How Does Your Site And Keywords Get Linked? Options

[DV-Design]

Im so confused, without writting a long story here i have gotten into the online fray only 2 moths ago, teaching myself html, php, and css. Now i find myself faced with trying to get my site displayed to the world. I feel very dumb when it comes to the world of search engines and SEO.

There is alot of confusion to sift through, but ill try with a specific topic now. How or what determines which keywords your site gets results from?

hypotheticlly if i wanted to show up in the results for "computer help" (i dont really, just an example), aside from putting this in a meta tag and using it on my page how would google or anyother search engine know or decide that my page should show up when thats punched into search?

Also is there a way to see if you show up at all for a certain keyword...like if i punched in the above keyword and found 2 billion results, is there a tool or method for finding out i do indeed show up, but im 1.5 billion from 1st place?

Thanks.

[Jarret]

One of the things that Google and other search engines use to determine what a page is supposed to be about is the anchor text that is used in the link pointing to the page.

So if you had a page on your site about widget A and another site linked to that page and used widget A as the anchor text, Google would read the link and try to determine how relevant the link is to the page it is linking to. The more links pointing to a page containing relevant anchor text, the more relevant Google will see the page and will most likely move it up in the rankings.

There are certain scripts out on the web that will allow you to see the first 100 links that show up in Google on one page, you could use one of those and then just search the page for your site to see if it shows up on the first page. If it doesn't then move on to the second page and so on. I am not aware of any tools that will automatically do it for you, I am not sure whether or not Google would frown upon a tool like that (as it would get used extensively) and would put even more strain on their servers with everybody using it.

Although, you could sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site and wait for it to gather information. They have a section showing the top 20 search queries that your site is showing up for in Google. I am not sure how deep it will go but I have some sites being reported in positions 200 and beyond that.

[DV-Design]

Thanks, i didnt realize the the text comprising the link was important. So its better to link you page using a keyword or 2 as the link then to simply link it by name?

[Jarret]

To a degree yes. You want to link to the page with the most descriptive text as possible about what the page is about.

A good thread to check out would be Tips For New SEO's. Read through that thread as it will greatly increase your knowledge about anything and everything related to SEO if you haven't already.

[Jill]

Yep, you'll want to read the Tips for Newbies. Once you've read all the articles, things should start to be a lot more clear.

Please let us know if you have any specific questions when you're done.

Happy reading!

[DV-Design]

Is there a tool that will tell you if your site shows up on goolge for a certain phrase or keyword?

[chrishirst]

Your site logs / analytic tool is by far the most accurate one.

[Jill]

Is there a tool that will tell you if your site shows up on goolge for a certain phrase or keyword?

Yes, it's called Google. Go to their search box, type in the certain phrase and look at the results to see if your site shows up.

[DV-Design]

Well Jill i meant like if it shows up 1 millionth in the result, is there a tool that you can use to see if it shows.

interestingly enough while searching for something i found that if you type

link:www.yoururl.com

In google and yahoo and a few other search engines it will list all of the pages indexed with that search engine that have a link to your site. Was interesting to see.

[Randy]

Well Jill i meant like if it shows up 1 millionth in the result, is there a tool that you can use to see if it shows.

No. If a search engine will only show a max of 1,000 sites, as Google does, there can be no tool that'll show sites 1,001 or higher.

As Jill already said, you can do this in Google yourself. You can even set your Google preferences to show you the first 100 sites instead of just 10 to make it a quicker process. You don't want to use an automated tool to do this even if you find one. The why is because most of the so-called tools out there do not use an API license, so are in violation of the search engine's TOS because they're scraping. Verify 100% that a tool uses API before you use it.

link:www.yoururl.com

In google and yahoo and a few other search engines it will list all of the pages indexed with that search engine that have a link to your site. Was interesting to see.

Wrong, especially where Google is concerned. See this pinned thread for more on the link: command.

[Jill]

V-Design what you want to do is sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools account.

You'll get all the info you're looking for in there.

[DV-Design]

Cool thanks. I got alot to learn and im over stauration (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) but ill figure it out with some time. You guys will just have to put up with my stupid questions (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[IdanDone]

Hi Dv-Design,
It's pretty simple (but can be more complicated if you're interested in SEO).
There are some factors google check in order to determine website's keywords:
These are the major factors:

Window titles (titles tag)
Headers (h1 tags)
Text in pages.
Anchor text (the text in the links (internal links) in your website and to your website (external links))
Text in url

Type in Google: "SEO factors" - you will find some simple tables which display all the factors.

Good luck.

[Jill]

IdanDone, personally, I would not say that H1's nor text in URLs are "major" factors of the algorithm. No sirree, I surely wouldn't.

Others of course would disagree.

[DV-Design]

But the overall gist i seem to be getting from people is that the content of sites and pages are the primary factor for being linked to a keyword.

So then how do purely forum based sites with the index as thier front page become top in results?