When your company’s name or product is typed into a search engine, where does your website appear in the rankings? Being ranked highly in the search engines is not luck of the draw. With over 100 search engine optimization (SEO) rank criteria to consider, how does a company focus on what should be done?

First, identify a short list of relevant keywords and phrases that pertain to your company and its offerings. Keywords and phrases are the actual words that users type into search engines that allow them to find a particular company or information regarding their need. Then, incorporate these in specific ways to boost your ranking.

Here are a few strategies that we use to boost our clients’ search engine rankings:

Keywords in your domain name (URL). Search engines promote those which have keywords in the actual name.

Keywords in page titles. Page titles appear at the top of the browser window. Search engines promote sites which contain the searched keyword or phrase in their page title.

Relevant META keywords and descriptions. META data is embedded into the page’s source coding. Descriptions can appear on the results page, giving the user an indication of what type of information they can find when tracing the link.

Keywords and phrases in page content. When keywords and actual page content are in sync, high ranking is the payoff.

Keyword anchors (links) within website. Replace generic “click here” links with keywords links to targeted pages within your site.

Referring links from credible websites. Have affiliate websites link to your website to encourage interested users to click. The more referrers the better. (Do not use link farms – they harm your rank.)

Number of pages in site. The larger, the better.

Age of site. The older, the better.

Frequent site updates. “Fresh” pages are preferred and considered more important.