Continued: Keywords and Web Page Titles ... Google habits

When a new web site is recognised by Google for the very first time either by direct submission or because it has found the new site via a link on an existing Google site it examines that site in some detail in a micro second. It also saves a copy of the complete page. It places the information in a database. This page becomes 1 of more than 3 billion in Googles database (and growing daily ... 8 billion 2005 July).

When you or I search Google it is not a search of the web as most of us believed and possibly still do. It is a search of Googles own database (that is why it is so quick!).

If you, by which I mean your page, are not in the Google database you will never be found on Google searching no matter how good your site.

About once per month Google completely reviews its own database. It adds to it and throws out redundant or offending (ie offending to Google not the searcher) web pages.

At this stage of what is called the Google dance the new site will possibly appear to searchers for the first time. If you really watch carefully you will probably find your beloved page disappears again very quickly and you start to worry.

Then, like manna from heaven a couple of days or weeks later your site appears again and if you have done a good job it might just be on page 1 number 1.

No-one from what I can gather really understands what is happening during the Google dance but you can imagine what a job it must be to re-arrange 3 billion web pages just because you (and many thousands or millions like you) submitted a web page.

Note Google no longer dances this way ... it's important to learn and understand recent changes (2005) to continue to succeed.

Google does not use as a matter of routine any human search mechanism to judge the worthiness of a site (until 2005) Yahoo did and probably still does and is one reason it charges $299 to apply for a listing.

The question Google no doubt asks itself every day is how can my Google machine think more like a human being in order to assess the relevance of a web page from a human beings point of view. This is Googles ongoing daily challenge and must be stressed and re-stressed.

Google has one main aim and that it to find a way to behave like a human at computer breakneck speed so that its customers get a relevant search result, which prompts them to pay a repeat visit one day.

Keywords again

Understanding and recognizing the use of keywords is one way Google can infer what a web page is about. It can never know.

Let me try to really make this obvious.

The Title of your web page was good cheddar cheese nothing else. Google at this stage assumes your web page will be about good cheddar cheese that was the TITLE after all. If Google cannot find a single repetition of the phrase good cheddar cheese in the rest of your web page then Google will not really know what to do next. Think of Google becoming somewhat confused. However rather than waste time trying to discover what the web page is really about and because Google is a very busy machine Google says this site is not an important site about good cheddar cheese so let me put the SERP on page 999 out of harms way where no-one will ever find it.

This is a very simplified description but is akin to what happens in practice.

In the early days of the search engines the clever SEOs knew that search engines could be fooled this way. Using this knowledge a web site would be titled (do you know what title means in this context?) good cheddar cheese and every second word on the page was good cheddar cheese like the following

Good cheddar cheese

Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese.

Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese.

Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese.

Good cheddar cheese is really good cheddar cheese. Good cheddar cheese is made by good cheddar cheese makers. These good cheddar cheese makers are god at making good cheddar cheese.

To buy good cheddar cheese at highly inflated prices click here

The owner of such a site would get a lot of visitors to his site because such writing did enable a web designer? to get a page to rank very highly on SERPs.

Search engines of course got wise very quickly and started to reject sites having an over statement of the same word on them. Annoyed visitors probably alerted Google to this spamming technique. The point is it worked because of the lack of human intervention to examine the site. Yahoo never got this attention.

Now if say a web page was 600 words in total and the concentration or occurrence of the keyword good cheddar cheese was about 3, 4 maybe 5% and the Title was good cheddar cheese and also the heading on the page contained good cheddar cheese then the chances would be good that the page was really about good cheddar cheese.

Most search engines work this way with many other refinements of course.

The point is very simple and very clear. Your web page will have difficulty achieving high ranking if it is not organised (optimised is the preferred word) for a keyword. However sheer weight of incoming links can overpower the benefits of keywords.

Keywords and titles article continued here