Search engine positioning takes time and expertise - both. Here are the basics that are required to even be in the game.
1. Search Engine Friendliness
Search engines use "crawlers" that visit and scan your web pages and assign points for a wide range of variables. When these crawlers, also known as spiders, can't crawl your website effectively it immediately puts your site at a disadvantage.
2. Page Title Tags/Keywords
Your page title tags must match the keyword search that brides are performing. If those keywords are not in your page title tags, your website has ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of showing up. Putting your company name in your page title tags is absolutely unnecessary (and brides are probably not searching for your company name, if they are they'll find it based on the page copy).
3. Inbound Link Popularity
The number of websites linking to your website creates a "popularity" factor. The more websites that point to your website the better. But even more valuable is when the rank and quality of those websites is high. Google uses a system called Page Rank to losely indicate page popularity and ranks a page on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being the best). Frustrated with your competition showing up above you all the time? Building inbound links is one of the most powerful ways to bump out your competition and get their top ranking.
4. The Text Used for Those Inbound Links
The keywords used in the links to your website play an important role. Links using your company name are of little value. Links using the description of your business as the keywords brides are searching for (i.e. Chicago Wedding Photographers) are incredibly valuable. Search engine spiders crawling the web note the words used in the links they follow and use them to establish theme and relevancy.
5. On Page Copy/Keywords
The words you use on your pages must be recognizable and crawlable by search engine spiders. The best chance at getting top rank comes after creating relevancy using your page copy and keywords. If search engine spiders can't read your page (i.e. FLASH) you have little chance against a competitor who is not using FLASH and has crawlable, keyword-rich text throughout their website.
6. Site Maturity (Age and Frequency of Crawls)
Like it or not, the longer you've been on the web the better. It can take a new website 12 months, or longer, to get ranked in the top 20 listings on any search engine result page (SERP). If you have a domain name that has been active for three or more years, and you don't have top ranking for your keywords/category, you're not doing something right.
7. Topical Relevance
If you're a wedding consultant in Hawaii you have to make sure all of your pages clearly communicate a relevancy about that topic. Google particularly, but other search engines also, use algorithms to try and establish a site and page topic. Relevancy to the search being performed by a bride is critical to achieving top rankings.
Chris Jaeger
Practical Online Marketing
http://www.practicalonlinemarketing.com
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