Top Things Google Looks For

Although Google looks at over 100 different criteria (which can change in importance
over time) for ranking pages, here are the top aspects or elements that are currently
deemed a “must-do” if you are serious about a top ranking. Other elements will be
discussed later on that are also important. The following are listed in approximate
order of importance, with the first two items being more important than the others:

1. Keywords used in link text – both on your site and especially on other websites
   that point to your site. And the more links you have on other sites that point to
   your site and that contain your most important keywords, the better, all else being
   equal.

   This is extra important if you are targeting broad, generic or otherwise
   “competitive” search terms.

2. Keywords used in the title of your Web pages (between the <TITLE> tags).

3. Keywords used in headings (H1, H2) and in the body of your Web pages.

4. The PageRank (PR) of your web pages, which in turn is dependent on the
   number of links that point to your site from other sites. The importance of these
   incoming links in turn is dependent on the PageRank of the linking page, which in
   turn is dependent on the number of incoming links to that page, and so on.

5. Web pages that contain at least 200 words of relevant text content. The more
   web pages on the site, the better chance of ranking well for a larger number of
   keyword phrases.

6. How often the content on your site is updated. You should update your site once
   a month if possible.

7. How fast you are obtaining new links (too many links too fast is a bad thing).