Over the past couple of months I have been watching what Matt Cutts and Andy Lasnik have to say about on page content and optimization and specifically duplicate content. One thing that Andy Lasnik says about duplicate content sounds very familiar to the Google Adwords quality scoring system. Here is a quote from a recent interview regarding duplicate content.

“It’s very much related to issues of quality as well. If the degree of content duplication is such that it impairs the user’s experience, it can indicate a site that is generally of low quality. In that case that site probably isn’t going to do very well in our index.” (Adam Lansik)

Although Google has not come right out and said there is an organic quality score that plays a major role in the organic positioning I think there may be an actual number similar to that of the Page Rank that is used to determine the overall quality of the site based a number of factors and then that score is combined with the overall credibility of the site. As new as this idea may sound, it actually goes back to the basics and fundamentals of SEO, it is just combining the credibility and relativity with another factor that helps to eliminate spam… Quality.

I don’t know that an organic quality score really exist in a manner of it actually being a number but the is no disputing that the quality of your site in relation to your content is a factor that will not necessarily gain you much positioning without Page Rank but a low “quality score” can definitely be a factor in reducing your visibility regardless of Page Rank.

The main factor that I have seen that could decrease your overall organic quality score would be the duplicate content factor. Many sites will use a “madlib” approach to writing content where keywords are inserted into a templated paragraph so the paragraph looks as though it is unique. This actually only creates about 20% or less unique content meaning you will have 70%+ duplicate content which can be a dead giveaway.

If you are having issues gaining visibility in Google while you are doing great in Yahoo and some of the other search engines you may want to do a duplicate content checker to see what the percentage of duplicate content you have. I will be watching very closely over the next couple of months to see if Google gives any indication of releasing an organic quality scoring number or system.

Thanks,

Brad Henry

Each Language has a set number of words we use therefore there are millions of pages on the web that essentially have the same physical words on them.   By using keyword density, Tags, Titles and other on page factors, Google can narrow this down to just a mere couple hundred thousand relevant pages.

In order to further refine the results and provide the most credible source of information Google assigns a point of credibility ranked on an exponential scale from 0-10 where 10 is the best.   It is more difficult to go from a 6 to a 7 than it is to go from a 2 to a 3.  The page with the highest relativity in combination with the highest credibility (Page Rank) will typically gain the highest positioning in the results.

Google uses your backlink structure to determine your Page Rank.   The quantity and quality of your backlinks ultimately determines your score.  Each link counts as a vote towards increasing the quantity or quality of your backlink structure.  In most cases, the more links you have the better.

It is important to not gain a significant amount of links from “bad neighborhoods” such as link farms because Google’s spiders are smart enough to recognize attempts to alter their ranking system and can penalize your site.

The Page Rank that is visible through the Google Toolbar is only updated about 4 times a year while the real Page Rank is a number that is continuously fluctuating depending on the links that come and go.  This can help explain why your link building efforts don’t seem to have any impact on your visible Page Rank.

Other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN use a similar technique for judging a site’s credibility.  Because of this system, link building is a crucial part to any search engine optimization strategy.

Thanks,

Brad Henry

Search Engine Optimization 

What is the best Keyword Density for a page for SEO?

This question has been asked at some point in time by most SEO Analyst, web marketers, copywriters, and anyone else who puts text on a website. While no search engine comes right out and says what the best keyword density is, I have worked with enough website to have an idea of what works and what does not.

You have to be careful about keyword density as not to go too high or search engines can discount your site because it becomes to spammy. I have found that if you a keyword density for a specific keyword phrase between the 2-3% range you will be ok. It is better to have more instances of the keyword on the page up to a point. You want to have more exact matches but in order to keep the density low you have to increase the volume of text on the page.

I have found that having between 300-600 words on the page will allow you to have a low enough keyword density but still allow you to have enough multiple exact matches to your targeted phrase to be competitive given you have enough Page Rank distributing to that page. You also typically don’t want to focus a single page to more than 2-3 highly competitive keyword phrases. The page will automatically get found for more “long tail” keyword phrases as well if you can generate enough unique content to fill the 300 word minimum.

Brad Henry

Search Engine Optimization Analyst

www.seoslap.com