I’m sure someone in the SEO community has been asked this countless times and why many people reading this will think to ask it in reference to their own site. After all, it is a very important question and the answer, if you can take advantage of it, could prove to be very valuable.

However, it is a fairly easy question to answer, at least on a general level, the answer that demystifies the so-called “black art” of search engine optimization. (However, I must say again that this is an “idiot’s guide” and therefore does not cover some of the more complicated topics of “keyword density”, “deep link ratio”, “code to code ratio”). text” and others, all of which affect the effectiveness of any web page).

We can illustrate the answer to this question using an analogy.

This analogy is based on an old market, the kind where men with wheelbarrows enter and then shout what they have on sale, you know, “a pound of plums for 50 pence” or “genuine leather jackets for 50 pounds”. get the image. However, in my analogy, Google establishes these “markets”, one market for each vertical market. So you have one for cars and one for plumbers and one for houses for sale, and so on.

Now, everyone who wants to enter any of these markets can give it a try regardless of what they sell; however, Google will be quite ruthless in preventing anyone who feels they are not in the right market from entering (however, like any process this one is not foolproof). This leaves countless thousands of “web pages” (not sites, but pages) wanting to come in to sell their products. Because entering gives them the opportunity to be chosen by those “Google agents” who enter the market looking for the best pages to list.

But getting into Market Place is just the first step, how does the Google agent pick you for one of those coveted top ten spots?

To better understand what is going on, you first need to know the rules of these markets.

The first and most important rule is that all web pages start at the back of the market, which of course makes it very difficult for Google Agents to “hear” them shouting their wares. As the sites to which the web pages age, the web page goes up in the market, getting closer and closer to the front (and therefore more easily heard).

more rules

In every market, you’ll find two types of web page, one that’s trying to get the attention of Google agents for a listing place and the other, well, they’re saying, “go and take a look at this page, it’s all about of x”. These are the “links” to pages on other sites on the web, and because these Google agents listen to them, they are, as you may know, very important. They may even have an agent search the sandbox area, especially if there are enough of them or they are considered important in their own right. The rules for these linking pages are quite simple, they say “I represent website XXX and we are all YYY. I would like you to consider website ZZZ, they are very good at what you are looking for”.

So much for these “link pages”, but what about the normal web page? What are the rules for them?

First, each web page must only speak the words on its page, it cannot say anything else.

You first shout out your Title (the bit in the blue bar at the top of your browser), here you can really make the words resonate, making them easier to hear. Then it continues down the page, saying the words on the pages, stopping when it comes to paragraphs, etc. When it comes to a heading on a page or something bold or italic, you can say the words a little louder, and when it comes to lists, you can pause between each sentence, the better to make the words more effective.

You can also make it quite clear to Agents that there are other pages on your own site that are very relevant (these being internal links), all with the aim of trying to convince the agent that the web page’s website is really very relevant. Useful. and therefore must be listed.

So what does the above mean for the unprepared website?

Well, for many, although they have managed to break into the market, they find to their horror that when it comes to shouting their Title, they have to say “WM Cooper” and not “WM Cooper Plumbing, Shower & Faucet Suppliers”. , which if the agent is looking for plumbers to list is much more interesting.

Then, when they get to the words on the page, they have to say nonsense about “Welcome to the WM Cooper website. We’ve been in business for 30 years and have thousands of satisfied customers, come to us…”, at which point which the Agent has “turned off” and started looking elsewhere.

Now if the words on the page had had a “Plumbing Supplies” heading and then read something like “We can supply you with faucets, baths, tiles, sinks” etc, the agent would have been much more likely to listen. .

Other sites have different problems, sure the webpage exists, but other pages on your own site don’t point them out the right way. Google prohibits such pages from entering the market, arguing that “there is no record of its existence on the website it claims to come from, therefore it does not exist, please leave.” So pages like these fall on the first fence…

On the other hand, there are those unfortunate pages, which although they are quite clear, to the human reader anyway, everything about “hotels in Portsmouth” doesn’t really say this on the page convincingly, so if other A thousand pages (and there could be a lot more) are all screaming, in no uncertain terms, that it’s “Portsmouth hotels” who they’re going to pick, do I really need to say more…

Therefore, only those web pages that have done their homework and enter the market prepared win those coveted front page positions. Well, that’s true to a point, but we’ve forgotten about those “link” pages we were talking about earlier, what role do they have to play in this saga? quite a lot, in fact I estimate that Google agents give such a high value to this area that it accounts for more than 50% of the points they award, so much is due to these links. That means it’s worth getting a lot of links pointing to your site in that market.

But beware, Google, in a perverse way, and knowing that people know to listen to the screams of these links, will only listen if the website the link is on is relevant to the site you’re talking about (pointing to ). In other words, a site dedicated solely to Florida fish farms will be of little use in terms of “link pressure” for a site selling harvesters, and vice versa. Also, just to spice up the pot (as if it needed it), Google also keeps an eye on the number of sites in a market that “scream” about other sites, and if a site seems to have too many new sites “scream” around a short period of time they are likely to be a bit suspicious. It’s, God forbid, someone trying to make a site seem more popular than it really is…

So the market is full of dangers, but basically free of “tricks”. If the pages of a website do their homework and make sure they’re really “saying” what they’re about, making it pretty clear in the Page Title as well as the page headers, have plenty of links and references. to other pages on your site (and even off your site) and, more importantly, getting some links pointing to them and to the other pages on your web page, will be listed. However, do anything else and be prepared to keep asking that question “why do some pages show up on Google while mine doesn’t…?”