Factors Which Influence Rankings
A website's rankings on search engine's are influenced by a variety of different factors:
On the Page Factors and Optimization:
This includes, but is not limited to: Incorporation of identified keywords into the
-Body Text - Near the top of the page, in the beginning of sentences, and also near the end of the pages.
-As bolded or italicized text, within the body text.
-Title
-HTML filename
-Alt Text
-H1 to H5 Tags
-Text links
-Web site Theme
-Website architecture built around categories, or themes.
-Website architecture with linking structure that allow for spiders to reach and index optimized pages of the site.
-Website architecture and pages built around specific keywords.
-The number and variety of pages on a website. The more the better, a 100 page website will usually do better than a 3 page site.
-Competitiveness of the keyword. Certain keywords have much more competition than others. Highly competitive keyword areas included online casinos, adult sites, and others.
-Affiliate status: If you have your own unique product or service, it will be ideal to achieve high rankings. If you simply are a re-seller of another website's product or services, that you link to with a affiliate code, it may be difficult to impossible to be included in the directories named below, severely hurting your rankings.
Off the Page Influences on rankings:
Inclusion in major Search Engine Directories: the most important of which are DMOZ.ORG (The Open Directory Project), and the Yahoo Directory.
-The category within these directories the website is included in also influences rankings.
-PageRank of a website(according to Google) or Link Popularity:
Most search engines use the number of links from other website's to your site in their algorithm as a measure of quality. It also takes the PR(PageRank) of the sites linking to yours, into account. The higher the PR of the site linking to you, the more it boosts YOUR sites PR.
A link from DMOZ.ORG and the Yahoo Directory will influence your PR very positively.
The actual link text of incoming links: A link to your site with keywords in to text affects your rankings. For example, if many sites link to yours with a specific keyword in it, the site will get a boost for that keyword.
The "theme" of the websites which link to you: It is better to get links from sites in your keyword category or theme. The search engines look at the "theme" of sites linking to yours when determining your rankings, as well as the text of the individual page.