6 criteria for ranking highly in search engines

Written by Joe on Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Want to rank on page 1 of the search engines?

Of course you do! Everyone knows, ranking highly in search engines is key to driving traffic to your website and getting more business. Here are 6 criteria to help you rank higher in search engines.

1. Use primary keywords in your domain name

Using primary keywords in your domain name instantly tells users and search engines what your website will be about. Do a search and take a look at the results for yourself. As you scroll through the results, take note at how many domain names include the word or words you searched for.

Recently it has been said keywords in your domain name carry less weight than they used to. The reason for this is spammers buy long keyword filled domain names just to rank highly for the keywords. However, if you can, try to get a domain name with some of your keywords in it.

2. Use keywords in page titles

Including keywords in your page titles will help search engines more easily find your website. They are also shown on many websites when linking to your website. Sites like google, yahoo, digg, and stumbleunpon all use your meta title to link back to your website. Unique titles on each page help your users know what page they are on and help search engine spiders understand your content.

3. Use keywords in meta description

You know how search engines show a description underneath the links? Those descriptions come directly from your meta descriptions. Use keyword rich meta descriptions on every page to help search engine spiders understand what's going to be on every page and index your content correctly.

4. Keyword density around 4%

This is an important one. Back a few years ago, website owners would use keywords over and over to easily get to the top of the search engines. Websites that used this approach are very difficult to read and just plain annoying. Have you ever read an article that repeats the same words over and over? You want to stay away from this approach. There are many free keyword density tools on the internet you can use to check that your pages are around 4% keyword density for a couple of words.

5. Target your local market

Some search engines have started to show local search results on top. Adding your business to your local maps, can help users find your business when searching for businesses in their local area. With your business listing, you can include pictures, links to your website, get reviews and more. And the best part about is it's free!

6. Google/Alexa pagerank

A lot of people make a big fuss about pagerank. While it is important, you shouldn't obsess about it. It takes a lot of time and effort to increase your rank. Inlinking is one of the best ways to improve your pagerank. Getting a few higher ranked websites to link to your website will tell search engines that you have good content on your website.

This is just the tip of the search engine optimization iceberg. Remember, getting ranked highly on search engines is going to take time and a lot of hard work. But we are here to help you. Contact us today to learn how we can help optimize your website for search engines.