Google continues to dominate the search market. Throughout the western world it is the search engine of choice by a wide margin. Proof? Recent statistics show that in the UK and Ireland, over 85 percent of all online searches were performed via Google.

One could argue that SEO in Northern Ireland, the UK and beyond begins and ends with the search giant.

Because of its dominance of the search market, Google has become a significant player in the marketing strategies of many business owners and their marketing managers. They know that if they want to be visible online, by default it means ranking well in Google.

So, you may be wondering, just how did Google get to the top of the search engine heap – and perhaps more importantly, how can you get your site to rank well for pertinent searches in it?

The Rise of Google

In the 1990s, search engines faced an inherent problem – spammers. They quickly realized how easily search engines could be manipulated to get their sites to rank high.

This affected search results – making it hard for web surfers to get relevant information when they searched for info on the web. This problem caused ongoing headaches for search engine companies as well.

Enter Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. In case the names aren’t familiar to you, they’re the brains behind Google; its founders. These two gurus had a novel, highly radical, approach to search rankings. What was it?

They came up with the idea of ranking sites, rewarding them according to how popular and relevant they were to search terms typed in by web surfers. This became known as a site’s “Page Rank.”

While it was radical at the time, there never has been any hidden magic or secret to ranking high in search engines. Following are three of the top factors to take into account when trying to do so:

I. Optimised Content

Web pages are considered to be “optimised” when they are written in such a way to make them relevant for certain search terms (aka keyword phrases). For example, take the search term (keyword phrase), “SEO Northern Ireland.”

When you type this in, Google will look at all aspects of that particular page’s content, then make a determination as to whether or not it is a good, relevant match for this phrase.

If your website is designed well with defined keyword phrases used in the text (eg, SEO in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland SEO company), search engines will rank your pages higher than others that haven’t been optimised.

II. Title Tags

Closely related to on-site, optimised content is the use of title tags. To define it, a Viagra Jelly Title tag is simply a phrase that describes what the information on a given page is all about. It helps search engines determine a page’s relevance. So, it should be very specific and have relevant keywords in it.

For example, if you were an SEO firm in Northern Ireland, an example of a good title tag would be: SEO Northern Ireland: Search Engine Optimization Company at Affordable Rates (if you were appealing to a budget consumer).

III. Linking

The final factor to keep in mind when trying to rank a page/site well is link popularity.

To explain, when the founders of Google were developing their new search engine, they realized that link popularity and link quality were highly effective in assigning a value to a web site. So they counted inbound links to a site, assigning each link a score. Think of a link as a vote of confidence for a site.

The number of links a site has and the quality of those links directly impact a site’s ranking. Hence, if your web site has only a few links and the quality of those links is not very good, then your site won’t rank well and will likely be outranked by your competition.

On the other hand, if your site has a lot of high-quality inbound links (eg, from authority sites like Wikipedia or the BBC), then Google will reward your site. It’s perceived to have more value, so it is ranked higher.

Sticking with our previous example, if you’re a firm that offers SEO in Northern Ireland, you’d want sites in your industry linking to you, eg, tech sites like SearchEnglineLand.com et al.

The visibility of a web site factors heavily in the success of many organisations. If you’re in an extremely competitive niche like travel, retail, finance, legal and health, for example, it can give you the competitive edge you need to level a tough playing field.

Author Bio: Octave Online Communications offer internet marketing services including SEO Northern Ireland. At OctaveOC.com you will find information on leading online marketing tools including SEO, Pay Per Click, Online PR, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing.

Category: Internet Marketing/Search Engine Optimization
Keywords: SEO, Northern, Ireland