Getting higher search engine rankings is often not an easy job. If there is strong competition, it requires a fair amount of time and a substantial effort to get that coveted top 3 position.There are two main aspects to improving your rankings with SEO – onsite and offsite.

Onsite SEO means everything which is literally within your site. This can be your meta tags (Title, Description, Keywords) to the way your content is written e.g. keyword density. It also includes your internal linking structure. Getting this right should be considered as the first and most important step, but should not take you all that long once the research is done.

Offsite SEO on the other hand is where the time really needs to be spent. There are a number of ways of increasing your search rankings, the best of which are largely though to involve link building – or backlinks. However, when looking to get these backlinks, you should always bear in mind that the qualities which really lift your site are:

* Dofollow links
* One way links
* Links from high PR sites
* The link needs to have your anchor text for best results

There are a number of places and ways to get links – the most frequently used are social bookmarks, article directories (such as ezines), web directories and profile backlinks. Remember it’s not necessarily how many you have, but how good they are too!

Lastly, combining these methods is your best bet for achieving higher search engine rankings.