Industry News & Trends

We're not sure that Sherlock Holmes, the writers of TV's "Lost" or even Nancy Drew can fully solve the issue of what really influences rankings the most.

Mysteries are meant to be unraveled, of course, and it might help if you keep these 5 factors in mind when assessing your search engine optimization efforts or your competitors for that matter.

1. Content Changes
The reality is that you do change your content - whether it's the home page, a category page or the product/service page. Anything you do to the page can affect the rankings.

2. Search Engines
Whether major or minor, adjustments are inevitable with search engine as they tinker with their algorithms. Depending on what tactics you've used (deliberately or by chance), your impact may be significant.

3. Website Size Matters
More pages means more rewards. Every page added over time can affect rankings - positively or negatively. Remember, some rankings are determined by themes that search engines pick up from the site, not just a single page. If you add pages, keep your strategic keywords in mind and try to incorporate them with any expansion.

4. Inbound Links
Much has been said about the need for links, particularly quality more than quantity. Your success in that area depends on how well you can identify other websites (especially in related or semi-related industries) and your persuasion skills ("please link to me").

5. Wise Competition
Search engine optimization is not a fool's game. In-house teams and consultants work continuously at the craft to jockey for the coveted top positions. It's no wonder that your rankings may vary.

When you survey the land, it may be discouraging that other websites rank higher than yours when you know they have apparent deficiencies - lack of content, no keywords in the title above the meta data and a limited number of pages.

Any website, including yours, can rank well as long as it has something (or a few things) going for it despite shortcomings. Typically, site age (read: longevity with the search engines) and the nature of the inbound links can give some websites the edge.

Search engine optimization specialists often insist that the title tags need to include keywords. But plenty of websites rank for keywords that aren't in the titles and may hardly be in the visible text. How do they win? The search terms are significantly present on the website and in the anchor text of inbound links.

Plus, it always helps to have a keyword in the domain name, but that's another story.

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