Search engine optimization is the ability to make it easy for the search engines to find your site, blog, social networking site, etc.  Search engines are how 90% of people find the information they need.  Google has a 75% market share in North America and in Europe. Did you know Google controls more traffic than Yahoo and MSN combined?

 

Top Internet marketers know 84% of searches will never get past the bottom of page two of Google. 65% of people will never click on paid results, so being at the top of nonpaid (organic) results is imperative to getting traffic to your site.

 

As you can see, if you want to get droves of traffic to your site, you need to rank high on Google. Whether you have a new website or long established Internet presence you need to be at the top of Google’s results to be found.

 

It’s estimated there are hundreds of “Search Engine Optimization Factors” Google uses to rank pages in their search results page (SERPs). Google gives rough guidelines for webmasters, but no one knows exactly what all these guidelines are. In order to dominate Google, you must understand how Google works?

 

Most of us know Google uses keywords to determine what site is the most relevant to a search, but what happens if two sites have the exact same title? Or what happens when two sites have the exact same title and same content?

 

Here’s a list of the top 86 on-page and off-page search engine optimization factors Internet marketing experts feel affects a sites Google (and other search engines) Ranking:

 

ON-PAGE RANKING FACTORS

 

POSITIVE FACTORS (You want to try to make sure you can adhere to as many of these as possible)

 

1.      Choose the right keywords. Everything is built upon keywords and keyword phrases. You need to know what people are searching for, how often, amount of competition, and trends. Here is a great tool Google provides to find your keywords https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal  

2.      Put your keywords in the URL or website address. The first word is the best, second is second best, ex. www.marketingtips.com/sales/coldcalling

3.      Use your keyword in the domain name. This is the same as in page name with hyphens, which are a good way to separate keywords.

4.      Write keywords in the title tag. There should be 10 - 60 characters, every page needs to have a title tag and every tag needs to be different, it should begin with the name of your business or site, then add keywords. Don’t use special characters. ex. Billionaire By Thirty> Investments> Online Businesses

5.      Add keyword in the description meta tag. Give a brief summary of your page content; try to keep it less than 200 characters.

6.      Put keyword in keyword meta tag. Provide information to the search engine about the contents of your pages. Every word should show up in the body text. Do not use a single word more than twice.

7.      Check the keyword density in body text. It’s recommended to use 5 - 20% of all keywords divided by the total words in the post. Don’t include more than 450-600 words in total on each page. Use more pages and categories if you have more to say. Divide into neat paragraphs, each paragraph should be about 3 or 4 sentences. Here is a great free tool to check keyword density http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Keyword-Density-Analyzer.php

8.      Test individual keyword density.  It’s recommended to use 1 - 6% of each keyword divided by the total words.

9.      Add keyword in H1, H2 and H3 tags. These are seen by search engines and very important. H-tags are given greater weight than regular page content. Include unique keywords with the H1 tag with a short sentence including your relevant keyword. Here is a great free tool to check H1, H2 and H3 tags http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Keyword-Density-Analyzer.php

10.  Keep keyword font size in mind. There is evidence bigger is better than smaller, not too big though.

11.  Be mindful of keyword proximity (for 2 or more keywords). A general rule is the closer the better. Here is a free tool to measure keyword proximity http://www.ranks.nl/tools/proximity.html  

12.  Understand your keyword prominence. Use your keyword at the top of the page, in a bold, large font.

13.  Try to use the exact keyword phrase order as people use in queries. You want to use the keyword phrase in the exact order you want it to show up in the search engine result pages.

14.  Put into practice keyword stemming. Use the stem of your keyword and create additional keywords by adding a prefix, suffix and pluralization, ex. market, marketing, marketer, marketers, e-marketers, e-marketing. Use throughout your site.

15.  Add keyword to alt text to describe all your graphics. Don’t use too many images.

16.  Apply keywords in links to site pages (anchor text). Don’t use too much anchor text. Here is a great site to check anchor text http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php  

17.  Write outgoing link anchor text with relevant keywords

18.  Insert internal links to internal pages. Links should contain keywords.

19.  Make sure all internal links are valid.

20.  Create your site with an efficient tree like structure. Aim for two clicks to any page, never more than four clicks.

21.  Use intra-site linking. Have efficient links between lower level pages.

22.  Have outgoing links only going to good sites.

23.  Strive for a high link stability. Avoid “link churn” (rate at which these links appear and disappear)

24.  Keep all external links valid. Validate all links as often to make sure the link isn’t dead.

25.  Maintain less than 100 total links out. Too many links out can make your site appear to be a “link farm.”

26.  Be aware of domain name extensions.  .Gov is awarded the highest status, .edu and .org sites are given a high status, .com sites are examined the most due to the number of spam sites with .com.

27.  Make an effort to keep your page size under 100k file size. Less than 40k is recommended. It’s better to have more smaller pages then a few larger pages.

28.  Use hyphens in the URL rather than “and,”  “or.” One or two are great for separating keywords; too many can be bad.

29.  Keep the URL length small, the smaller the better. It’s recommended to never go over 100 characters.

30.  Recognize the freshness of your site. We want old pages and new pages, not an imbalance of one or the other.

31.  Maintain fresh pages, with new updated content.

32.  Understand the frequency of updates. The more you update the more love you will get from Google.

33.  Look at your page theming. Try to keep your posts consistent with your overall site theme.

34.  Aim for a large site. The more original, useful content, the better.

35.  The older a site is, the more weight that it is given.

36.  A newer page on an older site will get faster recognition than older pages on old sites.

 

NEGATIVE FACTORS (You want to try to make sure your site doesn’t have any of these factors)

 

37.  The text is only in graphic form, there is no text in the body of the page. If there is no text, then you will have no keywords, thus making you invisible to search engines.

38.  You have an affiliate site with no unique content.

39.  The website is overly optimized. There is a high keyword or H1 tag repetition.

40.  Linking to bad neighborhood sites. Here is a great free tool to check this http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm  

41.  A site automatically redirects visitors to another page using meta tags refresh.

42.  Your site has bad language or racial terms.

43.  Poison words or words that are deemed as spammy.

44.  Too much cross linking all under one host will tell the search engines that you are one unit.

45.  Stealing images and text from other sites.

46.  Keyword stuffing or adding too many keywords to your site. Here is a great free tool to check this  http://tool.motoricerca.info/spam-detector/

47.  Keyword dilution or targeting too many unrelated keywords on a page.

48.  Editing your content too often can reduce consistency. Don’t change your content too frequently.

49.  Don’t use frames because the search engines have trouble differentiating one page from another.

50.  Don’t change your anchor text too frequently.

51.  Too much Javascript. Don’t use redirects or hiding links.

52.  Don’t use single pixel links. If your links appear to be hidden you will be penalized.

53.  Too many flash pages will hurt you because flash is hard to read by search engines.

54.  Not using an index tag with harm you become your competition will be.

55.  Don’t use an invisible text, which is text in the same color as the background and not easily seen by the viewer.

56.  Don’t have too much duplicate content.

 

OFF-PAGE RANKING FACTORS

 

POSITIVE FACTORS (You want to try to make sure you can adhere to as many of these as possible)

 

57.  Focus on getting a high number of quality inbound links from high Page Rank sites.

58.  Aim to have incoming links from high ranking pages.

59.  Seek links from authority sites.

60.  Google will look at the anchor texts of the inbound links to your site, try to have them related.

61.  The age of the link is important, the older the better.

62.  The more popular the referring page, the better.

63.  Make sure the number of outgoing links to the referrer page isn’t very high, too many can make your site look less important.

64.  Strive to position the link on the referrer page as early as possible.

65.  The keyword density on the referring page does matter, however it’s hard to have too much influence on this factor.

66.  The HTML title of the referrer page. You want to have the same subject/theme as they do.

67.  The referrer page has the same or related theme.

68.  Your site is listed in the DMOZ Directory, http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

69.  Your site is listed in the Yahoo Directory ($299 per year)

70.  Your site is listed in the top directories. The more directories that link to you the better.

71.  The age of the site that links to you. You want old, long-established.

72.  There is a temporary boost for new sites, however this boost only lasts for a couple of weeks.

73.  Does the site directory have a tree structure? Google wants a logical, consistent, conventional structure.

74.  Is the site map complete and does it have keywords in the anchor text?

75.  The size of the site. There is debate on this topic. Some say bigger is better, while others think fewer pages could now be better.

76.  Does the site have a theme or are there many unrelated words?

77.  Google will look at your page traffic;

a.       The number of visitors. More visitors= more relevant.

b.      Is there an increasing trend? We want a site that is growing.

c.       How often is one of your pages clicked on? The higher the better.

d.      How long does someone spend on a page? The longer the better.

e.       The number of times a user bookmarks your page. The more often, the better.

f.       How recently did someone bookmark your page? The more recent, the better.

g.      How did visitors leave your page?

78.  How long is your domain registered? Legitimate domains are often paid for several years in advance, while illegitimate domains are rarely used for longer than a year.

79.  Are the sites you associate with legitimate? If you own all the sites or if they are spammy, not good.

 

NEGATIVE FACTORS (You want to try to make sure your site doesn’t have any of these factors)

 

80.  Have you paid a company for traffic? Most likely it will be low quality traffic. Google does not reward link buying.

81.  Google will use temporal link analysis to see if there is a trend of consistent incoming links. You don’t want tons of links one day and zero the next.

82.  Your site has zero links to you. Google wants you to have at least one backlink.

83.  Never implement cloaking, which is when you show one webpage to a search engine spider and another webpage to everybody else.

84.  Google says that links coming from bad sites can’t affect you because you have no control; however some experts suggest it will hurt you.

85.  If you violate Google’s Terms of Service (TOS) prepare to be penalized. For example, if I searched for my site www.billioniarebythirty.com 150 times a day.

86.  How reliable is your server. Make sure you have a top notch server that never drops.

 

Having a basic understanding of how Google works is extremely important. While it is very difficult to adhere to every factor, keep them in mind while creating and optimizing your site.

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