Element of Search Engine Ranking
admin | Feb 08, 2011 | Comments 0
Ranking plays such a large part in search engine optimization that you will see it frequently in this SEO article series. You will look at ranking from every possible facet before you reach the last page. But for now, let’s look at just what affects ranking. Keep in mind, however, that different search engines use different ranking criteria, so the importance each of these elements plays will vary.
Location : Location doesn’t refer here to the location (as in the URL) of a web page. Instead, it refers to the location of key words and phrases on a web page.
So, for example, if a user searches for “wordpress plugin,” some search engines will rank the results according to where on the page the word “wordpress plugin” appears. Obviously, the higher the word appears on the page, the higher the rank might be. So a web site that contains the word “wordpress plugin” in the title tag will likely appear higher than a web site that is about wordpress plugin but does not contain the word in the title tag. What this means is that a web site that is not designed with SEO in mind will likely not rank where you would expect it to rank.
Frequency : The frequency with which the search term appears on the page may also affect how a page is ranked in search results. So, for example, on a page about wordpress plugin, one that uses the word five times might be ranked higher than one that uses the word only two or three times. When word frequency became a factor, some web site designers began using hidden words hundreds of times on pages, trying to artificially boost their page rankings. Most search engines now recognize this as keyword spamming and ignore or even refuse to list pages that use this technique.
Links : One of the more recent ranking factors is the type and number of links on a web page. Links that come into the site, links that lead out of the site, and links within the site are all taken into consideration. It would follow, then, that the more links you have on your page or leading to your page the higher your rank would be, right? Again, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. More accurately, the number of relevant links coming into your page, versus the number of relevant links within the page, versus the number of relevant links leading off the page will have a bearing on the rank that your page gets in the search results.
Click-throughs : One last element that might determine how your site ranks against others in a search is the number of click-throughs your site has versus click-throughs for other pages that are shown in page rankings. Because the search engine cannot monitor site traffic for every site on the Web, some monitor the number of clicks each search result receives.
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