The question “what is search engine rank” has puzzled people who have never interacted with the notion of SEO for quite some time. When you are not familiar with concepts like web spiders, Google ranking, keywords and meta tags, building and improving a website seems to be a real pain and only a super internet savvy could do it.
Let’s take things one step at a time. When you first create a website, you do it for online exposure. The best way to get that exposure is to have people find you when they are looking for a product/service similar to your on a search engine. While search engines like Yahoo or Bing are also good, the market leader is Google. So, redefining the goal of your website, it is safe to say that you need to be listed amongst the top search results in Google.
Still haven’t figured out what is search engine rank? In a short definition, it is the position that your website occupies in the search results for a specific keyword or phrase. As you probably know, Google normal lists 10 results per each page, except for the local listings and a set of images and videos. You goal is to be amongst the top 10 search query results for the keyword your website focuses on. The benefit of having a high-ranked website is pretty obvious: more visitors and more clicks.
When there is a lot of competition on a certain keyword or phrase, lifting your position in the search engine ranking is quite difficult.
Behind this ranking lies a complex algorithm that gathers about 200 factors which Google uses in order to determine the position of that website. Some of these factors are the level of competition that we mentioned earlier, social signals, the relevancy that you page has and many others.
Seems pretty easy, doesn’t it? Well, Google has decided to personalize the search experience of every internet user. Using our very own search history, the rankings of certain websites may be changed if that change turns out to be more relevant to a specific user. This means that your website could rank 5 for some, but rank 10 for others even if the keywords or phrase used in the search is the same for all cases.
There are some pointers that you may want to take into account if you want to improve your search engine rank:
- Use the keyword in the title tag – This means that you should also create a custom title for each page/post.
- Consider the links back to your website – It helps your page gain global popularity
- Use keywords in the content of the article – Do not force it: a keyword should be used at every other 100-150 words.
What are your thoughts on search engine ranking and what would you do to improve things for your web page? Feel free to write us a comment, we will respond to you as soon as possible.
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