Link Popularity

Link popularity has become increasingly important for those who wish to increase search engine ranking, with 19 of the top 20 engines using it in their ranking algorithms. Simply put, search engines give a ranking boost to sites that have links from quality, related sites

Issue #1- Meta Tags
Some people believe that meta tags are the Holy Grail of achieving a high ranking on a search engine. Unfortunately, their effectiveness is limited (many engines ignore them completely), but they can play a limited role on some engines. To see if your site has meta tags, go to your home page. Click the "view" command at the top of the browser window. From the pull-down menu, select "source". This should open up another window that shows your code. Much of this may seem indecipherable, but there should be two commands there (usually near the top of the code). One of these says meta name="description" content= and will go on to describe your company and products, and one says meta name="keywords" content= and goes on to list applicable keywords for your site. If these tags are missing, have your web expert insert them. Again, this may not do much to increase search engine ranking, but it will not hurt.

Issue #2- Links
Link popularity has become increasingly important for those who wish to increase search engine ranking, with 19 of the top 20 engines using it in their ranking algorithms. Simply put, search engines give a ranking boost to sites that have links from quality, related sites. There are numerous free tools on the web that will allow you to see what sites link to yours (just type "free link popularity check" in your favorite search engine). If you don't have many sites linking to yours, it may be time to start a link building campaign. This is where you find quality, non-competing sites in your industry and ask them to link to your site. An additional benefit of link building is that these links can bring you additional, highly targeted traffic.