You've been researching Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and you feel like you have a pretty good handle on what it is, and that is the first step. So what are some of the factors that feed into the ranking of your particular listing in search results? These ranking factors start with the obvious - your name, address, and business purpose.
You want your location to be in the landing page of your website, page or blog. When you have your city and state in that title tag, then you have the number one ranking factor going for you. If your business has a physical location, you want to include that information as well - this factor where Google gets to rank those businesses that are local to a search and have an actual physical location is within the top 10 ranking factors for local SEO today.
Another factor in the top 10 is having links to other individual web pages or websites that have high authority and high quality on your landing page. When you are linked by high ranking, high authority - meaning sites and pages with a lot of followers and/or high ratings - to other sites, this adds weight to your own ranking and pushes you up the list.
One very important feature that ranks in the top 10 is being consistent with your NAP - which stands for name, address, and phone number. It is a very common mistake among those with an online presence to have their business name, address and phone number showing in multiple places throughout their site - even in their landing page. If any details about your NAP are inconsistent, then that throws the rankings off and it will move you down in the search results. This could be as simple as having your name as "The Main Street Garage" in one place and "Main Street Garage" in another. Or having your address as 123 Main Street on your landing page, but 123 Main St. On your other pages. Go through your entire site and get all of this information consistent for best rankings.
Design things so that your product or service has its own page - in other words if you provide nutritional protein powder, maybe your URL should have Acme Nutrition-proteinpowder.com. This is the landing page for your site, and if you are paying attention to all the other ranking factors, having your actual product in your URL will help drive your page up in the rankings for anyone searching for protein powder or nutrition protein - it gets the most power out of what you are selling or providing with least investment overall.
And then there is the title tag and good meta descriptions which drive good and accurate CTR (click through rates) so you are gaining business without unjustified costs for AdWords. If your CTR is too high and you aren't adding business, then your AdWord costs are going to be too high and not worth it for you. But when you have a great title tag and the meta descriptions that go with it, you are going to drive the searches to you more accurately and the CTR will start working for you.
