Key factors to position your site at the top of the major search engines

To arrive at their list of best-fit web pages, search engines use a combination of on-page and off-page factors to determine the ranking of specific keywords. On-page factors are those elements that can be evaluated directly from a web page document (such as title tag, keyword frequency, and also details about the website the page is on). Off-page factors basically refer to link-based analysis, or rather, analysis of web pages that link to that particular document.

Page Ranking Factors

How relevant is this document to the search query? This is determined through the following factors. Please note that I am putting only those that are MOST important:

title tag

The title tag reflects the content of the document. This is elementary, and yet many people get it wrong. How you refer to the document makes a big difference, and if you’re not putting your important keywords in the title tag, search engines will think this isn’t a relevant page (for those keywords).

For example, if you have a website about exercise equipment and one of the pages is a ProForm treadmill review, what do you think would be a better title tag?

* ProForm Treadmill Review >> URL.com

Prayed…

* URL.com >> Treadmills >> ProForm Review

The former is much better optimized for that page’s keyword term: “ProForm Treadmill Review.” The second will only confuse the search engine and as a result of the unclear title tag, that page would have ranked much lower.

Put your keywords (focused and specific to that page) first.

Use of keywords in the document text

Keyword density has been abused ever since search engines became popular. Search engines no longer measure density: they analyze your content for various types of ways your keywords are present (keyword concurrence, related words, keywords in tags (headings, style, image), keywords). as anchor text to other pages) and base your decision on it.

Using keywords correctly is difficult when you are also trying to write for your readers and therefore trying to maintain a natural flow in your writing. Most people tend to resort to search engine spam, forgetting their readers and writing highly optimized pages that are tailor-made for search engines but drive readers away.

The solution to this is to make sure your page topic is extremely focused and specific; This will allow you to talk in depth about one thing at a time: the optimal keyword usage you want will emerge from this kind of focused writing. .

Document Accessibility

Accessibility here refers to two things:

1. How accessible is your website:

* easy to follow links (simple html links, not hidden behind javascript redirects or embedded in flash)

* common navigation structure (menu)

* sitemaps (google and regular)

2. And how accessible are the pages:

* no extra-long URLs with multiple parameters (like [http://www.url.com/random.php?id=1&x=2&y=3..]. (and so))

* Keep all javascript code in an external .js file.

* Minimize the amount of flash and other non-indexable content on your pages.

Main theme of the site

The theme of your website is very important (usually determined from the main page, but also through an analysis of your web pages as a whole): for a search engine, the more focused the site is on a theme , the better it will be to provide information. on that topic – this knowledge, of course, is combined with link wealth (what everyone else is saying about that site) to give definitive answers.

keyword spam

In short, keyword spamming is the easiest and stupidest way to get search engines to discover your website. This includes keyword stuffing in meta tags, title tags, alternate image tags, etc. White-on-white text is also another form of keyword spam and is quite easily spotted by search engines.

Avoid keyword spam – You can spend your time doing something much more important, like adjusting your title tags.

Off Page Ranking Factors

Everything I’ve said about on-page factors is relevant, but the reality is that with an overwhelming wealth of links, you can overcome all of those factors (in most cases, just get the title tag right, use the word key once or twice in the text and boom, your link profile can take care of the rest).

Off-page factors are important because of a ‘real life’ analogy (link-based analysis) that Google brought to the world of search engines and that other SEs have subsequently adopted to some extent. Google’s analogy with the real world:

Links act as quality editorial recommendations/votes for web pages. As each “editor” is different in terms of knowledge, experience and main topic, these votes also have different values. Experience in an industry is measured by the number and quality of votes received.

This is democracy in search: a good idea in theory, but in practice quite unwieldy, especially given the temptation to game the system and create inflated link wealth by searching for links via spam blogging at one end and buying links. in the other one.

In this context, what are the key off-page factors that search engines consider most important?

link anchor text

The anchor text of links pointing to a web page is just as important as the title tag of the page itself. This anchor text acts as a quick identification mechanism of what the linked page is about. If you can somehow control your anchor text, you can ensure that you get optimized links.

One way to make sure you stay in control of your anchor text is to remember that when you’re trading/buying links, it’s more effective to give people the exact html code to insert into your website. People are lazy and for someone who is not very handy with html/site coding, this little step may be the reason you get that link.

Be sure to vary your anchor text considerably – use related words and extended keyword phrases as much as possible.

Links to documents from the internal pages of your site

This refers to the links that the web page obtains from the internal pages of the host website. Essentially, although internal links are not as important as external links for ranking purposes, they can give you a huge boost, especially if the anchor text is optimized and these links are within the content.

This is one way you can use to transfer your site’s link richness to your most important pages.

External links to the document

How many links does this page get from other websites? While your internal pages may not get many links from outside of your website, any page that automatically does has a strong chance of being ranked for your key terms.

When you’re trading links, getting a couple of links to your internal pages is always a good idea, especially if they’re focused on a popular keyword. Also, once you start creating good, linkable content, people who visit your website will gradually start linking to your pages as well.

Learn more about each of the above categories and apply for your own website. With a better understanding of on-page optimization factors and off-page optimization factors, you will surely increase your website’s search engine result placements.