What about the number of back links some of these sites have? That’s helpful no?
January 30, 2009 – 12:49 pmA friend of mine recently asked this very question. He had been given a “Search Engine Optimization Process Summary” (impressive huh!) from an SEO company. The summary included information about competitor sites and text on these sites home pages. The report was a mix of partially useful information and, in my opinion, misleading geeky dribble. Over all, it painted a very concrete picture of what the client needed to do. Unfortunately, describing “what it’s going to take” is rarely concrete.
The question was:
“What about the number of back links some of these sites have? That’s helpful no?”.
I answered in a way that would break up the concrete impression that had started to set.
“yes and no. Back link count and it’s relationship to rank is not as empirical as they make it out to be. The value a link carries for a specific term varies. There are many factors involved. A simple count of the back links will give you an abstract impression of the stability of that sites position in general. I’d even say a wrong impression. You have to examine the actual back links (the actual pages and the site content overall) to get a clearer picture of how influential they are for a particular term or niche or at all, for that matter. Even still, if a domain in general has a tremendous number of quality links from similar and quality sites and the search engine really trusts the site you’re trying to out rank then you’ll have a harder time surpassing them due to the overall trust and power of the domain. iLounge.com, for instance, ranks for many search queries that they only have one page of unique content for and few if any totally relevant backlinks to. Yet, because they carry so much trust, unique content and massive quantities of good backlinks in general, they will rank very quickly for any new content they create. It’s simply a good site that people like. Google knows to do this because the people tell them without specifically saying it about specific search terms. Does that make sense?”
The report from this company also included information about keyword density. This was valuable information. Though again, it paints a picture that is misleading and confusing.
I can’t imagine any of my clients writing thier content then running a keyword density analyzer on that content, then adjusting it, then running it again until they get 10% of this term and 5% of that term. It’s ridiculous how geeky geeks can be even when dealing with something that supposed be [and actually is] about people.
Do you know WHY keyword density is actually measured and WHY it’s considered when indexing content and adjusting the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)?
…Ready, for the answer? BECAUSE IT’S SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT WHAT GOOD WRITING WILL NATURALLY CONTAIN! …go ahead, smack yourself on the forehead.
I tell all my clients to write intelligently and naturally for the people they provide the content for. The result is ,almost invariably, content with “correct” keyword density. What’s more important is that it’s going to be interesting to the appropriate reader and will actually engage them.
Forget the search engine and forget keyword density measurements as a measure of how relevant your content is. Use it only to detect when you’re going overboard or using too many pronouns or non-specific descriptors. Most adults have the inate ability to write with the correct use of nouns, pro-nouns and descriptors for their topic. You wouldn’t repeat Abraham Lincoln every time you were writing a sentence about him would you? No, you’d use ‘he’ and ‘his’ or ‘the presidents’ or maybe ‘the Union leader’.