How To Improve Site Ranking in Google

Search Engine Optimization is considered to be life line for any on-line business from a simple blog to a fully functional e-commerce website.  When it comes to SEO, one should realize the fact that most of the Search Engine traffic comes from a single site i.e. Google.

Following are some of the  guidelines to improve listing of your website at any search engine:

• Use site design elements to improve your search engine positioning
• Understand how search engines work
• Know what factors influence search engine rankings
• Improve your site’s search rankings in other ways
• Avoid Spam

1. The design of website is very important factor for both, users and search engines or directories.
2. To understand the work of search engines You may need to understand specifically each search engine. But understanding Google would be sufficient enough.
3. The factors which influence search engine rankings are the following:
   1. Design: Your site’s design plays a major role in the user’s decision to either stick around or continue surfing. Graphics, layout, load time, fonts and ease of navigation can all influence the user. To craft a site that retains visitors, make it fast, clean and pleasant.
   2. Keywords: Most techniques to improve your search engine rankings have one thing in common — keywords. Choosing appropriate keywords is extremely important. Keywords are what lead search engine users to your site.
   3. Theme: A theme is defined by search engines as a common topic throughout the site. In an effort to provide their users with more relevant information, search engines developed sophisticated technology that “extracts” site’s themes. This technology allows results to be more focused on the topic searched for. Think of themes as your most important keywords used consistently throughout the site.
   4. Site Popularity: With click popularity and stickiness DirectHit claims to allow users, rather than search engines or directory editors, to organize search results.
      1. Click Popularity: It is a measure of the number of clicks received by each site in a search engine’s results page.
      2. Stickiness: It is a measure of the amount of time a user spends at a site. It’s calculated according to the time that elapses between each of the user’s clicks on the search engine’s results page.
   5. Link Popularity: Link popularity is much more than a measure of how many links point to a site. Search engines use far more sophisticated formulas to gauge how popular sites are. Therefore, developing quality links is more important than ever. And a growing number of search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms.
4. The other ways to improve search ranking are very difficult but important which include paying attention to what your competitors are doing. Analyze their high-scoring pages and use their techniques.
5. To avoid spam you need to learn what tactics each search engine considers spam and avoid using them, other wise the site may get banned.

This article, in no way, a complete guide for SEO but it does highlight some of the most important things to consider when one is optimizing his/her site.

Do let us know what you think about these guidelines. If you have some to add more, do let us know.