Getting high rankings in Google’s search result pages will make a big difference for your business. It is said that there are about two hundred plus factors that control rankings in Google search result pages. Here are the most important factors selected for Google top rankings.
1. Title Tag
Title tag is one of the most important factors for search engine rankings. Don’t make it all the same through your web pages. Title tag should contain target keywords that are relevant for each page. It is recommended that the title starts with target terms and phrases.
If your company is already well-known, you can add your company name or brand to the end of the title. But don’t make titles too long.
2. Incoming Links
Build relevant links as many as possible. If possible, go with deeper links. It means that you should try to build incoming links from web pages of a site, rather than from its homepage. In most cases, web pages under categories have more specific and detailed information than a home page.
Link quantity is also important but drop it if the content is not relevant. It is believed that bad links can actually damage your rankings.
Try to build more links by actively participating in social media sites. Read more about practicing social media marking.
The reason Google and other major search engines consider links as a very important factor is because they think your website must have content worthy for other people to link. So it’s about how much good quality content your website has. Follow the right ways in building incoming links, always keeping this in mind. Simply, there are no short cuts!
3. Absolute Path for Internal Links
Absolute Links mean that you use full URL for links.
Absolute link:
http://www.free-ebusinesshelp.com/se-optimization/get-top-google-ranking.html
Relative link:
/se-optimization/get-top-google-ranking.html
When the Googlebot reads links of your website, it doesn’t add your domain to your relative links. All it reads is ‘ /se-optimization/get-top-google-ranking.html’, not ‘ http://www.free-ebusinesshelp.com/se-optimization/get-top-google-ranking.html’.
4. Anchor Text of Links
Anchor text is the text within the hyperlink that you click on to move to a linked page. Place your target keywords in anchor texts, instead of the words like ‘Click here’, or ‘More information?’.
5. Keywords and Links in Body Content
Keep the linked text as low as 1% of the total text of your main content of a web page. Place your targeted keywords in the visible text. (Don’t hide them using tiny fonts or background colors.) Don’t repeat the same keywords over and over. Instead, use similar keyword phrases.
6. Keywords in H1 Tag
Place your keywords using H1 tag, if possible, at the beginning of the web page.
7. Keywords in Domain
Having your target keywords in your domain helps rank better when your domain name is used as an anchor text for inbound links from other web sites.
8. 404 Page (Page Not Found)
Create a custom 404 page that looks like any of your web pages. This redirects search engine robots to another page of your website when they run into “roadblock” – default 404 page – with no links to follow.
Visitors will get benefits from a custom 4004 page, too. For example, there is a user who has spent 5 to 10 minutes looking for “laptop case”. The user spots your website in a search engine result page and clicks on it, thinking he or she can buy “nobrand laptop case”. But the page was removed from your web site and the user is greeted only by a boring, inefficient default web-server 404 page.
A custom 404 page with essential links of your web site will look a lot more user-friendly. The user definitely will like this kind of 404 page better.
9. Out-bound Links to Authority Sites
Place out-bound links to the site that are authoritative and relevant. This actually helps performance in search engine result pages. But don’t have too many of them. Make sure that they are relevant to your content and you place relevant anchor text to link them. Remember to check the out-bounding link validity periodically.
10. Other factors
Positive Factors for High Google Ranking
Domain extension: gov, org, edu are favored by Google.
Hyphens in URL: If there are one or two for separate keywords, it’s good.
Length of URL: Keep it as short as possible.
File size: Try not to exceed 100K.
Freshness: Fresh contents and links are preferred.
Site age: The older, the better.
Negative factors for high Google ranking
Flash
Frames
Too much JavaScripts
Lots of Images without ALT texts.
Too much repetition of keywords.
Outbound links to bad web sites.
Immediate redirection using Meta tags
Pixel link: Don’t hide links with single pixel image.
Copyright violation (copying content and images without permissions)
Positive non-webpage factors
Listed in directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo! Directories
Sitemap
Negative non-webpage factors
Zero incoming link