Search engines like Google use many factors to determine the rank of your website. In fact all in all, search engines take hundreds of different variables into account to decide which website to display first when a search is performed.

Although many variables are used, some are more important that others and are considered essential for improving the rank of your website on search engine results. Here are 10 important factors that search engines use to determine the rank of your website.

1· How many Sites Link to Your Website

Backlinks or inbound links to your website is one of the most important factors that determines your website’s rank for relevant search terms. SEO specialists constantly work on link building techniques in order to improve ranking.

However, there is more to it than simply increasing the total number of incoming links. For best results, focus on obtaining high quality links from sites that are relevant to yours.

2· The Number of  Pages on  Your Website

Search engines and users alike love websites with new and fresh content. Websites with a lot of quality content and websites that are updated frequently with new content have a much better chance of ranking higher on search engines than websites with fewer content that are updated rarely.

3· Age of Domain Name  (URL)

The age of your domain name domain name also has an impact on your search engine ranking of your website. In general, older domains are considered more authoritative by search engines and given preference over domains that are very new.

Other factors such as keywords in your domain name also offer some benefits in the short term. However I would suggest putting more emphasis on branding when choosing your domain name. Instead you can get the same keyword advantage by using keywords in your page name instead, which is explained in the next point below

4. Keywords in Page Name (URL)

Use of keywords as part of your URL i.e. in your page name also has an effect on search engine ranking of that page. For example a web page with the address  “www.your-domain-name/web-design.html” has a slightly better chance of ranking on Google when someone searches for ” Web design”.  As such it is a common practice to use the main keyword for the page as part of the file name or page name in the URL.

5·  Competitiveness of Keywords

The keywords being targeted by your website will play an important role in determining your search engine rank. The more competitive your keywords, the more difficult it will be for your website to rank favourably on search results.  You can use Google Keyword tool to find out the competitiveness of search terms.

6· Words in Bold

Main keywords you are targeting should be in bold at least at some places on each web page. Words in bold are given a higher weight than normal words. Having the main keywords as bold text is an effective technique used by Search engine marketing specialists to improve the chances of a website appearing when the word is searched for.

7· Location of Keywords on the Page

Many SEO experts have suggested that search engines give more weight to the start of the page than other sections. It thus helps to include your search term in the 25 words on the page. Many also recommend on using your keyword once towards the end of your content. This can improve the chances for ranking for those keywords.

8· Length of Textual Content on your Page

Search engines love content on a website, particularly text.  Having a flash only page or a page with only images and no text can seriously damage your chances of ranking on Google and other search engines. For best search engine results, it is advised to have at least 300 words of text on each page on your website. In fact I use at least 500 words per page on mine, and in most cases 800 words.

9· Keyword Density

Another aspect of use of keywords in your content that impacts search engine rank is keyword density is the number of times a keyword is repeated in the content of a web page. It is measured in percentage. Keyword density is measured as a percentage of total word on a webpage. A keyword density of 2% to 5% is ideal for the keywords you are targeting.

10· Page Rank

This point is debatable to say the least. Google page rank is a score on a scale of 1 to 10 given by Google to a webpage. In theory, the higher the page rank of a web page, the higher the chances of ranking favourably on Google. However in reality, page rank is not very up to date and takes months to update.  Although it does not reflect the true ranking of a website, it does give some indication on its ability to rank. You can use it as a measure to supplement other metrics.