Domain name
A key factor in determining ranking for a particular search term is whether the keyword is contained within the URL. e.g. www.7SEO.co.uk contains the search term SEO. For many uncompetitive search terms it is possible to rank highly for a search term exploiting this factor alone. In fact there is a whole industry grown up on exploiting this factor.

Domain Age
Another factor affecting ranking is how old your domain is. If your domain is new i.e. less than two years old this can affect your ranking slightly negatively. Search engines view the website as less well established. If the domain name is less than six months old the factor affects ranking even more so – particularly for competitive search terms. There is another factor widely reported as the ‘Google Sandbox Affect’ and there are other postings on this website that discuss this in more detail.

Website content
The content of your website and it’s relevance is another key factor which search engines measure in order to rank sites. Ultimately search engines measure relevance above all and look to the nature and amount of the content to ascertain where they should rank a particular site for a search term. Broadly speaking the more relevant content that your website has relating to a particular search term the higher it will rank. The creation and alteration of website content to reflect what search engines measure favourably for a particular search term is called ‘On Page Optimisation.’ A well optimised site can often rank well for certain key terms simply because the website and content is structured in such a way as to rank highly among search engines.

Websites Linking to your Site
Links from other websites to your site are another key factor that search engines measure. However, the quality and quantity of links vary greatly. A single link from an authority site such as ‘New York Times’ or the BBC would be valued extremely highly by the search engine. To measure links the search engines crawl websites and follow the link potentially to your site. This is how they determine the ‘Value’ of the link. Other factors relate to how many links are coming form that particular site/page. So not all links have the same ‘value.’ In fact there are a number of techniques which link building companies employ in order to ‘Fool’ the search engines into regarding a particular site as an authority site – these techniques can have a detrimental affect on ranking and are often called ‘Black Hat’ techniques.

Relevant Content that Appears in other Search Engines
Increasingly search engines measure relevant content that links back to your site from other authoritative sources such as Facebook Twitter Youtube Squidoo and Social Bookmarking sites. Relevant content can be placed on these sites that links back to your own site and search engines not only measure the link but can place this content in the search result. Often you will see Youtube videos appearing in the search results for a particular search term. Google is refining this process of when to show content form other search engines in it’s search results.

We always recommend a program of link building to accompany any ‘On Page’ SEO you undertake as High ranking in Google i.e. Page 1 can  be achieved with the right amount of quality back-links for competitive search terms. Competitive search terms tend to be those ones that drive the most traffic.

There is a lot of confusion – even amongst SEO companies – when understanding the affect of back links. Some companies purport to offer the ‘Holy Grail’ of SEO that will solve all your page ranking problems. However the truth is there are two strategies you can follow to achieve Google TOP 10 ranking for any given keyword.

1) Develop an authority site – This usually only applies to businesses that have been around for a long time and as a consequence Google has grown up with them and recognises their web site to be an authority site. Usually you will find that these fortunate companies have an old domain name – around 10 years and have effectively grown up with Google and Google recognises this.

2) The domain name mirrors a key search phrase – If you own a domain name that mirrors a key search term then Google weights this quite heavily. At one time this was a very important factor but it less so now.

3) The only option available to companies where the above does not apply to them is a high volume of quality back-links. What we specialise at 7 SEO is effectively ‘undertaking a huge amount of Internet Marketing involving all the tools available such as article writing, directory submission, Social bookmarking submission etc. and creating a wave of ‘Internet Publicity’ that Google and other search engines readily find. All this ‘Internet publicity points to your website. Think of it this way. London is going to have a lot more signs to it than a small village in Somerset. The reason is that many more people are looking for London than this imaginary village. Google interprets this as importance and ranks your website higher. So if you have a lot of ‘signs’ pointing to your website it must be important. This measurement appears to be fundamental to Google’s algorithm.

The ‘signs’ directing the ‘robots’ to your site are made up of the key search terms you are wishing to feature for. Google interprets this activity as ‘authority and slowly over a period of months, your site becomes an authority for that particular search term. 7 SEO build several thousand ‘signs’ throughout the Internet all pointing at your site. What makes 7  SEO unique is that our ‘signs’ include the key search terms, not just your domain name. So if I see a ‘sign’ and it says ‘London’ if I travel in that direction I expect London to be there – so it is with earch engines.

Choosing key search terms that people regularly key in to the recatngular box is called organic search engine optimisation and 7 SEO specialise in this kind of website promotion.

Here are some real life examples. A client had just purchased a domain relating to car hire. He was hoping to set-up a price comparison site. However we all know that car hire is a very competitive search term and the probability of achieving a Google Page Top 10 ranking in the short term I told him was non existent. He was looking at 6-8 months and would probably have to spend twice as much to achieve the same results if he had a more mature domain i.e. 18 months. I found a mature domain for him so he saved himself a lot of heartache and money