SEO Professionals already know that Google says that there are over 100 factors that go into ranking a web page. How many you need to address is dependent upon what your competition is doing. If they’ve mastered 10 areas of a page to get their ranking, you’ll need to focus in those same 10 areas and more. If they’ve focused on 50 different areas, spending time with only 10 will seem frustrating to you as you wonder why your site isn’t taking over the competition. The good news is there are tons of industries that I’ve come across where there is little to no competition or poor search engine optimization for the top rankings.
What follows is a list of areas that top SEO professionals look at when determining which areas of a site to improve.

• Use the Keyword phrase in your title tags
• Use your keyword phrase in your body tag
• Using a coordinated effort to target keyword phrases to pages that discuss those phrases
• Using keyword phrases in your H1 tags – I’ve seen large text work just as well as H1.
• Keyword  use in domain names – Definitely helpful.
• Keyword use in page URLs – This too is helpful.
• Keyword use in other H(x) tags – Use variations of your phrase in other headlines. Plurals and synonyms.
• Keyword use in alt tags, image titles and title tags – Lots of people ignore this.
• Using bold or strong tags around keyword phrases – Some at the top of your document and some at the bottom.
• Keyword phrase use in meta description tags – A big help.
• Link Popularity with the sites internal linking structure – Organize your site with regards to what link text points to what page.
• Link quality to external sites – Link to similar sites with good quality that’s been around a while.
• Age of your page – Older is usually better.
• Quantity of content – Write a lot. 250 words per page at a minimum. Lots of pages.
• Overall document quality – Properly formatted and sensibly arranged.
• Update frequency – If you can work it and it is necessary, update your pages often.
• Accuracy of spelling and grammar – Better spell your keyword phrases correctly.
• HTML validation of page code – Proper html validate may never matter. Google wants all content.
• Overall link popularity of site – Get links to your site.
• Age of the site – If your site has been online for less than a year, you’ll be lucky to get good rankings within the first 9 months.
• Relevance of inbound links to site content – A very big deal. Getting a link from a porn site when you’re selling soda won’t help much.
• Link popularity from similar sites – Now you’re talking. Google expects to see links from and to similar content.
• Rate of IBLs to site – They used to say that getting a bunch of links quickly makes you look bad. That always flew in the face of a good press release though.
• Relevance of page content to search query – A big deal. If google sends you traffic to your soda site, here’s hoping they were searching for soda. Otherwise, it’s only temporary. This doesn’t happen anymore.
• Traffic to page – Google is watching traffic patterns now. Good content will do you good.
• TLD extension (.edu, .gov vs .com or .tv .gs) – Never read anywhere that this matters.
• Searches for your domain name – Increases traffic.
• Anchor text of the inbound link – A very big deal.
• Popularity of site linking to yours – Also important.
• Subject matter of page linking to yours – Make sure it matches.
• Google’s view of the site linking to yours – Needs to have its own quality content
• Age of the link – It takes months for google to find your link and then determine age and then credit you for it.
• Text surrounding the anchor text of link to your page – You can’t throw random links anywhere.
• Other sites link popularity from the page that links to yours – Goes back to quality content linking to yours.
• Links from .edu, .mil or .gov – A potential big benefit to your site.
• PR – PR is more of a guide. Low PR sites can out rank others.
• Server accessibility – How often is it down?
• Duplicate content or similar content – If you sell stuff that everyone else sells, write new descriptions.
• linking to low quality sites – Why would you?
• Duplicate meta tags on many pages – This is plain lazy, and it could be holding you back.
• Overusing keyword phrases in content – You know it’s over used when you know your customers will notice.
• Buying links or participating in link schemes – It’s hard to do this right and get benefit from it.
• Slow server response times – Get a new host
• Links from spam sites – I doubt Google will punish you because of who links to you but it absolutely can’t help. Waste of time.
• Few visitors – More and more Google will have and use traffic patterns to determine popularity.

It’s a full time job. Hire an SEO Professional today to get your website on the right track.