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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? 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
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 questïons,
choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your
top page placement will come. |
