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The definition of Search engine ranking is the position at which a particular site appears in the results of a search engine query. Each page of a particular search result typically lists about 10 websites, augmented with local listings, videos, images, and off course in most cases also 10 paid click ads. Search engine ranking is influenced by a multitude of both on-site and off-site factors including age of site, the quality of a site's link portfolio, relevancy of the page, social signals and level of competition, among others. Google admits to using 200 factors when determining a site's search engine ranking, many of which cannot be controlled by the website owner.
There is a lot of discussion on the web about how to get into the highest ranks in the search engines. Link building, using the right keywords, all of that. But there is more to SEO than you might realize. Search engines rank individual pages of a website, not the entire site. This means that the homepage might rank #1 for certain keywords, while a deep internal page might be listed on the third page. Domains can be assigned a trust value and an authority value. But, ranking and SEO is determined on an individual page basis.
We all want our website to rank high up in search engines, otherwise no one fill find us. We have compiled five easy to follow steps you can take to improve your rankings.
Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the title tags in the Head section of your webpage. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like “New Document”, remember to change it to some meaningful text with keywords you have used on your page inside to reap the benefit of this feature. Otherwise, your site will only feature in the search results when someone looks for “New Document”, and there are already 1,67 billion website about “New Document”, so no need to add another one.
Most people don't realize this. Besides the title tag, if you want your website to feature in Google's results when someone searches for a set of words, say "Widget X", those words must actually occur on your page. Think about it from the point of a search engine. If you don't put the words “Widget X” somewhere on the page, how is the search engine supposed to know that the page deals with that topic? The search engine is not a human being who can draw inferences from the general tone and content of the page. Even if it can handle some synonyms, you're going to compete with other sites who have specifically placed those words on their site.
If you have been placing images on your website without bothering to place ALT tags, now is a good time to add them. An “ALT tag” (or alternate tag) is just a way of putting a brief description (using words) of what your picture shows. They are needed by the software used by the blind so that they know what's in the picture. Since all search engines, including Google, are essentially blind, relying on words, they also need the ALT tag. The description you give in the ALT tag is treated like the words occurring on your web page, although I don't know if they are regarded as being of equal importance.
There are two main aspects of social media marketing. The first is your profiles on these social sites, and the second is how often you are able to get your website mentioned on the web. Search engines like Google are starting to take into account votes from social sites. Currently, in Google's Webmaster Tools you can see how many people voted +1 for your website and how it's affecting your traffic. So, if you want to do well on the social web you need to:Build up your profiles – create powerful profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. The three articles I linked to should be able to teach you how to build powerful social accounts.Promote your site – whether it's blog content, a product you are selling or service you offer, add social media buttons to your website. Encourage your users to click on them as it will affect your search engine traffic in the long run.
There are a lot of different types of links you can get such as blog roll links, homepage links, links from blog posts, directory links, educational links, footer links, etc. SEOs have a tendency to build only one, instead of each, of these types of links. If you want to rank high, you can't just focus on one type of link building method such as directory links. Instead, you need to get links to your site from blogs, directories, and sometimes from the homepages of other sites. Just make sure whatever links you are building are also relevant as those links tend to have the biggest impact.