Google (and other search engines) take many things into account when rating your pages for search rankings, and as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, they’re a much-analyzed secret. But there are a few that stand out from many people’s experience as counting toward a lot of points.

One of these is your HTML title or page title. This is simply the title that shows up in the top of your browser window. Google prefers this to be descriptive and unique for every page, rather than just having the title of your entire site repeated throughout. An easy solution is to use the article/content title (which is ideally full of searchable keywords).

Another is your URL or web address. Google likes keywords to be in the URL, too, and the closer to the beginning, the better, in my experience – which means keywords in your domain name (primary web address) are extremely helpful. For instance, Canadian Business will rank well in searches containing the word “Canadian” as its main address, canadianbusiness.com, includes it.

Both of these are areas where you can improve upon your site’s search rankings, either through a site upgrade or during a relaunch.