Google Fu

[watervole]

I need help from someone who understands Google better than I do.

If I search for  -  link:dupuytren-online.info - then I get three results.  ie.  There are three sites that link to - dupuytren-online.info

However, if I search for  - dupuytren-online.info - then I get 294 results such as this page Read more... )

Comments

[philbradley]

First of all, don't make the assumption that Google knows what it's doing. It doesn't, and often gets things wrong. Google is also NOT looking for the total number of links to a page - it's just looking for a smaller number of what it regards as important links - so Google could tell you there's only 100 or so links when in fact Yahoo returns thousands (which is what happens with my site). You cannot, and will not get an accurate result. You might find it worth looking at http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/ which lets you plug in the URL and play around to get lots of useful information. You should also use various search engines to get a better indication of the number of links, as this is one of the key ways of getting a good ranking.

[watervole]

Google's approach makes sense in some ways. Having just had a basic stab with the link you recommend, I find that Yahoo lists a lot more links, but they're mostly internal ones for the site and there's a lot from another site that Google has simply listed as one entry.

Yahoo lists the BBC link, which Google did not.

I assume that lots of links is crucial to getting a good ranking, but I'm unclear as to whether Google is counting links that it isn't listing, if you see what I mean.

Do you have any suggestions (in additions to links, which we're intending to work on - they link to loads of Dupuytren's sites that don't currently link back) on improving Google rank?

[philbradley]

You want lots of links to the site, preferably as one way, rather than reciprocal. Ideally not the 'click here' variety, but a link with text that makes sense and contains keywords that people might search for.

You also want to make sure the keywords are included in the title, headers, first 25/250 words, with a high keyword density. Of these the links and titles are by far the most important.

[watervole]

Thanks, that's very helpful.