Many different factors influence your web site’s ranking among Google search results. Here are some of the top factors you should take into consideration, in no particular order:

- Inbound Links: Google is more likely to give your site a top ranking if other relevant web sites link to it, especially if they are well-known sites.

- META Tags: Description and title tags are also among the top factors to consider; they ought to be optimized with search keywords and appropriate text lengths. Be sure not to use the same tags on different pages.

- Spider Accessibility: Your site’s pages must be accessible to Google’s automated “spider” (or “robot”) system so that it can index them. Adding a “Site Map” will help make this possible.

- Creation Date: New sites generally receive low ranking levels in Google results for several months, while they are in the “Supplemental Index”. New pages are also at a disadvantage.

- Keywords: Web pages rank better when the search keywords being targeted are used repeatedly (but not too much) in the text, esp. if they coincide with the title and file name.

- Outbound Links: Linking to the wrong kinds of web sites (like bad neighborhoods) or exchanging links with unrelated web sites may harm your Google search ranking, especially if you do this more than once.

- File/Domain Names: Google also factors in the relevance of words within your web site’s URL, which includes its file, top level domain, subdirectory, and subdomain names.

- Outdated Links: It is best to avoid leaving links on your site that lead to URLs which no longer exist (this occurs when the linked pages have disappeared or changed their URLs).

These are some of the top factors which affect your site’s ranking on Google. Others also play a role, like image ALT text, time between updates, and the wording of inbound links.

If you look at the top of your browser window, above the address bar and menus, that’s where you will find the page title. It is specified to search engines by a title element, which is the TITLE tag.

The reason so much importance is placed on the page title is that it helps search engines understand what a web page is all about, thereby increasing the relevance of search results. However, recently there has been some question as to whether longer page titles rank better or not. Here are some thoughts on that topic:

Many experts wonder if there is a downside to having title tags that match a popular search query exactly. The reasoning behind this train of thought is that these types of title tags will be seen as an advertising attempt to trick the user into clicking rather than true content to help searchers.

So, this may be one reason a longer page title could rank better than one that includes only the searched term or phrase.  We have found that a 5-6 phrases followed by the company seems to work best.  Here is one example of a page title we have done:

Another thought is that the end user experience is better with a longer page title. This would be because it’s generally easier to understand a page’s content with a longer title.

If you do decide to go with a longer title, though you don’t want to make it overly long. Keep in mind that Google only displays the first 63 characters in search results so the searcher won’t see more than that.

While Yahoo and MSN show more characters it’s best to go with a title that can be displayed fully on all 3 major search engines. You also only want to use your best, or most important, keywords. Typically pages rank better when there is more than one keyword in the tag.

So, it seems as though the answer may be that medium page titles work best. You don’t want a title that seems spammy to the search engines or the end user on one hand. But, on the other hand you don’t want a title that will be cut off so that your topic isn’t clearly shown to the search engines and end users.

We see many sites that go over-board and place 100 – 125 characters in the title tag.   While not confirmed, Google is always looking for ’signs’ of a spammy site and a long, keyword rich TITLE.   Our recommendation is to use the full 63 characters for the page TITLE without going over and place your most important keywords first.   In addition, if you are going to put your company or website name into the title, we recommend doing that at the end of the page title.

Rand at SEOMoz does a good walk-through of the Keyword Research Process and how site hierarchy should be more important than just Keyword Demand. This is a common question that we come across as we try to interpret keyword volume research and overlay it into a website.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Implementing Keyword Research from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Once keyword research is complete, it is time to overlay the identified keywords into the meta data and on page body copy (a writing task) and modify the site architecture and link structure (a development task). While not specifically mentioned, this is an excellent time to evaluate Page Rank sculpting and attempting to silo content.

Rand is putting this all under a Keyword Research and Implementation, while we tend divide this overall process into several smaller steps:

• Keyword Research – Brainstorm, research, presentation and sign-off by client.
• Meta Data – Mapping of target keywords to the website pages.
• SEO Content Optimization – On page body copy improvements to support target keyword by page.

While we break this up into some small deliverable items, we do view the overall process as one complete exercise to improve the on-site factors that affect SEO.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves numerous terms and acronyms that many people are unfamiliar with. Some of them are also used with regard to internet marketing in general. The following SEO Cheat Sheet briefly explains each of the important terms’ meanings.

ALT Tag: Usually applied to graphics; text-only browsers and search engine spiders/robots see these tags instead of the images they are associated with.

Backlinks: These are simply external links from other web sites and blogs that link to the site in question. Some sites have free backlink-checking features.

Black Hat: Manipulative SEO techniques which try to cheat search engines and competitors by artificially making pages appear relevant to certain unrelated keywords.

Blogroll: This is a list of links to other blogs/sites which appears in the left or right sidebar of many blogs. Getting listed is good for SEO.

CTR: Click Through Rate. This is the percentage of internet users who click on a particular link or another type of online advertisement.

FFA: Free For All link pages. Although these may have had some SEO benefit many years ago, using them can severely harm search engine rankings.

Keyword Density: How often keywords appear throughout a page. Search engines may penalize attempts to cheat, such as putting a long list of keywords at the end.

Link Bait: Such “bait” is a web page that uses a title and/or content which “baits” other sites to link to it. It is very desirable for SEO.

META Tags: This refers to the keyword, description, and title tags used by many web pages. They affect how search engine results appear.

NoFollow: The “nofollow” tag/attribute, when added to a link, prevents the site being linked to from receiving (or losing) any SEO benefit.

PageRank (PR): A ranking system used by Google, which affects how close to the top of Google search and directory results a web site will appear.

Robots/Spiders: Automated computers which explore the WWW, looking for new pages and collecting information for the search engines to index.

Sandbox: A theory that Google puts new web sites at a significant disadvantage in search results for months after they are indexed.

SEM: This acronym refers to Search Engine Marketing, which encompasses SEO, paid inclusion, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Site Map: A page on a web site which links to all of the other pages. This makes it easier for “spiders” to find and index them.

See our other entries for more details on each of the terms listed in this SEO Cheat Sheet, and consider printing out this page for future reference.