Mar 14 2011

Ranking Well With Search Engines - What Does It Take? Posted 2 years 66 days ago ago by John Clark     0 Comments

Web designers are constantly asked by each customer what we can do to get their sites ranked high for search engine traffic. This blog series will offer insights on what needs to be done to rank well.

There are at least 140 factors to consider when optimizing a site for search rankings. I plan to break them down into 30-35 categories and explain a bit about each one. To even complicate these factors more, we can throw in 4 additional combinations of things:

1. Onsite Factors - these are things web designers and owners can do to increase peak performance for search results. This is were a lot of my 140 factors will be aimed. Things like codes, site names, page names and keyword density. Yet onsite factors can only take you so far. If done in isolation the results will be disappointing at best. Which leads me to the next point.
2. Offsite Factors - In general these are factors that have a heavy weight on search results. How many other sites link to you? How authoritative are they in the industry? What are you putting on your site to encourage constant linking back to your information?
3. Social Networking Factors - There is power in having contagious customers and nothing proves it more than how often they tweet or re-post and link to your stuff. Yes, I said it, "stuff". You can help this by being involved with social networking or my making it easy for your visitors to involve your content in their social networking. Sites that offer a 1 click solution to posting their content on a Twitter or Facebook reference should receive 50% more traffic and response than those that don't. This is provided you have something to write home to mother about. 
4. Pay Per Click Factors - the fastest way to rise to the top is to pay for that position, whether it be in Google, Facebook or Yahoo!. Many business owners bristle at having to "pay" for placement but it is the fastest and usually the least expensive route you can take. Free listings (also called 'organic' listings) are not as free as you may think. Calculate the time invested in keyword research, researching your competition, paying your web guy to get all the onsite factors right, social networking time and much more. If time is money, you get the idea. As my mother always said, "Son, there's no free lunch out there. Somebody has to pay a price for it."

These are the areas I plan to cover over the next few months to help you understand what needs to be done in simple terms. There is no silver bullet or magic wand to waive. There is a lot of hard work and study that has to be done into your particular industry to make it successful.

The goal here is to drive customers to your site and through your door, be it virtual online or brick and morter. With that in mind, my first post will arrive shortly.