Lesson 2 - How do Search Engines rank websites?

The search engines do not reveal their exact procedures and only give you a general idea of what they consider when ranking a site. Things considered are the keyword density, where the keywords appear on your site and how they are used. Search Engines look at these keywords as they give a good idea of how relevant that site is.

Where do they look for keywords?

It is important to note that they not only look in the page content but also in the:

• Page Title
• Meta tags
• Links
• Alt tags.

So how can I make sure my website is in the top 10 or 20 instead of being number 800 in the list of results?

You can’t really control what a search engine does and there is no single “secret” of getting ranked near the top as different Search Engines using different methods. Don’t be fooled by claims made by some search engine optimisation (SEO) firms, nobody can guarantee you top ranking across all the search engines all the time. However you can greatly increase your rankings by using certain strategies such as adding keywords in the places I have mentioned. If you put into practice these techniques that I outline below, you are much more likely to get a better ranking and so increase the number of visitors to your site.

Lesson 3 - Finding keywords for your website