There are many tricks to improve your rankings within a search engine. We all can look these up on the internet. What you may not realize is the most popular words can also lower your rank as much as raise it. Here are some tricks that have worked in the past but may now lower your ranking.

1. Use of the word “sex”
2. Hidden Hyperlinks- links which are the same color as the background
3. Fake links- some sites put links on unrelated areas to increase traffic. Irrelevant links lower your rankings.

Lowers rank

1. Time it takes to load your page
2. Lack of browser capabilities
3. Excessive Javascript and/or text in flash
4. Lack of tags to keywords
5. Unrelated content in your site
6. Repeating content, be original

Raises Rank

1. Using your keywords in your articles with the right dispersion percent
2. Multiple link levels, using 1 link for 20 pages is frowned upon in the SEO community
3. Visibility, use referral links to other sites with similar content
4. Knowing the competition, look for the original angle that your competitors have not used. They use keywords too. Find a different way to use them.

You can judge your ranking ability by how Google ranks you. They are tough and they are always raising their standards. Once you’re on top keep watch.