When everyone is trying to rank high on the search engines, one can no longer avoid the need of expert search engine optimization (SEO) solution. However, SE optimization can be a tricky job as the ranking pattern of the search engines remains a closely guarded trade secret. There are lots of speculation around about how the search engine would react on a certain aspect. Everyone now wants to know how to make a site search engine friendly.

Decide the Search Engine: Decide on which search engine is worth targeting. Amongst the search engines Google is the mighty one, followed by Yahoo, MSN and the like. Around 80% of the web users reach to the sites through the search engines and the majority of them use Google for the purpose.

Assess your Competition: It is important to know who your competitors are on the same keyword. Google Adware is an excellent tool to give you a fair idea about your competition. You would find it harder to rank with the most competitive keywords. Similarly, keywords with less competition would help you in ranking fast in the search engines.

Analyze your Site: Since it is your site that you want to rank in the search engines, it is important to analyze your website to make it search engine friendly.

• Content: It is the most important component of a website. Importance of relevant and quality content for higher ranking can’t be denied. Since visitors search information on the sites, Google tends to give more value to sites with good and informative content.
• Keyword Density: The keyword is the word through which the visitors would search  to find your site. Hence, the keyword should be present enough time in your content to help it appear in the search. However, over repetition of the keyword without relevant content would be considered as ‘keyword stuffing’ and Google regards it as spamming. Hence, a balance needs to be maintained in repeating the keyword in the web content. Ideally the keyword should comprise 2% to 6% of the content.
• Relevant Urls: The web page url should contain the keyword. Relevant urls help the website to rank easily on the search engines.
• Easy Navigation:  It is important to ensure easy navigation between the pages of the website. The longer the visitor would stay on your site, the higher value you’re likely to get from SEs.

Links: The number of back links to a site plays a significant role in a sites rank on search engines. Ensure enough number of quality link for your site.

The SEO industry is still evolving. More and more factors would come to light in due course about search engine ranking. One has to be accommodating with the changes to maintain the ranking of his website.