There are potentially hundreds of factors search engines use when indexing and ranking a website. This can quickly become overwhelming for both organizations and web professionals. When it really comes down to it however, content is and always will be king. With that in mind here are five important things to know about search engine optimization.

1) The total number of pages in your website

The amount of content you make available via your website is critical for SEO. It is important to have content that is relevant to your target audience and specifically the terms they will use to find information. The number of pages you will need to create depend on how tough your industry is and how strong you competitors are online.

2) The number of total indexed pages targeting a specific keyword
Luckily you can use a simple technique in Google to determine the number of pages any website has indexed for a specific keyword. Simply go to Google.com and type site:thewebsiteyouwant.com and the add the keyword you are looking for in quotes. For example (site:apple.com “iPod”). This will return the total number of pages apple has indexed under the iPod keyword.

3) The number of internal links, linking to related content within your website
Every page in your website will be indexed and ranked for one or more keywords. Each page in your site that is indexed under a certain keyword could bring value to other of like content by inter linking between them. Look for these opportunities and link only when there will also be value to the human user.

4) How many visitors your website receives from referral sites
This is commonly referred to as deep linking. For optimal search engine performance it is commonly accepted that you should have at least 10 inbound links to your top priority pages from websites outside of your own. This will help these pages in their rankings by proving the authority of the content that exists within them.

5) How frequently the content on your website updated
Most SEO professionals like the guys from www.seoadvantage.com.au believe that it is very important to continually add new relevant content to your website. This will help to enhance the authority of your domain name. Add new pages whether the be blog posts, white papers or some other form of content will not only create more content to be indexed but also allow you to better target new industry keywords as they become priorities.