OUTSIDE FACTORS:

1. Design
Your site's design plays a major in role in determining your ultimate search engine ranking. There are many things that influence your site's design, including graphics, layout, load time, fonts, navigation and so on. For a site that retains visitors, follow three simple guidelines: fast, clean and pleasant.

1.1 Graphics
Four GIF rule: Use no more than four images on your home page. It's a good idea to have as little images as possible, especially on your home page.

1.2 Font
Researchers claim that Arial and Times New Roman are easiest on the eye. These two fonts are also most common and are available standard on various computer platforms. If possible, try to use these fonts: they are easiest to recognize.

1.3 Background
Avoid using an image for your background. It will probably be large, since it takes up the whole screen and will slow down your pages. Also, research shows that background images make it harder for people to read. The best combination for reading is white background and black letters. If you prefer to use other colors, still try to keep the background light and the font dark.

1.4 Web-safe colors
Colors are displayed differently on websites due to how they are interpreted by the browser. There are 216 web-safe colors, ones that will be displayed as you see them. By using these colors, you can be sure that your visitors see what you meant for them to see.

1.5 New Multimedia
The new multimedia options, such as Flash and Director will impact your site's load time. Always provide your visitors with the option of skipping an intro and going straight to the site. Even search engines do not prefer website's that are a full-blown multi media extravaganza. Try using as little of these as possible.

1.6 Frames
Search engines do not penalize sites for using frames but indexing such sites become more difficult for them and consecutively, in the long run your website stands a small chance of better and higher search engine positioning.

2. Navigation
Navigation is the text or images, or any other method that guides a user through your site. It is a way to connect parts of your website and let your visitor choose where he or she wants to visit.

Elements Of Good Navigation
Sites generally use text or images for navigation. The benefits of using text include fast loading pages, clearly defined links and less space usage than with images.

Images, on the other hand, can make your site aesthetically pleasing and professional. Most sites feature a combination of text and image links, making a site look professional and be user-friendly. You will notice that many sites have image navigation with text navigation at the bottom of the page.

A mistake that many web designers make with navigation is making it hard to spot. If you have text links, make sure that they're a different color, font or size; anything to make them stand out. You should also make link images easy to identify. Place a border around them, or add some text underneath. Don't make your visitors look for links; differentiate them from the rest of your site.

Consistency Is The Key
Whether you use images or text for your navigation, being consistent is very important. Here are two things that you should consider:

Pay attention to the rest of the world
If everyone else is using a shopping cart as a symbol for the ordering section, it's not a good idea to use money as your symbol. Although it might be prettier, keep in mind what your visitors are used to seeing. Chances are, they'll expect to see the same thing on your site. Keep your navigation standard: include sections such as company info or a contact page to make a visitor feel more comfortable.

Same thing, same place
If your navigation is on the top of your home page, it should also be on the top of all the other pages. Similar layout should be used throughout the site.

3. Common Mistakes

Spelling
Although search engines don't penalize for spelling or syntax mistakes, run spell check before publishing your site.

No Construction areas
Editors for any directory, such as Yahoo!, ODP and LookSmart, will tell you that "This page is under construction" message means that you won't be listed. Don't submit to directories until you have the whole site up. Neither the editors, nor your visitors are going to enjoy "construction" areas.

Perfectly functional
Make sure that your site is functional; editors and your visitors alike don't want to see error messages. All links, registration forms, password-protected sections and cookies should be working properly.

Registration
Don't make visitors register to get past your home page. Many users, as well as directory editors, won't waste their time with this. Make registration optional, if possible.

Outside Links
Many sites make the common mistake of placing links to other sites that open in the same window (instead of a new one). Links to outside sites should open in a new window, so that your visitor returns to your site after he or she closes that window.

PAGE-RELATED FACTORS

Page-related factors are concerned with keywords and their placement in the HTML. These factors include:

1 Title tag
HTML Title describes the contents of your web page. This title is most likely to appear in the results for search engines and on bookmarks. It is also the first thing that a spider sees on your page. Therefore, the title has dual importance since it will be seen by both: people and search engines. The Title tags should be made relevant to the contents on the web page. The title of every page could be crammed with keywords related to the content on the page and thus used to bring maximum benefit to the website.

2. Keyword frequency, weight, prominence and proximity
There are a few techniques that can help improve your search engine rankings. Most of these techniques have one thing in common - use of keywords. Keywords are what people type into a search engine... words that lead them to your site. The importance of having appropriate keywords in your website thus cannot be overemphasized. Keying the right keywords in your website's source code in the form of a meta keywords tag is thus the first step to better search engine positioning. Not just the home page but also even the inner pages should have content specific keywords in its HTML source.

3. Description Tags
Description tags are HTML tags that describe in brief the contents of the page. These are visible to the surfer when your page appears in the results of a search. Thus their importance cannot be undermined. Also these can be effectively used to increase the frequency of keywords in the HTML of your web page.

4. ALT tags
ALT tags, which are basically images' descriptions need to be added to the website. Since search engines don't index images, they can't index all the text that your website has in image format as in the case of photographs of all the models of various products on your website. It can positively influence keyword frequency and help achieve you better rankings.