bit technical but it will help you to understand how search engines
specify the position of a web page in the search results.Search engines use mathematical formulas to determine the rank of a web page.
These mathematical formulas are called ranking algorithms. Although search engines
don't reveal the exact algorithms, IBP's Top 10 Optimizer will help you to decrypt
these algorithms.All major search engines use the same principle to rank websites. The exact ranking
algorithms differ from search engine to search engine but the principle is the same.
We'll use the ranking algorithm of Google as an example.How does Google rank your web pages?Google explains the ranking algorithm like this:"Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web
page. Google uses PageRank™ to examine the entire link structure of the web
and determine which pages are most important.It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are
relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall
importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant
and reliable results first."As mentioned in the quote, Google uses PageRank (which is a mathematical formula
and not the same as the green bar in the Google toolbar) and hypertext-matching
analysis to rank your web pages. What does this mean?- You need good links
To get good results for the PageRank factor, you need good links from related pages
that point to your site. It's a simple principle: if page a links to page b then it is a
recommendation from page a to page b. The more links point to your website, the
better your rankings.The quality of the links is also important. A link that contains the keyword for which
you want to have high rankings in the anchor text is better than five links with the
text Click here. A link from a website that has a related topic is much better than links
from unrelated sites or link lists.