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Saturday, 06 Sep 2008
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How
To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking
by
Suzanne Morrison
With
search engines like Google currently indexing over 8 billion pages,
it is becoming more and more difficult to get a top search engine
ranking. Type in a popular search phrase such as "Internet
Marketing" into Yahoo or Google and you will be returned
over 8 million results!
Unless
your website is in the first two or three pages, it is unlikely
that you will receive many visitors from search engines.
So
what should a webmaster do to give their website the best chance
of ranking high in the search engines?
All
search engines work slightly differently and have ever changing
algorithms for ranking web pages, but these tips can be applied
when planning, developing or marketing a website to help you reach
that top page of search engine results.
(1)
Choose your keywords carefully.
It's
extremely important to set aside time to research your keywords.
It's best to do this in the planning stages, before developing
your website, but many of us start a website without knowing a
thing about how the search engines work, so you may find yourself
doing this weeks or months later.
Try
to choose phrases that are searched on frequently and if possible
have a low number of competing websites.
To
get an idea of the number of times a keyword is searched for per
month, type a keyword into the box at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
This
will tell you how many times your keyword was searched on in the
previous month (based on Overture's partner search engines) and
give you a list of similar keywords.
Another
useful tool to help you choose your keywords is WordTracker. This
tool will help you choose your keywords and give you a "KEI"
for each set of keywords based on the popularity of the keyword
(number of searches) and the amount of competition.
You
can try this out for free at http://www.homebiz-direct.com/wordtracker.html.
If
you manage to pick your keywords in the planning stages you may
even be lucky enough to find a domain name that contains your
keywords.
(2)
Optimise your pages.
Once
you have decided on your keywords you will need to optimise your
pages for those keywords. Here are a few tips.
–
Ensure that the Title of your page contains your keywords.
–
Mention your keywords inside the meta tags. Most search engines
no longer use meta tags, but some make use of them so it is still
worthwhile using these.
–
Try to make sure that the first occurance of readable text on
your page contains your keywords.
–
Ensure that your keywords are mentioned in the initial paragraph
of your page.
–
Use your keywords throughout the text of your page, but be careful
not to overdo this. Your page should still be readable by humans!
–
Use your keywords between the headline tags on your page ("H1"
tags or H2/H3 if H1 is too big).
–
Occasionally bold or italicise your keywords.
–
Make sure that links pointing back to each page on your site contain
the keywords for each page.
–
Give all your images an "ALT" tag and put your keywords
in here too—again, don't overdo this.
–
Try to put some of your keywords in your outbound links.
(3)
Start linking.
One
of the most important criteria in getting a good search engine
ranking is the number of backlinks you have to your website from
related websites.
Type
in your chosen keywords to Yahoo or Google and take note of the
top 3 sites returned to you.
Now
go to http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
and put the URLs of the top 3 sites into the linking tool, along
the URL of your own site.
Have
a look at the difference between your site and the top 3 sites
and this will give you an idea of how many links you need in order
to get a top search engine ranking for these keywords.
The
best ways to get links back to your site are:
–
By writing articles related to the subject of your website and
getting them published on the Internet.
–
Reciprocal Linking with other related websites
–
Posting on newsgroups and forums that allow you to have a signature
attached to your posting (with your URL in it).
–
Submitting your site to directories.
Try
to make sure that the anchor text (clickable text) that links
back to your site contains your keywords.
(4)
Add Content Regularly.
Another
thing you may have noticed is that top ranking websites have lots
of content.
Regularly
updating your website and adding fresh content will also help
your site to rank more highly in the search engines.
If
you don't have time to create your own unique content there are
plenty free articles available, just type "Free website content"
into Google and you'll have your pick of the 18 million results
that it returns to you!
To
improve your ranking, follow steps 1 and 2 above and repeat steps
3 and 4 regularly.
You
can check your progress on Yahoo and Google by using the free
search engine ranking tools at the following sites: http://www.yahoosearchrankings.com/index.php
and http://www.googlerankings.com/.
Suzanne
Morrison is the webmaster and owner of http://www.homebiz-direct.com.
To learn more about how to promote your website visit her Internet
Marketing pages on http://www.homebiz-direct.com/internetMarketing.html.
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