The factors affecting SEO ranking can be divided into many segments. The ranking of a website greatly depends on the proper optimization of the site and the techniques used to optimize it. Although paid optimization can also be done, but to make a website optimized with a paid service it requires a lot of effort on the users part to make it rank within the top of the search query list.

However, the general guide lines that the search engines provide for the optimization of the website are more or less same, although some rules may vary from one search engine to the other. The factors can again be divided into external and internal ranking. The general factors affecting SEO ranking include:

  • Amount of content or text on the entire website - A webpage which has high information content gets to the top easily. The general word limit of a webpage is between 500 and 3000 for it to get optimized on the search engines
  • Number of keywords used on the webpage – The usage of keywords depends on the size of content on the page. The general usage of keywords in a page has to be three to four times. The usage increases according to the word limit of the content
  • The perfect density of keyword – The keyword density of a page is measured as the relative frequency of a particular word appearing in the entire content expressed as percentage. The optimum level of keyword density on a page can be 5 to 7%. It is better to have 2 to 3% keyword density. If the density of the keyword is less than 2% then the search engines may not identify it properly, and if it is too high it may go in the spam filter. A web page with very high keyword density is generally penalized and banned from viewing of the search engines
  • Proper keyword placement – One of the main factors affecting SEO ranking is placement of keywords in the content. The main keyword has to appear at the beginning of the first line in the content. It is also required to appear in the last part of the content
  • The format of the text – Search engines pays more attention to those web pages which has special formatting or highlighting
  • Title Tags – The title tag is one of the most important factors affecting SEO ranking and optimization. The title tags must have keywords in it to get optimized
  • Keyword usage in links – Using keywords in the links of the page that goes to other pages is very important
  • Meta description tags – The Meta description tags is also one of the many factors affecting SEO ranking. The Meta description enables the viewers to know what the website is all about
  • Meta keyword tags – Meta keyword tags are used to specify the usage of keywords

The factors affecting SEO ranking should be followed by a website appropriately in order to get to the top of the search engine lists.