Improving Relevance Ranking in EPA Search Results
Transcript of Optimizing Search Visibility with Search-Friendly Content- Video (16:16) (txt)
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Relevance Ranking
The position of a document in the list of results for a query, known as relevancy rank, is determined by the following factors:
- The frequency with which the terms used in the query appear in the text of the document.
- The page’s metadata. If the search terms appear in the title or description, the page will rank higher. Search terms that appear in the metadata must appear in the text of the document to affect ranking.
- The text that links to your page. The text that people click on to link to your documents counts as content in your document, and is weighted highly.
- How often your page is visited.
- The number of pages at the EPA that link to your page, and how many pages are linked to those pages.
Guidance for Improving the Relevancy Rank for a Page or Document
Clear and Descriptive Links
- Use link text that contains possible search terms and describes the content on the target page.
- Do not use the same link text for different links on the same page.
- Use link text that matches or closely matches the title of the page or section of the destination page. Do not use “More info” or “Learn more” as link text.
- Use descriptive terms to tell visitors what they’ll get before they click on a link (for example, report, testimony, brochure, etc.).
- When linking to other file formats, follow this format: Document Title (DOCX), including the file extension in the link (video or audio, PDF, DOC, etc.).
- Do not use the website address (URL) for link text unless you are trying to get your visitor to remember the URL (AirNow.gov).
- See Web Standard: Link Text
Metadata
- Ensure your documents have good quality, useful metadata. The search engine will use the metadata to make connections between the search query and your document.
- If the search terms appear in the title or description, the page will rank higher. Search terms that appear in the metadata must appear in the text of the document to affect ranking.
Document Content
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Back up the metadata with content in the document. The search engine performs a full text search taking into account all text in the document. If the query term or terms you would like to connect to your documents are not present in the body of the document, the search engine will rank this page lower.
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Get to know your users and how they are searching for your content. Ensure the language in the document is consistent with intuitive search queries that users would enter in the search engine. Consult the query reports to see how and what terms people use to find your information.
Resources
Best Bets
If you have followed all of these guidelines, you may request to have a Best Bet created. A Best Bet connects specific documents to specific queries and displays these documents at the top of the search results page when the specified query is searched.
How to submit a request for a Best Bet:
Submit your request to Cathy Edstrom (edstrom.cathy@epa.gov) and Alison Shahan (shahan.alison@epa.gov).
Information to include in request:
- Specify that it's a request for a best bet to be created
- Include specific query(s) to connect to the documents
- Include the name and location of the documents you wish to have connected to the query(s)
NOTE: There is a limit of three Best Bets for one query
What will happen after you submit a request for a Best Bet?
- You will receive a confirmation of receipt of the request.
- The specified documents will be evaluated for compliance to the above guidelines.
- The documents will be evaluated to ensure the content of the document is best suited for the specified search query.
- If needed, the EPA librarians will make suggestions for improvements in respect to the guidelines above.
- Once all of these areas have been fulfilled and the specified document(s) are still not being ranked highly for the specific query, the best bet will be created.
- The EPA librarians will continue to monitor the best bet and will remove it once its page rank has improved and the document is returned on the first page of the search results when the specific query is searched.