When talking about search engine rankings many people ask themselves questions like; how many keywords should I put in my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have on the page? Should I use short copy or should I use long copy? Can I use flash or not? How many keywords should I put in my "alt" text? Etc... A general statement to answer the above questions is that "magic numbers do not exist." The most important thing you can understand as a search engine optimization expert is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a keyphrase in a search engine, something could easily change, and you might have to spend months or even years trying to figure the new algorithm.
It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm, do something much easier instead... observe your top competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using to make them rank in the top positions. The main elements to getting top search engines rankings are:
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Number, quality, and relevance of inbound links pointing to your site
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Fresh, relevant, quality content (needs to be added frequently)
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Keyword density of your home page or any page you want to rank highly
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Relevant Links, Links, Links
The first thing to observe from your competitors' sites is their inbound links. This means the number of sites that have a link pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to Google and typing: "link://www.webpro.com". However do not only do this on Google because they don't show all actual links pointing to a site. Yahoo and MSN tend to show a lot more of the back links to any given website.
Part of the observation should be not only what the links say, but where the links come from. Think about what the category is that those links come from. If you start to see a recurring pattern, you should start actively searching for links coming from that category.
80% of content WEBPRO publishes gets listed!
Search engines love quality relevant content that is added and updated frequently. The best way to achieve this is through our specialized content manager.