A website popularity is a function of the number of regular visits it receives. One of the most important ways to measure it is to check the website ranking on search engine results regularly and compare such results over the months.
Depending on the number of search results on Google or Yahoo!, for instance, a certain page can be positioned among the items of the first results page or in such a position that hardly anyone might see it. Ranking will vary in function of the specific keyword combination. This means the results based on one search term will show the page at one position, while the results based on a different search will show the same page at another position.
This allows us to ask:
1. What criteria set a website ranking?
2. What keywords should a website be based on?
The two main conditions for a good ranking position are:
• rich consistent updated content;
• timespan of online existence of the website.
So, if a site is regularly fed with unique texts related to each other and to its theme, it is strongly inclined to rank high on search results, provided it also satisfies some further conditions. And if two sites have similar contents, consistency, and size, the older one will probably be ranked higher.
There are also some additional interrelated conditions, such as:
• keyword optimization and
• quality backlinks.
All pages of a site should have a title tag tightly connected to their contents, which implies that by choosing each page title you should bear in mind possible keywords used as search criteria. The same goes for the headings of each page section, which should properly be HTML-encoded as heading tags. Furthermore, all images should include in their HTML code an alt-tag containing a description based on possible search terms. All keywords used in the title, heading or image tags must be consistent with the site contents and with the HTML metatags.
The keyword optimization consists to a large extent of these instructions concerning the source code of the website as well as of the number of other pages properly pointing to it. The most proper external links to your webpages are not the correspondent URLs, but rather the keywords used in your tags, particularly the title tag. Also, the best pages that should contain backlinks to your site are highly ranked ones. A large number of websites usually sell links, and the purchase can be mediated by other specific sites.
But buying links isn’t the only way to get links to your pages. You can promote your website through Google Adwords and similar services, including some free ones. Also, you should regularly make good articles out of your site contents adding a resource box and a link to your site. You can also create completely new articles for that purpose. Anyway, you can regularly have a specific service provider submit your articles automatically to article directories.
A further way to promote your site is posting useful or interesting videos inviting viewers to visit it. Another is to show its link as part of your signature in forums, question-answering communities, and blog comments. Other than that, your site can offer a newsletter subscription, which can in turn be promoted in all the occasions presented above. Finally, spending some time on Twitter and Facebook can undoubtedly be worthwhile.
Well, all these ranking-oriented strategies may not work if you choose wrong keywords. You must check the competitiveness of each keyword considered. A longstanding site with good content and thousands of good links will beat any other that contains the same keywords but isn’t as competitive in age, contents or backlinks. The solution for a new or small website is to invest in becoming more competitive by choosing less competitive keywords.
So, you need not only to check results from different search tests, but also to use tools such as Google Keyword Tool, which is free, to test possible new search terms for your pages. You should choose less competitive keywords which you can generate and test with the free tool and never lose of sight that a keyword needs to be composed of at least three words.
Carlos Silva is an Internet investor and Brazilian Portuguese translator who owns the website Best Business Ideas for Home Entrepreneurs. He has a long list of examples of good SEO service providers, presented through Stone Evans’ Plug-In Profit Site, which is an excellent set of services related to online business. He also recommends visitors to his site to subscribe to his newsletter and to download the free e-book Dotcomology.