It might seem elementary, but there isn’t much study around the value of the various HTML page elements in search engine results pages (SERPs). For SEO professionals there are always discussions about what is and isn’t indexed and used as a value for search engine rankings. In fact, it has been discussed at length as to if Yahoo indexes the Meta keywords element and uses it as a ranking factor, then it was confirmed that Yahoo does index the Meta keywords, but that it has the lowest value for ranking purposes with this statement from Yahoo:
What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.
Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words. Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.
However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.
So, with this in mind, I started thinking through what elements are important on a page and what of these have the most value or may have none at all. I spoke to other SEOs and took an informal survey of what is thought of being the most valuable elements and which one’s are considered more important as the others. Here are the eleven elements that keywords should be used to rank well, in the order of importance based upon my own assumptions and links to each of these pages:
- Page Title
- Heading 1
- Heading 2
- Heading 3
- Body Copy (tied with all other versions of the body copy)
- Body Copy – Bold
- Body Copy – Italic
- Body Copy – Bold & Italic
- URL
- HTML Sitemap (no ranking value for anchor text)
- Meta Description (no ranking value but still important)
- Meta Keywords (no ranking value)
- XML Sitemap (no ranking value)
So, to find out what is real and what is assumed, I tested it. Here are the details of the test (here are all of the specific details):
- Choose a three word keyword phrase (methodical verbal induction) – none of the words could be contained in any other page on the domain
- Create a unique page with the keyword chosen and insert said keyword in the particular element to be tested (published on 12/09/09)
- Link the pages from only one source (my HTML sitemap)
- Wait for Google, Bing and Yahoo to index each of the pages
- Test the rank of these pages by using the site command with the keyword and variations of the keyword to find the most important element
Notes about the test
Google was the first engine to index each of the pages with Yahoo following right behind. Bing did index four of the pages pretty quickly, then four more of the twelve, but after monitoring it, Bing dropped the eight pages from their index, so now, I cannot test Bing for the ranking factors. I have lost my patience and executed the test across Google and Yahoo only.
So, before you loose total interest in this test, here are the results of the test (sans Bing):
Google
1. Title
2. HTML Sitemap (keywords are only in anchor text to another page)
3. Heading 2
4. Heading 3
5. Heading 1
6. Body Copy
7. Bold Body Copy
8. Italic Body Copy
9. Bold/Italic Body Copy
10. URL*
– Meta Description – Did not rank
– Meta Keywords – Did not rank
– XML Sitemap – Did not rank
notes
* Keywords in the URL has more value when only one word query is used
Meta details are not considered as a ranking factor
Does not index or rank XML Sitemap
Yahoo
1. Page Title
2. Heading 2
3. Heading 3
4. Meta Description
5. Meta Keywords
6. Body Copy
7. Bold Body Copy
8. Bold/Italic Body Copy
9. XML Sitemap
10. HTML Sitemap (keywords are only in anchor text to another page)
11. URL
– Heading 1
– Italic Body Copy
notes
Heading 1 is not indexed for ranking
Italic body copy is not indexed for ranking
Body copy variations are indexed and does not appear to have any priority (except italic only)
Meta details are indexed and valued for rankings
XML content is indexed and ranked in SERPs
Wow, what results. Here are the values of page elements in order of value based upon the average across Google and Yahoo:
Page Title
Heading 2
Heading 3
Meta Description
Meta Keywords
Heading 1
Body Copy
Body Copy – Bold
Body Copy – Italic
Body Copy – Bold & Italic
URL
XML Sitemap and HTML Sitemap are not elements that are controlled in the on page elements, so they shouldn’t be considered for this test, so they are not pulled into the list.
Here are some high level details:
The page title has the most value on the page
Meta elements are still important
The H1 tag is overused and has been lowered in value
Keywords in the URLs is not that valuable
With these results, it shows what everyone assumes is right (even myself) isn’t always the case, neither is what others say including what a Yahoo engineer claims. The most important thing that I found with these results is that you can never assume that everything stays the same and don’t assume get the results first and then make an informed decision.
Feel free to share your questions, cheers!
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I am so glad that hubpages uses H2 over H1 for its headings! Thanks for this post and I will make sure my pages are optimized to these settings from now on.
Surprised me to see that keywords in the URL did not help much.
Titles appear to be the best way to add “meat” – especially for long-tail phrases.
Wow! certainly an insightful look at Google and Yahoo’ algorithms. I think we could probably get better results though if we repeated this test a number of times then used the average to ascertain how important these html elements are when it comes to pagerank. Still nice to know that H1 tags don’t seem to be as important.
I was quite surprised at the fact that H2 tag had more weight than the H1, but after some tossing it around, it does make much more sense, since the H1 is used for the page title. Great Post, I should start following this blog much more often indeed.
Oh,thanks!
I’ve been looking through your site. You’ve got some nice posts on here, especially this one, I enjoyed it…nice post. Consider yourself bookmarked
.
Trying things out instead of just assuming correct what others tell, will always be the right way to go. So, thanks for this testing and sharing the results. I was quite surprised about the value for H tags (well, reading the comments, many people were).
I’m still a beginner web master, and for me was the discovery that the XML Sitemap is not important for ranking, but only for indexing. Actually a lot learned, and all quite affordable explained. Try something that in practice.
Interesting post as always, with great analysis. I was surprised to read that URL keywords aren’t so valuable.
My understanding and knowledge of search engines I’m afraid are pretty much limited. I try to learn what I can and apply them where I can but being far from a techie person, I just content myself by watching toolbars and seo analytic tools do their work. I wish to have the same patience you have in doing these tests and your much coveted seo expertise.
I just know that the more links you get out there the faster you will be indexed and rank up
I keep it simple.
Thanks for putting up the rankings. They will really help while designing future website. an
Great article!
I can’t believe the weight of h2 compared to h1 tags, everything I ever read on SEO has pushed the h1 tag to death, I guess thi sis the result.
Saying that, if you’re building sites correctly, imo, you should have relevant text in a
range of header tags – not only for SEO, but to create a good page structure.
Another surprsing thing is the differnce in weight Google and Yahoo palce on a HTML sitemap.
Would be interested to see you do this test perdiodically over a range of time, to see if the results hold true.
Thank you very much for all these usefull information that will help us to work on priority on what is more important for SEO.
Thanks a lot for a good article. Much of this knowledge I already new before, but it is stille a really good article.
Well the information you provided in the article is really important & worth to be kept in mind. As a web developer I will surely try to employ these tips during my design & development process. Anyways thaks a lot for sharing such an useful information.
Wow, thanks so much for your detailed and thorough research. The higher importance of the H2 tag over the H1 tag is good to know! Also, I had for the most part given up on using the meta keywords tag, but I think I’ll pick that back up again, for Yahoo!’s sake.
Again, I appreciate the work you put into this!
I wonder if length of the title matters?
Wow, those are very dramatic results. I know that by posting H1 tags – it definitely helps me. I also absolutely love the WordPress all in One SEO Pack.
Thanks for posting these results. Now I know exactly how to put up my website correctly for the search engines..
If you like, you can visit my blog too @ GSniper Review
Xml Sitemaps are indexed by Google. Watch the sitemap of my site and you will see its indexed by Google.
Thank you so much. A great article.
Good information. Most search engines tell you what to do or what not to do, but I like your list.
oh thanks..i use H1 tag but always miss H2 tag now i have to page optimization for my site..thanks for the valuable share
Interesting work — it’s definitely good to know the priorities of some of these elements. Initially the H1 / H2 flip was a little odd, but it makes sense. The content is “H2″ and not “H1″. That helps make some of my HTML coding make more sense (been struggling with that problem for a bit now).
Interesting results on the H1 heading though not entirely surprising because of how heavily it has been abused by keyword stuffers over the last few years. It is definitely worth doing some of our own testing on this just to confirm your results.
I have always based optimisation strategies around using one H1 and then utilising H2, H3 as and when. Having read this, although I think it is still worth starting with H1 there isn’t so much of a requirement to try and force the keywords in. It’s actually easier to add keywords into H2 and H3. It also makes the web design easier, less trying to force the H1 as high in the page as possible.
Great list, thanks for sharing !
However, things change often and therefore testing and analyze is always required.
This is very useful article. I don’t know this semantic list of ranking.
Interesting results, and some quite unexpected ranking factors. From experience, I think that the URL can be more important than you’ve measured it to be – the closer keywords are to the root, then the more powerful this effect is though.
I’m also surprised that bold body copy is so important.
Interesting to see the differences between Google and Yahoo.
I’m not sure if I agree with these results, but studies like these are welcome and the sort of thing that anyone, or any company, involved in SEO should be doing.
Pitfall, I’ve got to say that I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. It’s so jammed packed with very useful information. I’ve got to ask a silly question, however. Is there a way I can subscribe to your blog via email?
I see the RSS feed subscription, but I’m still very old school and I like my information to come to me in my email inbox. I never quite got the hang of the RSS feed stuff and would much prefer to receive your recent post notifications via email (yes, there are still a few dinosaurs like me roaming the world).
I see that I can receive follow-up comments via email but just can’t seem to find the RSS via email.
One of the very few places where I got the ranking factors for all the three search engines-Google,Yahoo and Bing, and the explanation was so lucid..thanks a lot for sharing the secrets with us.
This analysis if good, does the bold body really affects? I just heard that one, if that so I will take a try on this. I take a study for this also. Any thanks for posting
thank you. veri gott..
I agree with the article and the various building blocks of a good webpage that you’ve written about, except an XML sitemap ? Is a sitemap really that important anymore ? I’d think that if your webpages are well linked together and if the search engine spiders can crawl through all of them through internal links, you wouldn’t really need a sitemap at all. An HTML sitemap or an archives page, maybe because that also tends to help visitors but a pure XML one, I don’t think is necessary in this day and age.
it’s nice article, thank you.
Thanks Author, Really good tips, keep adds best,
thanks again,bye…
Wow, great knowledge share. Particularly interesting that H1 tag is diminished below the H2 & H3. I guess it makes since now that it has been abused.
Now that this is public, I guess we can expect the entire header tag use to be obsolete in a couple years.
uh-oh….thanks for confirming my long suspected fear of the demise of the h1….that’s gonna give me a lot of work!
I love this kind of post, SEO put to the test! Not just the regurgitation of what we all know already!
This is a very nice and detailed article. It is highly known that Google does not look at the meta-keyword tag anymore so nobody worries about that anymore. I do like the fact that you show the title is so important because it is one of the things that the visitor and the Search engines both look at .
I always place more emphasis on my keywords in my title and it’s interesting to see italic before bold/italic – I am always careful to mix it up when creating posts. Not sure if it matters but that has been my mo.
Very helpful and insightful post. Thanks
Whoa! I’m so going to replicate this test. If it’s really the case that heading 2 tags outweigh heading 1 tags, could it be because Google has found that many websites, especially blogs, repeat the URL keywords in their heading 1 tag?
it seems more helpful tips, Thanks author i absolutely have a great time with browsing your posts thanks again,…Bye
Thank you for most Informative and useful topic on on page optimization factors. Thank you for analyzing factors for both google and yahoo search engines. I will certainly use this information while creating my next website.
Thank You
Very cool! Thanks you!
VERY informative seo tips
i think that is cool! thank you!
Thanks! It’s a good resource and I have saved it to my favorites list and I’ll be sure to visit time and again
One of the very few places where I got the ranking factors for all the three search engines-Google,Yahoo and Bing, and the explanation was so lucid..thanks a lot for sharing the secrets with us.
perfectt admin thank
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