An Introduction to Search Engine Ranking

Sometimes search engine ranking seems like a gray and murky world where you see shapes in the fog. Then a wind blows, the scene changes, and the posts you thought you saw are gone. Search engine ranking is much different now than it was three years ago. What were considered best practices then will get you banned today.

What's it all about? How do you get higher rankings? Do you have to pay someone to do this for you?

There's a huge huge volume of literature about search engines, much of it extremely technical -- and much out-of-date. Instead of being complex, I'm going to be simple -- oversimplify, in some instances, to make a point -- and in the process make the foggy landscape clearer for non-experts.

For the past couple of years, Google has been the dominant search engine, so most of my comments are directed toward Google's approach to ranking. With Yahoo's recent move to become independent of Google's search results, things are bound to change. But the basic principles I present will remain valid -- at least for a while.

Ranking Is Based on Two Factors

Back in the early days of the commercial Internet, search engines were stupid. You could repeat a keyword dozens of times on your webpage and magically it would shoot to the top of the rankings. These days that's considered spamming and can get you banned, but in the wild and wooly days of the Internet, that's how things worked. Initially, ranking was based entirely on the words and HTML found on your webpage. The better you could divine the search engine's secret algorithm as to keyword density in various parts of the webpage, the higher rankings you could achieve.

But beginning a few of years ago, Google began introducing another factor that affected ranking -- the quantity, quality, and context of incoming links to your website. These days, the linkage pattern to your domain has a great deal to do with how high you are ranked for a particular keyword.

Ranking of any given webpage, then, is based on two factors:

1. The keywords on your webpage. The more focused and clear the content is on your webpage -- and the clearer you can indicate this in your title, metatags, headings, and body text -- the better your chances of ranking high for the main keywords on this webpage.
2. The pattern of links to your domain name -- quantity, quality, and context of incoming links to its domain name.

A complex algorithm based on two factors determines which sites are on top for any keyword search.

• How to Get Your Webpages Ready for Indexing: Have Pity on Poor Googley-Eyes
• A List of Prime Resources for Search Engine Optimization
• How to Increase Search Engine Rankings through Links to Your Site
• What You Should Know before Outsourcing to Search Engine Optimization Firms