8 replies to this topic

[ykarj]

Lately I noticed that a lot of pages with lower PR showing higher up in the SERPs. For an example type "search engine optimization" in google and note that High Rankings (PR6) shows up on #2 and Search Engine Watch (PR8) shows up #4.

I also checked the density of the phrase --
13 times (1.46%) for High Rankings
10 times (.99%) for Search Engine Watch

but that can't be the difference since the #1 result - Submit Express - has PR7 and the phrase appears only 6 times on it (1.10%)

Can anyone help me understand this basic issue?

[Jill]

> Is Pr Not Important To Serp Sorting Anymore?

Correct. Not just anymore. It never really was.

And keyword density is also a useless measurement and always has been as well.

[Mohit.]

And keyword density is also a useless measurement and always has been as well.

If any site has higher keyword density for any keyword than it qualifies for penalty or not???

[Scottie]

I'm not exact;y sure what you are asking, but I'll say no.

However if you are stuffing keywords into your pages to reach some predetermined keyword density number, #1 it probaby looks unprofessional and you may have a hard time getting people to buy from it and #2 it may not rank well.

Use your keywords as many times as you can naturally use them on the page without sounding stilted or forced. Read the page aloud- it if sounds dumb, you've probably gone too far.

[ykarj]

Correct.  Not just anymore.  It never really was.

And keyword density is also a useless measurement and always has been as well.

If PR means nothing, then why is google going through the trouble of calculating it? Its not an easy thing to score each link according to relevance within content, relevace to linked content, and whatever other million variables go into link weight calculations.

[Jill]

PR doesn't mean nothing. It does mean something. It is factored into the algorithm with 99+ other things.

Pages simply don't get sorted in PR order in the search results. They don't get sorted by the page that uses a keyword phrase the most times either. And they don't get sorted by who has the most links. And they don't get sorted by who has the phrase in the Title the most. And they don't get sorted by who's using the phrase in their Meta tags. And they don't get sorted by who's got the phrase the most times in an H1 tag.

The search engines have a very complicated formula where they take everything they can learn about a page and use that to determine the relevancy.

Think about it.

If it were as simple as having the highest PR or the highest number of phrases on the page then anyone could simply do that and be #1 all the time.

It just doesn't work that way for obvious reasons.

[doughayman]

I have improved my rankings in the SERPs via increased Keyword Density. Not sure what threshold % that Google considers above norm (where it will hurt you), but adding frequency of Keywords on pages has definitely helped my rankings for these keyword phrases (I make judicious changes, wait for spidering and caching verification, and then measure SERP rankings, before making subsequent changes - i.e., I'm very controlled about what I do and measure). I agree that over-use of Keywords will hurt, and I agree that if you read the content, and it doesn't sound well-written (i.e., overuse of keyword concentration), then it is a good bet that you've overdone it. And I also agree that PR and SERPs is a very, very complicated algorithm -- like Jill said, if everyone knew what the algo was, we'd all be doin' it. I wouldn't even be surprised if those who work on the Google algo @ Google aren't totally informed -- i.e., some developers only work on pieces of it, and are not privvy to other pieces. If everyone at Google knew it, I'm sure there would be public leaks.....

[TopTenOrBust]

The search engines have a very complicated formula where they take everything they can learn about a page and use that to determine the relevancy.

What else can the search engines "learn" about a page except for the content of what is on the page, and the links pointing to the page.

After all, isn't a page simply a file on a server consisting of content (text) and links (internal & external)?

I understand that it isn't any single attribute that accounts for relevancy and rankings. Like most other things in life, it seems to be a collective effort of acceptable attributes that result in improved relevancy and higher rankings.

BTW I upgraded to Firefox 1.5 yesterday, and was relieved that the Google PR extension that I had wasn't compatible.

[Jill]

What else can the search engines "learn" about a page except for the content of what is on the page, and the links pointing to the page.

Well, as we've seen by Google's patent applications, there's a lot more that they're incorporating into those formulas these days (or will be if they're not already).

There's clickthroughs in the SERP, there's age of the page, age of the links, and with the addition of G analytics, there may be lots of other things they will learn.

I'm sure there's even more than those above, but that's what I could think of off the top of my head.