This article details the factors that can be simply manipulated yet produce large improvements in site ranking.

Keyphrase Research

You should be able to get a rough idea of target key-phrases from the content on the pages within your site. If there's no content at which to target optimisation, achieving good search engine rankings will be impossible.  Visitors will leave if they are not given content they are searching for.

A frequent mistake is to target the key phrases which drive the largest search volumes. Target key-phrases which relate to your content, and the more defined the key-phrases are the better.

Using key-phrases that may drive 120 high convertible visitors to your site each month is better than targeting a competitive broad key-phrase only vaguely related to your business, even if it does attract 30,000 searches each month.

Page Titles

This is a key on-page element. Each title should be different, and have key-phrases related to the content of that page. Search engines usually display the first 65 characters of the page title, so get the important key-phrases at the start of the page title. Also, the characters near the front of the page title are given more significance in algorithms.

The page title is displayed in the search engine results, so it must encourage browsers to action the link. Finding a balance between readability and key-phrases density is a challenge.

Meta Description

The meta description is not in search engine algorithms, although as it is displayed in engine results pages, it is vital it is optimised. Like page titles, the meta description should be specific to every page and contain text that is relevant to the key-phrases that page is aimed at.

The meta description is limited to around 160 characters. If no meta description is entered, search engines grab a random chunk of text from the page, regardless if it makes sense to the searcher. Ensure every page has a meta description.

Page Content

Page content is the best method of attracting visitors and incoming links to a website. Search engines love a lot of content, so the more content on your site the better for search engine rankings.

Content is less important now in search engine algorithms than earlier. However, ensure every key-phrase that is being targeted occurs every 100 words or so.