SEO What you control

Regardless of what is said on the internet there are several different ways to get good search engine rankings. It is also a lot easier that some people would like you to think. It simply amazes me how many sites are ranked that have no clue what they are doing. The ones that are number one, but it is obvious that they aren’t really optimizing for that word. The reason I wrote this is to give you some things that you can focus on to get your site ranked well.

The real point here is though there are several factors that can improve your rankings, you have to focus on what you can control. Focusing on things that you do not control is a waste of time. If you have ever heard of six sigma you would be aware of this philosophy.

So what can you control when it comes to SEO?

- The title of your page. This is probably the most influencing factor. Pick 5 phrases you want to rank for. Word them in a manner that you don’t repeat words but makes sense. Try to use less than 9 words.

- The text in your body. Use each phrase that you want to rank for in the body. I don’t really care if it is in H1 tags or in Bold. I don’t think those carry that much weight. When you want to get from position 2 to 1, maybe, but bold and h1 is not the difference between the 100th position and the first page.

- The filenames you use are important. Do not put things like sessions or log tail URLS in your file names. This causes the engines to index your pages seperately which hurts rankings.

- Your links. The sites that link to you are within your control for the most part. One way is link bait. If you can design something that people will link to then your rankings will improve. The downside is you need to create something nobody else has. I don’t do that well. I use article submission, this gives me full control over how people link to me.

Thats 4 things you have control over. Any time you want to improve your rankings start with these 4 things. This is how you control your search engine rankings