Search Engine Ranking Factors

Relevance / Topicality

In determining, for a particular search phrase, whether a particular website should be ranked in the top results (or returned at all), search engines are obviously guided by relevance. The content on the website considered as a whole must be relevant, the contents of a particular page must be extremely relevant, and the link neighborhood of the website must be populated by many other relevant sites. Two simple but very valuable methods to increase relevance are content-creation/organization and targeted link building.

To boost your website's rankings, its content must be on-topic and correctly organized. First, deep keyword research is needed to know the exact phrases you should target for the best rankings and maximum amount of traffic. Second, it's useful to define a formal taxonomy or subject tree for your website, which will reveal the optimal organization for your content so that the search engines will be better able to understand it. Third, the content should be created on the precise topics explicit in your keyword list, in their order of importance.

The link building process should be closely coordinated with your content-creation process. It starts with extensive research on all the important websites that share your website's subject. From this study, you can determine from which websites it would be most desirable to obtain links to your site. Obtaining these links is a laborious process, but it cannot be automated and effective at the same time. Beware any SEO who promises to automate any part of your link-building process!

Increasing your website's relevancy (vis-a-vis the most valuable keywords) for your site's rich set of tightly-themed content will bring you free, sustainable, highly-converting traffic that increases over time. Fail to achieve maximum relevance, and your website will fall in the search engine rankings over time until you no longer receive significant traffic for the keywords you want.

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