It’s taken a while, but after 10 years in business we here at Silver Square have gotten a pretty good handle on the algorithm search engines like Google use when returning search results. Various sources have been confirming for years that the majority of traffic on any search term goes to the pages that appear on the first page of search results – expecially the first 3 spots. So understanding the formula used to determine the order results are returned is a vital key to ranking well.

Understandably search engines don’t publicize their ranking formulas because that invites search engine spammers and “black hat” search marketers to manipulate the system. So these numbers are approximate, but it will give you a reasonably good idea of how pages are ranked.

• Talent 35% – Does the page demonstrate something unusual and interesting that the search engine hasn’t seen before? Pages with video clips of strong musical performances or juggling fire will see a boost in their ranking.
• Evening Wear 25% – Does the page project an image of elegance and sophistication? Significant preference is given to sites that include rhinestones and colorful sequins in their design. Any page layout that includes an exposed midriff in the middle of the page is going to get dinged, but a modest slit up the sidebar is acceptable.
• Swimsuit 20% – Although the page should reveal some tantalizing content when a visitor first sees the page, the search engine judges like for you to leave something to the imagination. For this reason, it’s important that you don’t put all of your information on the home page. Save a little something for the secondary pages of your site, or at least move it below the fold of the home page. Stay classy.
• On-Stage Question 15% – Each page also has the opportunity to use their title and description meta tag to respond to questions asked by search engine users. Examples of common questions asked include “how far to the sun?” “what is bill gates worth?” “jonas brothers lyrics” “danica patrick” and “free mp3 forum”
• Judge’s Discretion 5% – The judge also has a small amount of leeway to push a page higher (or lower) in the rankings if the page demonstrates strength in keyword density, page titles, meta descriptions, page rank, inbound links, relevant anchor text, keywords used in title and heading tags, age of domain, traffic and historical click-through data, social media buzz, keyword appearing in root domain, image alt tags, freshness of page, unique content, frequency of updates, ratio of code to text, query parameters, W3C standard compliance, presence and prevalence of advertising, diversity of link sources, location in site hierarchy, internal link popularity, global link popularity of domain, links from hubs/authoritative sites, growth of inbound links over time, page load time, server uptime, use of XML sitemaps, use of feeds, use of SSL certificates, detection of keyword stuffing, cloaking, excessively long URLs, links from untrusted sites, overuse of nofollow attribute, language of site, country code TLD, geographic location of visitors to site, and geo-tagging in meta data.

So there you have it. Now as you are preparing to enter the competition for search engine rankings, you know where to focus your efforts. Good luck!