This is Part of our Blog Series: How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy. Previously, we covered; What is SEO? and SEO Goals.

With over 85% of the search engine market, if you are not focusing your SEO strategy on what Google deems is important, then your strategy will be unsuccessful.

When it comes to making sure your website is getting picked up by Google’s organic search results, there are really only two things that matter to Google. (This is their “special sauce” and the reason they dominate the search market and are worth about $200 billion today.)

These two things are the “On Page” factors and Inbound Links. On Page factors are things about your site that tell Google you are relevant for a particular keyword. These are keywords in the body copy, URLs, and other HTML tags. Inbound links is a popularity contest. Do other websites link to your site with keywords that are relevant? Are these important websites? For example, it makes a big difference if CNN or IBM link to your website vs. getting a link from a non-relevant site with very little traffic.

Focusing your SEO efforts on these two factors, will lead to positive SEO results.

To learn additional techniques to rank better on search engines, please download our white paper, “How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy.”