Search engines operate independently of each other, and they’re ranking criteria are closely guarded secrets. However, people have figured out some things that seem to improve rankings. Largely, you need to treat this information as speculation or an educated guess. The search engines aren’t publishing the recipe for a top 10 ranking.

Essentially, each search engine has specific criteria it deems important or not. And it compares your website against this criteria, or algorithm. If your site meets the criteria, then it’s also compared against sites offering similar products or information as yours. Whichever site scores best in the algorithm gets the higher ranking.

Search engines rely on their results being fair, accurate, and completely non-partisan. That’s what the public wants. And if people start thinking they’re being sold a bill of goods by a search engine, they’ll move on and use another one. So, search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to keep ahead of the spammers.

Everyone pretty much knows that Google places a huge emphasis on a site’s title, so everyone’s paying a lot of attention to that piece of real estate. And one day, Google will change the algorithm and something else will get higher marks. And the scramble starts again.