The Factors that Play a Role in Your Web Site's Ranking

Author : 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 traffic 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? Here 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 it's 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 traffic you're after. A web site that has been
around for a while and developed it's 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 is 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 competitor's
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.Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs,
an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been
involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several
businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available
at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/
Category : Business:SEO