Did you know there are over 200 factors Google search engine considers in its ranking of your web page? We can only speculate what those are, since Google keeps them a secret. Through trial and error webmasters have come up with some suggestions on factors that play significant role on being ranked higher by Google search engine. Your want your web site to land at the top position on a search result offering contents best fit for the visitor’s search.

There are two ways you could accomplish search engine optimization (SEO) for your web site: On-Page and Off-Page.

Let’s consider the first type, On-Page optimization. Your goal is to optimize your web page in the best possible way and be spotted easily by the search engines looking for relevant text matching a visitor’s inquiry. Understand, the search engine is trying to bring the best possible site rich in content relevant to the search phrase the visitor has typed in.

Search engine spider will crawl your page and scan through to establish a rank for your page. It is based on two important aspects; relevancy and popularity. They crawl in certain pattern looking for the presence of keywords or phrases in strategic positions in your web copy, from top to bottom & from left to right.

Now, let’s consider some of these SEO factors you need to focus on….

SEO your permalink Structure
First thing to do is to change the permalink structure in your WordPress blog from its default (Commonly known as ugly link) form of ?p=post id to a custom settings of /%postname%/. If you want to include category into the link, then you change it to /%category%/%postnane%/

Common settings
o Default http://syedalamblog.com/?p=123
o Day and name http://syedalamblog.com/2010/07/13/sample-post/
o Month and name http://syedalamblog.com/2010/07/sample-post/
o Numric http://syedalamblog.com/archive/123
o Custom Structure /%postname%/

Once you have done that, you may want to install the Redirection plugin. Also make sure that under Manage –>Redirection–>Options, both URL monitoring select boxes are set to “Modified posts”. This will automatically add 301 redirection when a post URL changes. Now you can change those permalinks to SEO’d permalink and don’t have to worry anything about search engine consequences.

Title Tags
Title Tags are at the top of the hierarchy for each page. They are the first things the search engines look at. If the keyword phrase shows up at the title tag, the search engine flags the page as relevant to that phrase.

Keywords Meta tags
Because of it has been so much badly abused by search engine optimizers that crawlers mostly ignore its contents for ranking purpose.

Description Meta tag
The description Meta tags actually affect your ranking, but is usually shown as the page ‘snippet’ in the search engine results. It must contain keywords phrase to trigger an emotional response from your visitor and compel them to click on the link.

Headings (H1, H2 and so on)
Headings provide the content outlines to the search engines when they crawl your pages. If the target key phrase shows up in the heading, that demonstrate relevance.

Paragraph Copy
The more copy you have on your site the easier it is to rank well. Don’t just stuff copy with keywords, though! This will make your page unpleasant and unreadable as well as be deemed by the search engines as spamming, thereby punish you by dropping you from rankings or worse, ignore your page altogether

Keyword Density
Keywords density (all keywords) for your page should remain within the range of 5 -20% of total words. It is suggested to keep your individual keyword density at 2-4% range for best outcome.

Freshness of the page
Google likes fresh pages. Newer the better. Frequent updating results in frequent spider crawls, hence newer cache.

Bold Key Phrases
Contrary to what is believed, bolding key phrases in your paragraph text do not help your site any rank better. It may add to the aesthetics and make it easy reading for the visitors.

Hidden text
Hiding text on your page and stuffing it with key phrases may be an enticing thought, but search engines root this stuff out. If caught, your site will be penalized. So, don’t do it!

Site age matters
Older sites have higher rankings. It’s a fact of life. You can safely assume 2-year old site has higher ranking than a 1-year old site.

Trust factor
Having a physical address on every page can definitely help make you look more trustworthy.

Image Captions
Search engines are image blind. Text is what search engine indexes and thereby, ignores a web page without text. If your website heavily relies on images, videos, and audio and flash animation files it may affect your search rankings. It’s better to replace those pretty pictures with boring – but more effective text contents! Or, at the very least, put text captions near the image to help with search results.

Bullets and lists
Bullets and lists are more easily scanned by the readers and most certainly add to the better linking opportunities. However, they don’t directly impact ranking results of your web site.

Links
Links equal authority that translates into more relevance. Don’t just buy junk links, though. The quality of the site generating the link will also affect your ranking results. You need links coming from relevant sites. Keep in mind, search engines rank their results based on a combination of relevance and popularity of your web site.

Link Text
Ignored by so many, the link text does matter! If the link to your site reads Click Here that tells the search engine that your site is relevant to ‘click here’! If the link reads Golf Clubs, then it tells the search engines that your site is about golf clubs.

URL
Keyword-rich web address could be a huge help. Because every link to your site that uses the URL as link text creates a keyword-rich link. It definitely helps.

Submitting your web site
You can certainly submit your site to Google, Yahoo and others. But it’s always much better for the search engines to find your site through links from other sites. There lies the importance of commenting on forums and other quality sites. The popularity of your site is a big contributing factor in your search engine ranking results.

Number of clicks on your search listing
Contrary to the myth, you may click on your search listing as much as you want but it’s not going to move you up!

Few words of wisdom
Web site owners often fall victims to the promises of a ‘quick fix’ to the high search engine rankings. That’s nothing less than phantom expectations! SEO is a long and systematic process. You need to write, optimize, build quality links and slowly work your way up.

If you find a short-term fix that works, it definitely will not last. The road to the #1 ranking is literally littered with loads of web sites that resorted to trickery to reach there and soon vanished into oblivion. It does not last! There’s no such short cut to long-term longevity.

Nothing of real worth was ever built with the ingenuity of trickery! So practice ‘white hat’ SEO tactics and rely on contents and natural link growth with little enhancements here and there. This way you will build solid authoritative web presence and will reward you well. It will guarantee your web site a long lifespan and a steady sustainable income generation that you can count on.