engines of the time diluted the power of this metric on rankings until it became almost
useless. Similar dilution has happened to the keywords meta tag, some kinds of internal
links, and H1 tags.
Hey, Ben Stein, thanks for the history lesson, but how does this apply to modern search
engines? The funny thing is that modern-day search engines still work essentially the
same way they did back in the time of keyword density. The big difference is that they are
now much more sophisticated. Instead of simply counting the number of times a word or
phrase is on a webpage, they use natural language processing algorithms and other
signals on a page to determine relevancy. For example, it is now fairly trivial for search
engines to determine that a piece of content is about Jessica Simpson if it mentions
related phrases like "Nick Lachey" (her ex-husband), "Ashlee Simpson" (her sister), and
"Chicken of the Sea" (she is infamous for thinking the tuna brand "Chicken of the Sea" was
made from chicken). The engines can do this for a multitude of languages and with
astonishing accuracy.
Note
Despite being more sophisticated, modern-day search engines still work essentially the
same way they did in the past—by analyzing content on the page.
Don't believe me? Try going to Google right now and searching related:
www.jessicasimpson.com. If your results are like mine, you will see websites about her
movies, songs, and sister. Computers are amazing things.
In addition to the words on a page, search engines use signals like image meta
information (alt attribute), link profile and site architecture, and information hierarchy to
determine how relevant a given page that mentions "Jessica" is to a search query for "The
Simpsons."
Link Relevancy
As search engines matured, they started identifying more metrics for determining rankings.
One that stood out among the rest was link relevancy.
The difference between link relevancy and link popularity (discussed in the previous
section) is that link relevancy does not take into account the power of the link. Instead, it is
a natural phenomenon that works when people link out to other content.
Let me give you an example of how it works. Say I own a blog where I write about
whiteboard markers. (Yes, I did just look around my office for an example to use, and yes,
there are actually people who blog about whiteboard markers. I checked.) Ever inclined to
learn more about my passion for these magical writing utensils, I spend part of my day
reading online what other people have to say about whiteboard markers.
Note
People have a tendency to link to content using the anchor text of either the domain name
or the title of the page. Use this to your advantage by including keywords you want to rank
for in these two elements.
On my hypothetical online reading journey, I find an article about the psychological effects
of marker color choice. Excited, I go back to my website to blog about the article so (both
of) my friends can read about it. Now here is the critical takeaway. When I write the blog
post and link to the article, I get to choose the anchor text. I could choose something like