I was talking to a client the other day about the factors that Google uses to order the SERPs, it made me think that this information could be useful for our blog readers. So here we go, a brief  SEO 101.

On page Techniques:

1. Use of keywords in your Title Tag, preferably at the start.
2. Use of keywords in the root domain name, in otherwords a keyword domain.
3. Use of keywords in your H1 headline, preferably at the start.
4. Use of keyword anchor text in internal site links, preferably contextually and not just on your navigation.
5. Use of keywords in the first 100 words of the page.

Factors the Search Engines are looking for:

1. The level of trust and authority held by your domain, so PR factors like domain age, links, references on the web, returning traffic and so on.
2. The number of links pointing to your page.
3. The keywords used in the anchor text of the links pointing to your page.
4. The keywords used in the text of you webpage.
5. The amount of traffic and the click through rate from the SERP’s for your domain.

Things to avoid:

1. Malware on your website.
2. Buying links rather than building links – avoid known link brokers.
3. Links from your site to spam sites.
4. Clocking by user agent, JavaScript or any other method.
5. Server down time and unreliable hosting.