Hi Cricket!

Does the number of hits on a page affect where it shows up in the Google results? My page with the keyphrase Custom Christmas Stockings went from #97 on Dec. 1st, to #9 on Dec. 31st! I did get a lot of hits, and contacts from customers.

Thanks.

Kelly Feibes, Lexington, KY
Primarily Practical Knits

Hi Kelly!

Most likely, you are simply starting to see the rewards for all of your hard work. You may have also seen an increase of relevant incoming links from other Christmas Gift Shopping pages over the holidays.
 

Our crawler analyzes the content of webpages in our index to determine the search queries for which they’re most relevant. If your site clearly and accurately describes your topic and many other websites link to yours, it’ll likely return as a search result for your desired keywords. Google Information

Although the exact algorithm is only known by Google, they make it pretty clear that they determine the placement of a page in their search results based on relevancy of the search query requested. Relevant incoming links do play a part in this.
 

Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google uses PageRank™ to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant and reliable results first. Google Corporate Information

It is also interesting to note that Google also look at surrounding pages on your site to help in the process of determining relevancy. Your Holiday Knits page is certainly a relevant neighboring page and uses a strong anchor text link to your Custom Christmas Stockings page.
 

Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query. Google Information

Of course, you will want to keep your holiday pages up year round and continue to build quality content and relevant incoming links to the page in preparation for next year.

I WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

Ask Cricket Small Business Marketing Consultant and SEO Training Specialist
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