In a recent discussion with a fellow marketer, I was surprised at the level of attention to detail he had when it came to the creation of content. It’s a known fact that many companies and websites will generally rely on Google’s methodologies when it comes to website optimization. They have the most popular search engine, and everything else, so it’s only natural we align ourselves around their tools and services.

From that conversation, a few things came to light.

In order of popularity

A – If this is what Google says, who cares about everyone else.
B – Google doesn’t care about keywords in metadata.

So, what do they care about? Here are my current top five.

1- Page Titles
Your page titles cannot be more than 70 characters. And this number, of course, includes spaces.

2- Page Description
Page descriptions cannot be longer than 156 character. Of course, this also includes spaces.

3- Header Text
Your header text should primarily be in a H1 tag. According to Google, your header text is probably the most important piece of data on the page in comparison to the content.

4- Keywords in first paragraph
Your primary keywords from your title and description should be in the first paragraph of content on the page.

5- Back Links
I think this is the most straight forward concept I have heard. It’s simply a matter of whether you are relevant? Does anyone care about your website or content? The more websites that link back to you, the more important you are and this will increase your page rank.