One of the major factors in website assessment criteria is the role of search engine ranking of your site compared to your competitors'. While reviewing a website, higher search engine ranking for a webpage's keyword is the important factor that brings a lot of traffic to that web site.

This website assessment criteria is one of the first elements you have to find out when reviewing a website. It'll show the way to you for further website optimization.

What's the Search Engine Ranking of Your Website?

Suppose you're searching a word or phrase in a search engine. When the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) appears, you'll see 10 results in each page. They're the web sites that have ranked highest for the searched term you've typed. This is the general method for discovering the search engine ranking of web sites for the searched term.

These days when we talk about the search engine ranking of a website in search engines, usually Google is in our minds. As the major part of searching in most of the countries is done through Google, this search engine plays a vital role in bringing success to you. Of course, you have to see if this is the case with your e-business or not.

Google Page Rank (PR) System

To learn about the page rank of a website in Google, the easiest way is to download and install the Google Toolbar on your web browser. As soon as you enter a website's URL, the Google ranking indicator shows its PR on a 0-10 scale. It won't count that much in reviewing a website based on our website assessment criteria list.

Let's not be too overwhelmed by Google PR system for our Internet business. What matters the most is to rank high at SERPs for the key phrases we've selected. Having 100 targeted visitors per day and lower Google PR is much better than having 1000 visitors per day who visit our sites for various other reasons.

Search Engine Ranking Based on Keywords

You compete with other websites over certain keywords or key phrases. The website that appears higher in SERPs enjoys higher ranks (visibility) for them. Obviously, higher ranking leads to more influx of targeted visitors to your site.

High visibility is a factor every website owner likes to achieve. The important question is where you'd like to have such visibility? In which search engines? For which keywords?

No wonder why there's so much effort and competition on achieving a position on the first (two) page of SERPs. Your entire attempt is toward gaining more targeted traffic. Such traffic brings the kind of visitors you're looking for â€" they should be easily made into customers if your content is created properly. If you're on the third or forth page of the SERPs, there'll hardly be any chance to be found.

In summary, you should select your keywords or key phrases very carefully and put a lot of efforts gaining higher search engine ranking for them. This website assessment criteria helps you realize where you stand compared to your competitors. Knowing this, you should find ways to surpass them.

Keyword Selection

Website Assessment should be performed mainly based on the competition you have with your fellow websites over certain keywords or key phrases. You'll have to use a set of relevant keywords on the your webpages and optimize them for those keywords.

Every website is focused on its niche market. It's likely that your competitor doesn't concentrate exactly on the same niche market that you are. Despite this, when it occupies a higher search engine ranking for your keywords, it'll be considered competition.

Every optimized website has targeted certain keywords through optimization process. Since search engine ranking, as one of the website assessment criteria, works based on the keywords you use, you're seriously in need of a well-managed Keyword Discovery OR KeyPhrase Research.

It's not recommended to select the keywords that receive lots of competition and searches, because it will put you in a difficult position. It's usually recommended to begin with the key phrases more specific to your niche. Although less people search for those phrases, they'll be the same people you're looking for. Here, less traffic is better than larger number of visitors who won't take any action at your site.

Taking Actions for Higher Search Engine Ranking

After you've realized how tough or easy the competition is over your choice key phrases, you'll need to take the following steps:

• Create new content on your site centered around the newly-selected key phrases,

• Optimize the new pages for your key phrases ,

• Submit those new pages to the major search engines, and

• Try to gain inbound link to them from other websites using various methods.

The last but not the least, the process of reviewing a website should be an ongoing effort performed alongside with the above measures to see how your progress is. It takes time and patience, but you'll see the result if you pay due attention to search engine ranking as one of the most important website assessment criteria.