Read it somewhere. Enclosing the prominent keywords in <h1></h1> or <h2></h2> tags in the body of document improves page rank. Is it a fact? Recommendation was to use these tags instead of the regular <font></font> formatting tags alone for improving the pagerank.

Thnx

Anup

I don't think it is tag specific. I believe that Google indexes the first 100 or 200 text characters in your web page as increasing the value of your Page Rank, and as a result, higher placement in their search engine, of course, not to mention, other factors like links in other websites, and meta tags.

Although I read an article in SearchEngineWatch.com that stated that many search engines ignore the following comment codes....

<!-- keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword -->

Many webmasters have tried to improve their rankings in the past by using the comment tag, which doesn't visibly print in the page, but is indexable text within the page, but search engines have become more smart about these tricks.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

If you're talking about "PageRank" - Google's proprietary ranking system that, along with many other factors, is used to determine relevancy of search results - then the actual content of a page is irrelevant. PageRank is determined solely by the number and quality of links pointing to that page.

However, Google's algorythm does appear to place special emphasis on words that are in certain html tags, like <b></b> or <h1></h1>. Basically, those words are considered more central to the overall content of the page relative to other words not enclosed in special tags. This is one of the ways that Google tries to figure out what a particular web page is "about". There are many other ways, as well, such as the page's title, and the anchor text of links pointing to the page.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Does a proper alt tag improve PageRank. ie having alt tag contain the keywords in order to increase the keyword density?

Thnx

Anup

Nope. Again, PageRank is ONLY determined by the number and quality of links pointing to the page. Alt tags, like body text, title tags, h1 tags, etc. help Google determine the content of the page. Keep in mind that PageRank is just one, relatively minor factor in determining where a page will show up in search results. Those other factors often have a much bigger impact.

To put it another way... The only way you can increase PageRank is by getting more or better links pointing to the page. You can improve your positioning in search results a great deal, however, by making sure your title tags, alt tags, h1 tags, etc. accurately describe the content of the page with the keywords that people will be searching for. That said - don't try to trick GoogleBot with keyword spamming, since that may work for a few weeks or months, but might eventually get you banned from Google's index altogether.

If you want to know how PageRank works from a mathematical perspective, you might take a look at: http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Thats right, the owner of a site I work on has just sold a text link on every static page (over 2,000) to a buyer. The link is at the bottom of the page and describes the buyers business which is relative to the site the link is going on, he has done it purely for search engine ranking and it is a good strategy. I think the link is better ranked if the page its on is also well ranked which all of this sites pages are.



chmod

Hi,

I don't agree that ONLY incoming links dertermine the PageRank - in fact more than 100 factors influence PageRank and yes quality incoming links is one of them.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Cheers
Klaus

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http://www.ameinfo.com

Hi,

I think you're confusing PageRank (a ranking algorythm named after Google founder Larry Page) and the rank of listings in a search result. You're absolutely correct that many, many factors determine where a page will be listed in search results. One of those factors - a relatively small one, in fact - is PageRank. The page's PageRank is determined by that algorythm, which is 100% a function of quantity and quality of inbound links.

You can actually learn a lot more about how this stuff works by looking at the paper that Sergei Brin and Larry Page wrote while at Stanford:

http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Hi,

No I am not confusing it - maybe I am just plain wrong. If you are right - how can you then explain the below examples:

This website (GT) have a PageRank of 8 - with 30,600 inbound links.

About.com also having a PageRank of 8 - with 237,000 inbound links.

msn.com have a PageRank of 9 - with just 191,000 inbound links.

You might argue that the quality of the links are different - but with that difference in volume?

Cheers
Klaus

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http://www.ameinfo.com

Hi,

Seems I am just plain wrong - glad you cleared it up for me. However links on ones own site can help boost the PageRank of other pages on your own site. They don't need to Only come from 3rd party sites right?

Also it appears that quality is more important than volume. ie a PR 0 linking to your site will not do you much good.

Cheers
Klaus

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http://www.ameinfo.com

Hi,

Yes, you're absolutely right about both of those points. Inbound links can come from other pages on the same site, or they can come from 3rd party sites. It doesn't make any difference in the PageRank calculation, since the algorythm considers each web page - each individual url - individually.

And yes, quality can be much more important than quality. One link from the home page at Yahoo.com is probably worth more than 100,000 links from a bunch of PR 1 or 0 pages.

One final little note... The PageRank indicated by the Google Toolbar is not the actual PageRank, it just gives you a relative indicator. Some have speculated that the Toolbar actually uses a logarythmic scale, so that a page showing PR 10 in the toolbar might have a "true" PageRank of 10x higher than one showing PR 9. So in that case, it would take 10 links from "PR 9" pages to be as valuable as one link from a "PR 10" page. Nobody really knows what the scale is, though, outside of Google.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

It's the Quality that matters and not quantity. Things are changing everyday...and the recent Florida by Google affected the rankings of all the affiliatee websites and online businsses. No one thing affects the rankings in the SERPS, it's a nice blend of all that works.
>> Nakul Goyal (SEO, Link Building Expert)
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