The 20% SEO Rule
Why are we focusing on such a small percentage only?
That’s because these are the 20% that will affect 80% ofthe movement of site rankings. This way we can save time by focusing on themost important factors that will help us boost our site rankings fast.
Factor #1: Keyword MUST appear in DOMAIN NAME
This is the most important SEO factor. Itmakes a huge difference if you have keyword in domain name or not. With Keyword indomain name, you can usually outrank a lot of competition with just somerelevant backlinks.
In terms ofbest domain names, .com, .net and .org are the best domains. The rest are a little hard to rank according to whatpublic has to say. I always stay with the 3 most popular ones and have never tried usingother domain names. If you cannot get a domain name with your keyword, usinghyphens between the
words is a good choice.
You can alsoadd prefix or suffix, like theforextrading.com or forextradinginfo.com. In this case, a suffix ranks betterthan a prefix, we want the keyword to appear as early as possible.
What if youare on a .com and your competition on a .net ranks above you and both of you have good On-Page and backlinks but itseems like you just can't overtake him no matter what you do?
One directsolution is to add another 2 years to your domain name, prolong the expiry date. When Google see this, you automaticallygain a higher score and this can mean winning the war.
Factor #2: Keyword MUST Appear In The TITLE Tag
You MUSThave a Title tag. The Title tag MUST contain your keyword. This is by far the most important HTML tag in SEO. Google readstitle tag and use it to determine ranking by giving it a huge weightage.
Title tag isnoted to have consistent positive correlation with rankings. For a test, think of one keyword, go Google it and look at thetop 10 results, they usually contain the keyword.
Factor #3: Keyword MUST Appear in H1, H2 and H3 Tags
The mostimportant being H1 tag, followed by H2 and H3. You don't necessary need H3 tag if you cannot accommodate it, butadvisable to have it.
These 3 tagsare the pillar to your On-Page score and it helps a bunch in the PULL. There is not much correlation between headingtags with SERP ranking, not like title, but it helps Google to define yourdocument which in turn improves your PULL results.
Note on MetaTags: META Description and Keyword Tags While Google does not take Meta Description and Keyword tags intoconsideration, it is still useful for other search engines.
Testings andresearches show that having good Meta Keyword and Description will ease the PULL procedures and speed upresults. I think it is all good to still keep Meta Keyword and Description intacteven though Google says it does not look at it, but I doubt.
Factor #4: Keyword MUST appear in the first sentence
It does notmake sense if you were going for 100% relevancy but you can't find a way to add keyword in the first sentence. Keywordwithin the first paragraph is acceptable as substitute, but try to getthem in the first paragraph.
Factor #5: Keyword MUST appear in the LAST sentence
Same as theabove. You can easily add another line as a summary at the end of the page. When you have keyword appearing in bothfirst and last sentences, you are consistent and it confirms what youwant to talk about. It becomes a good opening and good ending, search engineslike this.
Factor #6: Keyword MUST appear 2% to 4% of the time
As a generalrule, a good keyword density is within 2% to 4%. However, this varies across industries and types of sites. I always gothrough the Top 10 results to find out their average keyword density.
2% to 4% isusually right, but if I see the Top 10 having density like 5% to 8%, I will follow closely. I won't go below 2%,logically, a relevant content can't have density of less than 2%.
Factor #7: At least ONE outbound link to internal pagewith Keyword as anchor text
You shouldmake a link to one of your internal page with the keyword as anchor text. This makes it very clear to Google that yourpage is talking about the keyword and that you are referencing your own site formore information.
Anchor texthas been known to be one of the most influential factor in SEO,
both On-Page and Off-Page. We don't want to let go anychance of optimizing well.
Factor #8: At least ONE outbound link to REPUTABLEexternal page
I usuallycreate a link to one of the authority site in the niche, one that I like to use is Wikipedia. I will create a link with my keywordas anchor text to point to wikipedia. Of course, I will style it so it does not looklike a link that drives visitor away. Here's an example:
<a style="text-decoration:none;color:black;"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter"
ref="nofollow">Twitter Affiliates</a>
Explanation:
style="text-decoration:none" => removes theunderline
color:black => This is your normal font color
rel="nofollow" => I don't want to leak outany link juices
This willmake the link looks exactly like normal text. This way, you can point out a link to an authority site without worrying aboutvisitor leaving your site or leaking pagerank.
Factor #9: Remove all junk and unrelated outboundlinks
This isimportant. Remove all unnecessary links to external sites. If the link HAS to be there, make sure the site you link to is anauthority site. Never ever link to a lousy site, link farm or other malicious sites.
Linking tothese types of site is guaranteed to HURT your ranking. The reason is that you have total control over where yourlink point to. If you reference a lousy website, Google is going to think yourcontent is generally, lousy as well.
Factor #10: Add at least 1 image with ALT text set toKeyword
Don't besurprised, but most of the websites do not have image optimized. Tests have found that Image with Alt text set to keywordhas great influence over the ability of a website to rank. So always make sure toadd at least ONE image to the document and have the ALT text being the keyword.
Google lovesdocument with image. However, Google cannot read image. The only way the spider can get a hint on what image you areposting is to read the image file name and the ALT text.
A file namelike: Acai-Berry.jpg is always better than DSC00011029.jpg.
Having Alt text with your keyword in it is mandatory fora successful PULL.
