What Are Search engine optimization Experiments?

The algorithm employed by search engines to determine web pages that appear on their search engine results pages and the ranking of each page is a closely guarded secret. Furthermore, undoubtedly the algorithm changes from time to time so that a website that has ranked highly at one time may fall out of favour and another takes its place.

Ultimately, those interested in search engine optimization (SEO), are trying to find ways to improve the rankings of their pages. We are dealing with computers. As a doctor with an academic background, I have been interested in trying to learn if it is feasible to learn a little about the ranking secret. Some experiments are well described in the literature and some that are presented are my own. These experiments are presented in the typical way - Objective - Methods - Results - Conclusions.

As Google provides the largest number of searches, all refererence to searches relates to this search engine.

Getting to Number "1" on Google

The significance of high ranking for a webpage in terms of traffic and possible income is discussed on Google-PageRank.

As a doctor, I would like my website www.2womenshealth.com to rank number one for "health" and "women's health etc.

Question: How realistic is it for me to attain number one ranking for "health"?

To address this question we need to look at the characteristics of the top ranked pages.

The Importance of Google PageRank

As a website owner, you should familiarise yourself with google pagerank and I would recommend that you download it and show it on your web broswer. You can download this utility from www.toolbar.google.com. There is a green bar representing the PageRank for the page and by hovering your cursor over the bar, the numerical value is revealed.

Experiment - To Determine the PageRank of the leading web pages for the keyword "health".

Method: Go to the number one site and observe its PageRank

Result: The number one site has a PageRank of 7.

Conclusion: The number one web site has a very high PageRank.

Very few visitors will reach your site if you are not in the top ten positions. - See Search-Engine-Optimization-On-Page

Repeat the experiment for the tenth ranked website.

Result: The tenth ranked page is "http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/" and has a PageRank of 6

Virtually no visitors will reach your website if you are ranked below 30 - Search-Engine-Optimization-On-Page

Repeat the experiment for the thirtieth ranked website.

Result: The thirtieth ranked page is "http://www.mayoclinic.com/" and it has a PageRank of 7

There are programs which can be adopted to automate the experiment for you. In the following example, I have used Axandra's Arelis and the results of the pages ranked about 100 are presented. The PR page rank at this level range from 4-8.

Just to emphasise the point, the web page ranked 1,000 has a PageRank of 7.

Question - How do I achieve high PageRank?

The major, but not only, factors that determine PageRank is the number and relevance of other websites that link to you. The process of obtaining back links is discussed on Search-Engine-Optimization-Off-Page

The Importance of Off Page Search Engine Optimization - Back Links

Observation - The Number One Ranked Website For "click here" is Adobe - www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html out of 1,520,000,000 websites found by Google.

Question - Why is Adobe Number One for "click here"?

Experiment

Objective - To Assess Adobe page for on-page SEO for "click here"

Method  -  Review The Adobe Page and look for "click here"

Result: "click here" does not appear on the page

Conclusion: It is possible to attain high ranking for a keyword phrase search term even if the phrase is not visible on the page.

Experiment

Objective to assess Adobe page for "click here" in the HTML Code.

Method: View Code for the page (Choose - Page Source) and look for "click here"

Results: "click here" is not in the Adobe page HTML Code

Conclusion: It is possible to attain high ranking of a page for a keyword phrase even if the phrase has not been optimised "on page".

Objective - To determine the importance of off-page optimization.

Method -

Search for "click here"

Determine the number of back links for the number one ranked page.

Results -

Number of Searches = 1,520,000,000

Number One Web page -

Experiment To Assess The Back Links for "health" of the top 10 ranked pages.