Search Engine Optimisation – Internal Ranking Factors

One of the topics that come up for discussion frequently at the search engine marketing section of UK Webmaster forum are the factors that affects your site ranking in search engines. This factors can be broken down into two: Internet and external factors. This blog looks at the internal factors.

Ranking factors are those elements of a site which are looked at by search engines to determine where the page should be ranked in search engine results. Internal ranking factors are the elements which are located on the specific website being looked at, and which can therefore be controlled by the site’s owner.

Keywords are one of the most important factors looked at by a search engine when deciding how highly a page should be ranked. Content on a web page should be optimized so that it has an appropriate keyword density; a commonly cited number is about 5% to 7% keyword density.

This means that the keyword or key phrase that the page is optimized for should be repeated five to seven times out of every hundred words. Any less, and the page would not be considered relevant enough to achieve a high ranking; any more, and the page might be considered spam and be banned from the rankings entirely. Each page of the site should be individually optimized for a keyword, as multiple SEO keywords tend to confuse a search engine and lower the page’s ranking. Also, there should be enough content on each page for it to be worth indexing by a search engine; 500 words is generally considered the minimum number for a useful SEO ready page. 

The location of keywords on a page is another useful internal ranking factor for site builders to consider. Keywords which are located nearer to the beginning of the page are more important to the search engine ranking system, as are those which are in some way highlighted. There are a couple of ways to do this, including highlighting keywords within the text of the page (although it is very important to do this sparingly to avoid confusing or frustrating the reader), placing keywords within headings, using keywords as a part of TITLE tags, and placing keywords in the links to other pages, both within the site and on external sites. When using SEO techniques to try to increase a page’s ranking, especially when manipulating internal ranking factors, it is vital that the suite builder not lose focus on the end user.

After all, the goal of SEO practices is ultimately to make it easier for users and potential customers or clients to get to a page, so it would defeat the whole purpose if the page was not useful to users once they arrived there. Pages which are a confusing tangle of apparently unrelated keywords appear to users as obvious spam, and they generally leave the pages within seconds and try another search listing. By the same token, if a page’s content is poorly written, misspelled, or too confusing, the potential customer may become frustrated and leave before learning anything about the product or service being offered. A better tool to entice users to the webpage is to create a Description Meta tag which briefly highlights what the page is about, so that even if your page isn’t the top search engine result, it may be the most relevant to users.

Ultimately, techniques which improve internal ranking factors can only be successful if the overall page is the best that it can be.

You can discuss this article at the general webmaster talk section of UK webmaster forums:: you can subscribe to UK webmaster forums via XML Feeds 

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