The search engine game is one that consumes a lot of time and effort. "How do I get on the first page of Google???" is the question on everyone's minds. Some ambitious people even want that coveted #1 listing.

What the search engines want is to be able to come up with the perfect page for whatever the searcher types into the search box. The more general the term to harder it is for the search engine to figure out what you want and, maybe not so coincidentally, the harder it is for you to rank for that term, if only because of the massive competition. Type "Growth" into Google and you will get a wide range os possibilities.

Type in something like Sony BRAVIA KDL-46EX500 1080P 120Hz 46-Inch LCD HD TV and guess what? the number 1 listing is for the amazon.com page that I used to copy that title. Google seems to have little problem identifying what I might want with that keyword. All the other links on the results page, including most of the ads, are for that same product.

Amazon's page has some of the SEO factors that you can use for your pages.

On page match

The keyword (search phrase) that I used is an exact match for the title tag of that page, the page title, and the content of that page. This is as it should be since that's the page where I swiped the actual phrase. Pretty much everything on that page is tightly related to that one product.

So for your pages the title tag, the page title, and the page content should be a good match. On a long page, like the amazon page, there will be many variations of that phrase, which will also help. Using exactly the same keyword over and over again makes for awkward reading. Mix it up somewhat with some variations.

Authority

Amazon is a PR 9 site. (Page Rank is Google's way of measuring the importance or a page and the authority ofa site. 9 is very high.) This means that any page on Amazon will automatically rank better than pages on a lesser domain, things being otherwise equal, even with exactly the same content.

Links

Google (using the link: command) shows 1380 links to amazon.com. Yahoo! and Bing show well over 200 million. As for that actual Amazon page with the TV, google says 38 links. Some of these are internal and some are from external pages linking to the amazon page. Any product on Amazon will probalby rank well, automatically, due to the massive number of internal linking and the authority of the domain. Not to mention a lot of techie sites and affiliates linking to that page.

Notice that despite 200 million+ links and a PR of 9, Amazon's home page does not rank for that search. Not in the top 10, anyway, and you'd probably have to dig really deep to find it.

So how do you use this to get better search engine ranking?

Your on page stuff needs to match up to whatever your main keyword is. Title tag, page title, on page content, and links out should all be "on topic."

Your site on "Tile Mosaic Design" will probably never have Amazon's authority, or a PR of 9, but it can eventually be an authority in that niche. You'll want lots of good content and lots of links coming in on a variety of related topics. A lot of internal, on topic, cross-linking is also a big help.

You will want to get keyword links form all over the place, preferably from sites with some authority and/or pages with some PR. The higher the better. A "keyword link" simply has your keyword in the clickable text of the link. It should also link to the exact page most appropriate to that keyword.

The trick, of course, is to find good places to get links and then there are tricks beyond that, some of which are unethical ("black hat.") "White Hat" techniques will serve you well and will last a lot longer. Work on the above techniques and learn all that you can about linking and your pages will defintely earn better esearch engine page ranking.

GrowthAndMarketing covers a variety of Maeketing and personal growth related topics oriented towards the new marketer, including tips for SEO, linking, article marketing, and more. To learn more about what the search engines want see How to Earn Better Search Engine Page Ranking and the other topics on http://growthandmarketing.com.