Internal Ranking Factors - Part 1

Internal and External ranking factors influence your position in search engine results. Let's review the internal factors.

Title Tag

Most important tag for Search Engines. The targeted keywords you choose must be used in this tag. Important keywords must be placed in the title tag.Limit the length of the title as the search engines displays the first 50-80 characters of the title tag.

Description Meta tag

This tag should be brief but it should be informative as this appears in the search engine results. It must contain keywords that is displayed in the title as well.

Keywords Meta tag

Keywords meta tag does not influence the search engine listings. Most people ignore this tag. You could use the keywords used in the page content.

Keywords in links

Use your targeted keywords in the inbound and outbound links this can slightly improve your page rank.

ALT attribute in images

The "Alternative Text" of images that are linked to other pages is counted by the search engines. You should use the keywords in ALT attribute.

Content on a page

The page content must have 500-3000 words. More number of words increase the search engine visibility.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density is a measure of keyword expressed as a percentage. For example if you are using the keyword "software" 6 times on a page containing 100 words then the keyword density is 6%.

The keyword density is one of the critical factor. If low, the search engines may not consider. If high, search engines may think spam. High keyword density or low keyword density will lower your webpage position in the search engine listings.

Keyword Placement

The targeted keyword or keyphrase must be closer or in the beginning of a paragraph so that it appears more important. Use the targeted keyword in H1 & H2 tags. Search Engines pay more attention to these tags.