Getting your webpages place highly in the search engines is critical. If you were to ask someone how to improve search engine ranking, they would probably tell you that quality backlinks, search engine optimization and original content are the key factors. Whatever your special area of the market is, you should incorporate these ideas.

But what should your focal point be?

Before beginning consider the keywords you will use. Is there a group of words that you’d like to denote as keywords for this web page? To insure a very targeted phrase with minimal or little competition, research your keywords carefully. Carefully select the word or phrase you want to rank for every page because this is of major importance.

Search engines look at both on page and off page factors when ranking a web page. On page factors refer to what you put on the page. This includes the actual article or content and any title, alt and meta tags. Getting people to buy something or perform a specific action on your website is dependent upon the quality of your site’s content.

Using your keyword phrase in the title, the keyword and description meta tags, and in the beginning, middle and end of your article will help to improve search engine ranking. Make certain that your keyword phrase is included in the name of the file, and don’t use it too much in the article - just around 3 times will do.

But if you really want to kick your rankings into high gear, you need to focus on the off page factors. This means the links that point back to your page. The keyword phrase you are targeting should appear in the anchor text of the majority of the links to your page. It’s not good, however, to have all your inbound links be the same so you want to mix it up a bit and use variations. Links that are highly relevant and come from quality sites are best, but you should not overlook links to more general content.

Links are key if you want to improve search engine ranking since more links you have, the higher your web page’s will rank. The inbound links are what will get your site in front of visitors and the content on your page is what will keep them coming back. If all else is equal, you simply getting more links than your competitors will put you ahead of them in the SE’s.

If you want to see real life proof of how getting more links to your site can increase your position in the search engines, then check out my case study at http://www.uniqueturnkeywebsites.com/backlinkstestcase.php

- Lee Dobbins