Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated game where the rules aren’t clearly set or change regularly. Search engines won’t disclose all the specific details about how their algorithms work and for a good reason. If everybody understood precisely what makes you rank on top, the search engines would have a tough time deciding which sites are relevant to the user’s query and which ones are just optimized to rank. Some of the ranking puzzle pieces have been uncovered through SEO experiments and testing.

Let’s see what SEO ranking factors are known to have an effect on your site’s ranking and how you can determine its ranking potential. Some of these factors are the quality of content posted on your site, keyword use, domain age, and external link popularity. The good news is that most of these factors consist of onsite elements that you have the power to change.