SEO Tips: 5 Factors That Affect Your Site’s Ranking Potential

What questions do SEO clients ask most often? The top-ten FAQ certainly includes “how can my site get page one (or two but no more than three) Google ranking?”

Well, I always tell my clients it depends on how strong their competitors are and what keywords and phrases to target. When a web site has a few competing sites well formulated to the taste of search engine algorithms, it takes much more effort.

Here’s a five-point checklist to gauge your site’s ranking potential:

• Analyse keyword or phrase difficulty.

Choice of keywords or phrases plays a vital part in an SEO campaign because it saves you the shots in the dark. The most valuable keyword sets are those with high traffic potential but limited competition. Some of the popular keyword research tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Tool and Google Keyword Tool.

What if a keyword is too difficult? Stick to it if you think your time and effort will eventually get your site well ranked. Otherwise, research on its variations or long tail terms. There’re always hidden gold mines no matter how fierce the competition is.

• Check If Top Ranking Sites Are Well Optimized

Don’t be scared of aiming high. Analyse the top 10 or 20 sites ranked for a specific keyword or phrase in Google or Yahoo SERPs (If you gets decent rankings in these two, you could afford to forget the rest).

How do you know if a web site has been optimized? It’s not hard to tell because SEO leaves traces. Does the site have quality back links? What is keyword density of its important pages? Do different pages have unique Meta tags? Does its internal linking structure promote the most important pages? Are keywords in URLs hyphen-related? For how many years is the domain registered? The list goes on…

• Check PPC Ads From Competitors

Some SEO professionals ignore this part too. If, after using keyword difficulty tools, you’re still not sure how difficult it’ll be to rank for a keyword, PPC results could give you a more complete view. The more advertisers are paying for a keyword or phrase, the harder to get high ranking for it.

It’s a good idea to open a Google Adwords account and find the PPC rates for keywords or phrases that you’re targeting. High rates usually indicate intense competition.

• Study Back Link Structure of Competitors

Back link study involves the number and type of inbound links as well as the anchor text used. If you’re looking for free tools, I strongly suggest Yahoo Site Explorer. Again, Aim high and check back links of top ten or 20 ranking sites for the keywords or phrases you’ve chosen. How many back links does a site have? How many are deep links? How many back links come from .edu and .org domains? How many are from link exchange partners? Does it have links from news sites?

• Other Important Data to Go Through

Finally, explore some other important data on a competing site to supplement the above study. Is it included in authoritative directories such as Dmoz, Best of the Web and Yahoo? What’s its Alexa ranking? What is the Page Rank? Don’t forget to check if its social media presence fits into the SEO equation. Say, how many times has it been bookmarked on delicious or how many followers it has on twitter?

After this five-point check, you should have a general idea of how difficult it is to get your site ranked high. So brainstorm using a mix of the data you’ve acquired and proceed to determine what keywords or phrases to target. That’s the core of an SEO campaign.