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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 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 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
traffic 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 utilising 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.
Founder of Abalone Designs (http://www.abalone.ca), 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 Abalone's Resource Library (http://www.abalone.ca/resources/).
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