By Sharon Housley (c) 2006

According to Matt Cutts, there are over 100 factors that affectsearch engine ranking. For those of you who don't know, Matt isa Google guy guru, he is employed by Google but writes anindependent blog and shares information related to Google andsearch engine optimization. Unfortunately, of those 100 itemsthat account for search engine ranking, there are only a fewthat webmasters can actually control.

Unless you are a interested in an exercise of futility, it isimportant to only focus on those ranking factors that you, as awebmaster, can control and influence.

What Search Engine Factors Do Webmasters Control?
Outside of the obvious (webpage title and description) thoseitems over which the webmaster has the most control are:Page Rank, Trust Rank, Anchor Text, Keyword Density, Domain Age,URL, and Relevant Links.

How Can a Webmaster Use These Items to Help Ranking?
First off--the obvious, each and every web page should have adescriptive page specific title and description. The title,description, and header tags are channels to communicate themost important details of a specific webpage. They should beused effectively, but not be abused. The web page should makeuse of h1 and h2 tags (header tags) to emphasize pertinentkeywords and phrases.

Particular attention should be paid when formatting urls.Keywords related to the webpage can and should be used in thewebpage urls. Use hyphens rather than underscores between thekeywords. Search engines are designed by developers andprogramming languages will recognize a hyphen and distinguishseparate words, while an underscore blends the words. Keywordsin the URL should not be abused, as search engines do notappreciate excessively long urls. Avoid using characters likeID= in the URL since many search engines will see it as a uniquesession ID and not spider the contents of the webpage.

The website's navigation depth should not exceed 3-4 levels. Theshallow website depth will make search engines deep crawl easier,ensuring that they will be able to spider the entire content ofyour website. If you add a new page and wish for it to bespidered quickly, add a link to it from an existing spidered webpage.

Domain hosting and location do matter! A .uk domain and awebhost located in the UK will increase the domains searchengine position in any .uk search engine. If you are targetinga specific region or market consider purchasing a local domain.

Obviously you control the websites content; bad content or nocontent means no incoming links. Good content has the potentialto attract good quality unsolicited links.

What Kind of Content Generally Attracts Quality Links?
The idea is to develop quality content that will result inincoming links. Think of JibJab (http://www.jibjab.com). Theyportrayed a controversial subject in a humorous way withoutalienating their audience. While JibJab was able to garner a lotof attention, it's a tricky tight-rope to walk. Consider addingtutorials that explain a specific technology, create a nichedirectory or a topic specific glossary, post industry news,maintain a blog with fresh content, or write how to articles.

Take advantage of your content. If you write a press releasedon't just send it to the editors, add it to your website ina press center. Submit the press release to public relationswebsites. There are a number of press related websites likePRWeb that are really good and all will result in good qualityincoming links back to your website. Also add your pressrelease(s) to an RSS feed. Not only will this communicate toyour customers that new products or updates are available, butyou will also benefit from RSS search engine and directory links.

When you post a release or content that has genuine value, usesocial bookmarking tools (like digg, del.icio.us, furl) tobookmark the content. These social bookmarking sites arebecoming increasingly important in weighing the value of a site.The large search engines do not yet use social bookmarking intheir algorithms, but it is quite possible, and highly likely,that they will in the future. If the webpage/content has genuinevalue, others will social bookmark it as well. The bookmarks areviral and with increasing popularity there is more emphasisplaced on content. Additionally, bloggers notoriously skimsocial bookmarking sites for content to write about which willresult in additional links. Keep in mind that in order tobookmark a webpage, it really must have genuine value.

Before we talk more about links, there are a few warnings worthmentioning.

What are the Link Warnings?
The first is to attain links gradually. Search engines preferlinks obtained over time rather than links achieved all at once.Avoid link schemes, link farms, or overt reciprocal links. Theycan be time consuming and have very little benefit. Avoid linkson the C block. If you own multiple domains, be sure not totriangulate links. Search engines have become wise to this andthey prefer a linking scheme that is more like a star (or web).

What Keywords Should You Optimize For?
When determining what keywords to optimize a website for, thereare a number of tools that will assess the number of times thata keyword or phrase is searched on, the number of websites/webpages competing for that keyword or phrase, and rate thephrase. Obviously, the terms that have more searches and lesscompetition are the best to optimize for--if, and only if, theyrelate to your product or service. If you optimize for termsthat are too broad, you will likely increase traffic butdecrease your conversions.

It is really a balancing act. Two of the more popular toolsavailable are Keyword Discovery and Word Tracker. Also, talk tofriends or family members and ask what phrases they would use todescribe your product or service. You might be surprised at theterms they use. Consider optimizing for regional variations.Look at the variety of terms used to describe soda - tonic, pop,soda, soda pop, or cola are all relevant and popular, but onlywithin a specific region. Examine web logs to determine whatyour users are using, look at the language used in emails andforum posts and consider optimizing specific pages for populardescriptive terms.

And finally, use competitive intelligence to locate links andkeywords. What are your competitors using? Analyze the adwordsthey bid on, look at their meta tags, look at their anchorlinks.

There is a wealth of information out there. No real mystery toit, so use it to your advantage.

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Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAllhttp://www.feedforall.com software for creating,
editing,publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon managesmarketing for NotePage
http://www.notepage.net a wireless textmessaging software company.
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