Use of keywords test
From SiteRay wiki
| SiteRay Test | |
|---|---|
| First appeared: | Sitescore 1.0 |
| Applies to: | All versions |
| Type: | Individual test |
| Scored: | Always |
What does it do?
Determine whether a website makes appropriate use of keywords: including them in content and emphasising them using appropriate technologies.
Why is it important?
One of the most crucial elements of Search Engine Optimisation is ensuring the website uses appropriate quality content with good use of titles, headings, links and other emphasis based around the desirable keywords. This test can determine whether this is being done, and suggest what sections if any require improvement.
Example results
How is it measured?
- Sitescore looks at the phrases that the website uses and emphasises the most. These are 'what search engines will assume this website is about'.
- Sitescore looks for the Meta Keywords used by the website. Effectively 'what this website is (presumably) looking to score for in search engines'
- Sitescore then compares the two lists, and highlights how well each keywords is covered by the content of the website. In essence, Sitescore is saying things like "You’re trying to score highly for ‘fixed-rate mortgages’, but you barely mention those words anywhere in your website". To score well, you should be repeatedly using those words, ideally in titles, headings, text and links throughout. Search engines are unlikely to be impressed.
The weighted analysis is based on the use of emphasis (e.g. bold), how high up in the page the text appears and whether it appears in headings or titles. These factors are compounded by a complex formula to score the use of each keyword or phrase.
Common problems
Some websites may not specify any keywords in their Meta Keywords tag. These websites should define what keywords they wish to be analysed for manually, or they will receive no score.
Some non-English pages can cause problems. See Testing non-English websites.
How to improve this score
- Ensure the keywords in your Meta tags are representative of your real content. This is very easy to do.
- Ensure your content is representative of what you are aiming for with your Meta keywords. Ensure that you’re emphasising the keywords wherever possible by using them in Headings (page 49), Titles (page 64) and Links (page 96). This is much harder, but will result in better rankings for your chosen terms.
How to use this test effectively
This test is invaluable for Search Engine Optimisation. If you have a poor score, you should review the findings in depth and implement the recommendations (see How to improve this score, above). Once you have a reasonable score, check this test regularly as you update content, to ensure it is improving over time (new content should be better optimised for search engines, not worse).
Algorithm
This explanation is not exhaustive.
- The desired keyword list can be set by the user, otherwise only the website name is used
- Non-English pages are not tested
- The plain text of the page is examined and tokenised into words, using common separators (punctuation etc)
- A phrase list is built up (1 to 4 word phrases). Phrases are 'stopped' by a stop word list (currently English only) comprises of particularly common words like "not", "there", "the", "a".
- Various filters are applied to remove common junk, including long lines (e.g. "--------- ..."), broken HTML appearing as text, programming code and more.
- The process is repeated for text inside headings, the title and bold tags, additional additional weight for each.
- So-called "Content" phrases are stored in a database.
- If Meta Keywords are specified, they are added as "Desired" phrases to to the database.
- After testing all pages, the most popular Content phrases are identified and the rest of the phrase list discarded (it is often HUGE by this point - many times larger than the site itself).
- The Desired and Content phrase lists are compared and scored individually. These results form a ssert table.
- An overall score is calculated by averaging the individual word scores.
