The Factors
that Play a Role
in Your Web Site's Ranking
By Courtney Heard
Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for
search engine optimization work and wondered what
goes into the pricing? What makes one site need more
work than another? Why do some sites increase
rankings faster than others? Why do some sites get
more traffïc from their top page ranking than yours?
There are so many aspects of a web site that can
decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web
site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react
differently to different marketing treatments.
What are these different factors that go into your
web site's ranking? Below is a list of the most
important aspects:
1. The State of Your Site Prior to the
Optimization - Your web site can have many different
attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well
or not so well. Your site's PageRank for example, if
your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, it's going to take a lot
longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking
well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames
or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be
required to redesign your site so that it is search
engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming
links, a fair amount of link development will have to be
done in order for you to see the rankings and traffïc
you're after. A web site that has been around for a
while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine
friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis,
will be able to reach top positions much faster than
other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.
2. The Keywords You Are Targeting - Some
keywords are less competitive than others. If you search
Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, you'll see at
the top of the results how many web pages are listed in
those results. That is the amount of web sites that are
competing with yours to reach top page placement for
that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword
phrase "web design" has approximately 303 million web
pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for
my name in quotations, "courtney heard", you will see
that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results.
It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the
keywords "courtney heard" than it is for web design.
This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools
such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately
how many searches are performed for a given keyword or
keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are,
the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site
and the longer the optimization will take.
3. The Size of Your Target Market - If your
site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot
more effort to reach the top ten search results than if
your site is targeting a regional market. It also
depends on what sort of market you're targeting. If your
site sells a product that only a small group of people
will be interested in purchasing, your site will be
optimized easier than if the product or service appealed
to the global population. For instance, the keyword
phrase "real estate" will require a lot more effort to
reach top page placement for than "real estate Canada"
and even "real estate Vancouver".
4. Competitor Sites' SEO Campaigns - You might
find that once your optimization campaign is under way,
your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several
times. This can be due to many things, but the one we'll
look at is your competitors' sites SEO campaigns. If
your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own
sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new
rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our
5th and final point...
5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign
- Your own link development and SEO campaign should be
thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized
site and utilizing all your resources for obtaining
incoming links. If your SEO campaign isn't approached
properly, your competitors can surpass you in the
rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition
and adjust your efforts accordingly.
As you can see, there are many, many things that make
your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites
can reach top page placement by just changing a title
tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on
Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask
questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient.
In time, your top page placement will come.
|
|
|
Check us out
on your smart
phone
businelle.com