When it comes to college football, the Hollywood box office, and the Billboard music chart, everyone wants to be number one. The same goes for search engine optimization (SEO).

Becoming number one for Google search queries carries with it a certain appeal – not only do you surpass your competition, overtaking them in rank and position, bu you are also listed for all the world to see at the very top of the search engine mountain as the coveted number one result. And being at the top means something, many things actually.

It means that you have been recognized as having the best content on the Web for that particular search query. It means that your Web site will garner more traffic. The traffic will be qualified, leading to more contacts, more leads and more sales. And it means that you’ve worked really hard to get to the top. You need to identify what you've been doing that works so that you can continue to stay at the top!

So unless you are already number one, you have your work cut out for you.

The SEO techniques you need to employ to get ahead in the search engines are determined by your industry’s competition and the competitiveness of the specific keywords and keyword phrases.

Some of the determining factors include:

• Domain Age – how old is your site? Older domains do carry a little more weight
• Title Tags - the words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page...optimizing them may result in more clickthroughs
• Number of Quality Links – how many highly ranked sites link to you? Google views sites that link to you as a “vote” for your site so the higher number of "qualified" sites linking to you, the higher you will be able to climb.
• Keyword Density – is the content on your site optimized for your keywords?
• Number of Indexed Pages – how many pages does your site contain? And do you have a way to grow your overall page count by easily adding new information to your site (news database, blog, etc.)

While there are many, many more, (did we mention lots?) the above factors are a good place to start and will help you examine why you are where you are in the engines. Once you understand the spot that you are in, you can better negotiate your climb.

If you are interested in becoming number one in Google, a lofty goal indeed, or at least starting to compete then complete the Plexus search engine optimization site assessment at Plexus SEO Services.