"On the Page" Factors
Location and Frequency of Keywords
One of the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Location involves searching for pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tags, which are assumed to be most relevant. Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. For instance, Figure 2 below contains an example of HTML coding positioned within the EDTECH website header tag. Notice that the title tag includes important words as to the content of the webpage/site:
| < html> < head> < meta http-equiv= "Content-Language" content= "en-us"> < meta name= "GENERATOR" content= "Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> < meta name= "ProgId" content= "FrontPage.Editor.Document"> < meta http-equiv= "Content-Type" content= "text/html; charset=windows-1252"> < title >Educational Technology at Boise State University</ title> < meta name = "keywords" content= "education, educator, educational, educational technology, instructional, instructional technology, graduate, graduate certificate, graduate certificates, masters degree, master's degree, online masters degree, online master's degree, educational research, instructional theory, integration, integrating technology, technology integration, multimedia, evaluation, assessment, authentic assessment, teaching online, online teaching, graduate certificate, problem based learning, problem-based learning, instructional theory, learning theory, online, Internet, internet, asynchronous, interactive, technology, constructivist, constructivism, accredited, regionally accredited, national council for accreditation of teacher education, NCATE"> < meta name= "Microsoft Border" content= "l"> </ head> |
Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine ranking. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.
While all major search engines follow the above procedure to some degree, they each have their own specific criteria. Some search engines index more web pages than others. That is why when search terms are inserted in different search engines, different results occur. Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." This occurs when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page to increase the frequency and put the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including responding to complaints from their users.
While web designers can control the above coding and design of their websites, there are additional factors in search engine criteria that are less controllable, often called “off the page” factors.