Introducing SEO Ranking Factors
What will make me top? Or more precisely “What are the factors that determine my position in the natural listings for a specific key phrase and what is their relative importance?”

Wow! Those are the questions that everyone involved in SEO, from clients to agencies, wants and needs to know. So let’s work through some answers.

Unfortunately, the number of people who can definitively answer these questions by concisely explaining the hundreds of factors, and the way they work with one another, is strictly limited to the engineers who work for the search engines.

However, through combining the experience of the authors, the review team and disclosure from the search engines and expert commentators, we have compiled a comprehensive list of the most important factors which determine position in the listings.

What determines ranking position in the natural listings?
The position or ranking in the natural listings for a particular key phrase is dependent on a search engine’s ranking algorithm.

For the search query entered into the search engine, the algorithm uses rules or heuristics to identify the most relevant pages, based on the page’s text content and its context (which can be indicated by links from other pages and sites).

Each search engine has a different set of algorithms created by engineers who strive to produce the best relevance for its users.

However, the ranking of natural listings has evolved as a science over the past ten years, based on an even longer history of document indexing and retrieval history. As with all sciences, there are fundamental principles which apply. So to deliver relevance search engines tend to use common search engine ranking factors.

Enough with the science: get with the ranking factors…

We will soon enough. But before we do here’s a word to the wise: understanding some of the most common ranking factors is straightforward. Keyword: ‘straightforward’.

Over the past few years many bedroom cowboys and unethical agencies have raked in fees by pretending that SEO is about wearing a black hat, doing the search voodoo, etc. But there is no need for any smoke or mirrors. If your agency refuses to reveal its techniques to you then our advice would be to move on. Immediately!

Despite the mystique perpetuated about SEO it really isn’t terribly difficult to grasp the concepts. The difficulty lies in managing your keywords and optimization over the long term. Not in understanding the ranking factors.

Who in my organization needs to know about this stuff?
It is essential for your technology team / agencies to understand these ranking factors. It is also imperative that all content owners / authors / stakeholders understand how good quality content can improve search rankings. Authors need to know which key phrases to use, otherwise you won’t have a joined up strategy.

Applying simple ‘house style’ rules can help generate visits from qualified visitors. In fact let’s coin a phrase: ‘house strategy’. You need to develop a ‘house strategy guide’ for your authors and editors.

So I can ditch my SEO agency, right?
It depends, is the honest answer. You might be able to, but it is more likely that this guide will inform your search strategy, with you making the calls. But you will still need somebody to manage it (either in-house or outsourced). Ultimately this guide to search marketing is about increasing ROI and maximising rankings, not about saving costs.

There remains a great need for solid, ethical SEO agencies. Management and optimization is an ongoing task. The bigger your company / market / website, the bigger that task is going to be. High volume search-terms and intense competition means that applying specific optimization techniques is required to rank well. Ethical SEO agencies can help you with this.

The holy grail of SEO is to achieve a high, stable and long-term presence at the top of the SERPs for phrases which have both high volume and which convert well.

Agencies can also help by putting the brakes on your own enthusiasm, as over-optimization is a leading cause of search engine penalties. Equally, after reading this guide, you should be able to determine if your existing agency is over-egging the SEO cake, or feeding you unsound advice.

Remember that search engines also use ranking penalties for websites / pages. They employ filters within their algorithms that penalize websites for search engine spamming (such as over-optimization of a phrase or non-natural links from other sites ).

Now for the six key ranking factors…

1. Planning and strategy including setting performance targets.

2. Index inclusion and coverage.

3. On-page optimization.

4. Link-building (internal and external).

5. SEO process.

6. Conversion efficiency.

Of these six areas, those at the heart of search engine ranking are success factors 2, 3 and 4. Why? Well, if your pages are not included within the index then you cannot expect to gain any search engine referrals. Once included, results are dependent on the combination of on-page optimization and link-building.

When we talk about link-building we’re mainly considering third party links, but a solid internal linking structure should be adopted within your own website/s. There are proven benefits.

The hundreds of factors used by the search engines to determine relevance can be simplified into the two most important factors which are essential for good ranking positions:
About the Author:

The best way to generate quality, targeted traffic to your site is through search engine optimization. When you know how to optimize every page of your website, you are increasing your chances of being indexed by major search engines. The goal here is for you to make it on search result’s top 10 so your website will be highly visible to online users. This can lead to dramatic increase in traffic and eventually more profit. Here are the 3 key ways to create more money in search engine optimization:

1. Use relevant keywords. Keywords play a crucial role in optimizing your website. Make sure that you use them on your domain name, title tags, header tags, and description tags. However, make it a point that you do not abuse the use of keywords so you will not be tagged as keyword spammer. To look for other keywords that are relevant to your content, use keyword suggestion tool.

2. Obtain inbound links. Search engines consider the quality and quantity of your inbound links. They must be coming from well-established websites that share your website’s topic or theme. The easiest way to earn inbound links these days is through article marketing where you have to write quality articles and submit them to publishing sites. You can also earn links through forum posting where you are allowed to post comments or replies together with your website’s URL.

3. Launch reciprocal linking campaign. This can be a time-consuming and tedious task but the results can be extremely rewarding. In this process, you are required to research for websites that target your niche and request for reciprocal linking. In order for the other webmasters to exchange link with you, you must make sure that your website has quality content.
hostgator coupon codes

Off page optimization consists of various strategies that are preformed for the page of a website, to maximize its ability to rank well on the search engines. This is done with target keywords which are related to the page’s content. The off page optimization factor plays an important role in determining the rankings of a web page.

Examples of off page optimization:
• Linking
• Directory submission
• Placing keywords within link anchor text
• Press releases
• Article distribution
• Social networking
• Blogging
• Forum posting
• Pay per click ads

Off-page optimization deals with link building as a strategic approach. This results in the improvement of your websites popularity and reputation. It also ensures that your business only gets quality and qualified links. For instance, placing your site unto the top search engine for link sharing will automatically increase the rank of your website.

Link building is basically the method of attaining incoming links to a website for the sake of traffic and search engine rankings. The number of links that go or lead directly to your website is a very important component in the search engine rankings, which you will end up getting. If you want to be visible to everyone, then this task is crucial for you.

When you have link popularity, it goes to show how many quality and relevant inbound links your website has- in major search engines- using linking popularity tools. These are for determining your websites quality and important inbound links from other web pages.

If you do not have these quality and relevant links, your website might not rank well for competitive keywords in search engine results page. If this occurs, it means that too many people will know what you have to offer to the public.

Though the link building procedure is one of the most difficult and time consuming aspects of search engine marketing; it is one of the best and legitimate ways you can build link popularity to your site, in no time. When you get ready to build your web page and you want it to be a success, then you should definitely consider going to professionals who are able build links and help you in getting your feet off the ground.

If you want to make sure that you get the most out of your business’s website, it will also be worth your wild to look in building links. As mentioned above, there are lots of ways wherein you can achieve off page optimization, with link building being one of them.

There are companies who are willing to help people in link building, in order to ensure that your website is a huge success and you obtain your business desires.

Some companies have certain guidelines in which they follow when they build links:
• Use keywords in the link anchor text for achieving particular targets
• Building permanent text links
• Use text for link placements, no graphics
• Do not use framed pages for linking
• Avoid JavaScript links
• No use of redirect script pages for linking
• One link per domain

Depending on the link building company that you choose to work with, you may get these effective types of services or even more.
personalized favors

Search Engine Optimization is becoming a more and more complicated area especially with the recent updates and data refresh done on the search engines’ index. However, the basic concept for good ranking does not change. The following illustrates five most important SEO techniques as summarized from the Google Webmaster Guidelines that all webmasters should follow.

The first step into SEO is to create a site that allows the bots from the search engines to crawl. A web page is as good as offline if it does not appear in the search engine’s index. It is advised to use clean and static urls for a page rather than lengthy url with complicated parameters.

It is stated clearly in the Google Webmaster Guidelines that they do not index urls with session ids. In addition, they will not index pages that require user authentication as the bots visit pages like a general user. Search engines also cannot guarantee that they will index all the dynamic urls. Therefore, in order to facilitate the search engines in crawling all the pages, static urls are always preferred.

The second technique is to create a site that holds unique and fresh content. Search engines like to index fresh content. A frequently updated site will find the bots returning to visit at a shorter interval. Adding unique content regularly will also help other users to find the site more easily as these pages will add on to the respective domain’s search index in the search engine database.

Third technique is equally important as it ensures that search engines can crawl every page in a site successfully. Having a text link navigation system is highly recommended for SEO purposes as it is almost guaranteed that the bots will visit all the pages via the text links. Avoid using JavaScript and Flash navigation system, as the bots will ignore them. Implement a Google Sitemap is also recommended, as this will help the search engines to find any pages that may be missed during the crawl.

After implementing a search engine friendly navigation system, the Webmaster should focus on the keywords allocation and place the targeted keywords in appropriate places. Of the entire HTML markup, the most important tags to take note are the title and the headers. It is advised to have a different title for every page and to adopt a proper hierarchy of headers so that search engines know what are the content that the pages are focusing.

The final step towards a good search engine ranking is to attract organic links. Organic links are natural links from content related pages. Google only takes into account of these natural links when ranking and indexing pages as stated in their guidelines. Although linking from the unrelated pages does not hurt its rankings, they will not help either.
About the Author: