There are two ways to look at search engine ranking factors. One is from the search engine side which is not human and does not see a web-page the way that humans do. The other is from the side of the humans, many of whom are trying to manipulate the spiders of the search engine to rank their site higher.

The algorithms that are programmed into the spiders changes to meet the needs of the users of a search engine. For instance, algorithms have been made which now exclude many of the black hat techniques incorporated by SEO marketers in recent years. This includes such tactics as link farming and other practices that are used to increase rankings in a dishonest way.

Keyword density is important on web pages as long as they are relevant to the topic of the web page. Many people think that keyword density will increase their rankings. But, it is important to know how the “bots” see the page as opposed to humans. A search engine spider crawls about 100 pages per second. The spider is looking for specific information on the web page and is not seeing the flashy design or the wonderful text. It’s algorithms are set to look for very specific details.

Some search engine spiders are programmed to index the one hundred most frequently used words on a page. Some of these spiders look at each work in the first twenty lines of text. Others index every word on a page. The algorithms are also set to look for diversity of link sources and keyword use in the title tag.

There are over two hundred factors included in the ranking of a page on Google. The age of a page and updates are included to exclude marketers who flood the index with link farming. The spiders are searching for information that conforms to valid HTML and web programming and many of the software programs that give a person the ability to create their own web-page do not have the valid HTML that is required.

There are many ways to incorporate the search engine ranking factors into the web design and content that a person is creating. Raising in rankings and profitability requires a holistic approach to design and marketing strategies. Focusing only on one part of a market decreases a business’ sustainability.