| Top Web Hosting Provider of The Month: |
 |
| Visit Bluehost.com | Read Bluehost Review |
|
|
| >> Web Hosting Geeks // Web Hosting Articles // SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
|
|
 |
Twelve Steps to Higher Search Engine Placement
Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors to any web site get there as a result of a search engine query. If this study is to believed, it certainly suggests that working to get high rankings in the search engines might be the most effective thing you can do to bring traffic to your site. The following 12 design tips will help you get started in optimizing your site's search engine placement. 1. Design for Specific Search Engines - there are hundreds of different search engines, but for best results you should design your site to take full advantage of the search criteria of the big three - Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you can get high rankings in these three, you won't need to worry about the other search engines. Knowing how these search engines rank sites (as well as why they will penalize a site) is important. The rules change often, but the tips below are the most current. 2. Know your target audience. Before you apply any of the tips below, do some research and find out what are the most likely key words and phrases your target audience will be searching for. In most cases, the key words or phrases won't be your site name, but will be something related to the solution to a specific problem or the answer to a specific question. Knowing the question that will be asked is half the battle. 3. Use Meta tags. By now just about everyone knows about Meta tags. These are commands you can place in the html on your web page to help the search engines categorize what your page is about. The two most important Meta Tags are 'Keyword' and 'Description'. The description Meta tag should describe what is on the particular page, and the keyword Meta tag should include the important key words from the page. Avoid using 'fluff' words and phrases as these will be ignored by the site. Warning: If the keywords in the Meta keyword line are not found within the text on the web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. This is done to prevent 'meta tag' spoofing. My advice - have a different Meta description tag on every page. And be sure that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page. 4. Optimize your Title tag. Many search engines give considerable weight to the html title tag on the page. It is the first element the search engine will scan and weight. Not including a title instantly reduces the search engine ranking your page will receive. When yo create a title tag, include keywords and write it to catch the attention of the users be scanning lengthy lists of titles in search engine results. For higher ranking, make sure the title tag matches headline text on the page. And be sure to use a different title tag for each page on your site. (Pages with the same title tag will often be ignored.) 5. Use Keywords in page headlines. Page headlines are important - to your visitor as well as to search engines. Use short keyword phrases, including hot button words and phrases. Avoid 'fluff' and generic words. My advice - use a strong headline on the page, and use the same headline in the title tag. 6. Use interesting text. Search engines actually count all the words on a webpage, then rank those words by frequency of use. The more often you use a word or phrase(up to a point), the higher you will rank with that word or phrase in the search engine. For that reason, be sure to include words or phrases that are likely to be searched for on your pages. My advice - Keep your text short, on topic, and packed full of keywords. Avoid useless and meaningless words, and certain phrases that will place you in the penalty box. 7. Use the AlT tags on all images. Search engines are starting to index sites by the images found on the site. They accomplish this by looking at all the image tags on the page, and cataloging the ALT tags accompanying the image. Obviously if you don't use the ALT tag, then images on your site won't be properly cataloged. When using the alt tag, be sure to use a keyword or phrase describing the content of the image. 8. Use the Title tag on links. Search engines look at all text on the site, including the title tag on the links on your site. Most sites still don't use the link title tag, so when you do, you gain an advantage. The link title should be a short keyword or phrase. My advice - Check out how the pages on my site have a left navigation menu filled with department names. I try to make these names keywords for my site, and the link to the departments all make use of the title tag. Doing it this way means that the search engine ranks the department names twice. Once as text, and again as a Link Title Tag. 9. Provide a Link Trail. Search engines coming to your site follow the links on the front page that lead into your site. These links should provide a 2 level trail to all pages on your site. If you don't provide a link trail, the search engines probably won't find all your pages. (And even if you do provide a 'link trail' - if you use the same title tag and Meta tags on your pages, the search engine may ignore all the pages beyond the first one.) My advice - check out how every page on my site has a one click link trail to any department on the site. You are never more than two clicks away from any page. Plus every page has at least 30 different link trails (through the departments) making it easy for visitors as well as search engine spiders to move through the site. 10. Avoid the Penalty Box. Search engines are getting smarter every day, and they will penalize a site if it violates search engine rules. These rules include: Keyword spoofing - using keywords not related to site content Keyword spamming - pasting hundreds of copies of the keywords on the page just to get high ranking Numerous doorway pages - using hundreds of index pages that do nothing but point to the site Link Spamming - submitting links to the 500,000 link submission services Page Redirects - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking Frames on Main Page - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking Flash Movie on Main Page - not necessarily a major penalty, but can cause loss of ranking My advice: Keep in mind that search engines are intelligent software. When they visit a page they try to determine what the page is about, relying primarily on the titles, headlines, text, links, and images on the page. That's why it is important to focus on those elements, and avoid the ones that can put you in the penalty box. 11. Check for errors. Before you submit your page to the search engines, run the page through an html checker and a spelling checker. Search engines do check and take into consideration spelling and html errors, and will penalize a page that has too many of either. My advice - take the time to do it right. If you get a poor ranking on a search engine it might be six weeks before the search engine comes back to re-rank you. Get it right before you submit to the search engines, and then keep it right so when the search engine returns, you will continue to get high rankings. 12. Manually submit the site. Don't be tempted to use an automatic site submission program. They don't work, and can get you penalized. Better to manually submit your site to the top search engines. Yahoo, Google, MSN. My advice - Start with Google.com, then yahoo.com, and then MSN.com. Each has a place to register your site with their search engine. This may seem a lot of work, but if you do it right and get high rankings, it will pay off. Craige Stacey has been studying search engines optimization as a hobby and has achieved some very good search engine positions in the past for PublisherGate - membership website software
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Niche Marketing - Why Keyword Research Come First A good portion of my business involves spending hours and hours using incredibly powerful but difficult to master software to uncover thousands of the exact, targeted keyword phrases people in any given niche market are typing into the search engines.When people new to the internet discover what I do and see the huge lists of keyword phrases and search data I uncover and compile, they often ask me what the heck it is used for. Is Google Fair? If you are the owner of a new website, trying to get a decent ranking from the mighty google, you will no doubt answer with a resounding, NO! Recent findings indicate that Google's algorithm has an ageing filter, which put in simple terms, makes it harder for a new webmaster to get high ranking in the SERP's, in the short term at least. So does this mean google favours established sites over new ones?Broad keywords appear nigh on impossible to get top 50 rankings for, and Google's first page seems like an unattainable dream. Google Sitemaps Just Got Better Having a Google Sitemap just got better! Not only does the search engine company check your sitemap, but now they give you feedback! The new feature was quickly noticed by many users of the service recently as a way for Google to alert the webmaster about possible problem pages that they have had trouble indexing.I had the wonderful experience of getting to know this service first hand when I logged in to Google Sitemaps to check on the status of one of my many sitemaps. Search Engine Submission - What to Look for when Selecting an Australian SEO Company Every business owner I've met has been encouraged at some point to invest in a website; often convinced with hype that if their business didn't have a website then they might as well pack their bags and retire to the social security queue.Hype aside, this statement is basically true. How To Syndicate Your Content Note: In order to preserve the proper format for the HTML code snippet in this article, copy and paste the article into Notepad, then copy and paste it from Notepad into your HTML web page.-----------------------------Do you have regularly updating content that you would like to make available to other websites? Perhaps a computer tip of the day, a daily recipe, or even a daily cartoon?Do you want to give your website more exposure, boost sales, enhance your search engine rankings, or grow your newsletter subscriber list?A fast and easy way to accomplish all of these goals is by using content syndication. SEO Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization About 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you're not on the first 2 pages, most people won't find you. Click Click Boom: a Linking Strategy that will Blow Away Your Competition Web marketers, do you hear what I hear?"Click-click BOOM"That's the sound of your new linking strategy that's going to positively blow your competition clear out of the water.Click-click BOOM. Search Engine Traffic: Winning With Content Targeted traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. The best source of free-targeted traffic to your site is the search engines. Attack Smaller Searches To Get The Big Ones! Searching online can not only be fun, but you sometimes need to be downright inventive.For those of you who have been searching online for years now, you've probably adapted ways & techniques to find what you are looking for quickly. Keyword Popularity Check Before using keywords for your site, it is always better to check for the popularity of these sub theme keywords. Some or all of the tools mentioned in the keywords tools section could be utilized to measure the popularity of these keywords. DIY SEO Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords. PageRank for Websites: Is There More to the Web? Google's PageRank has been around for years, and in the opinions of a lot of e-business owners, it can make or break a site. Lately, with Google's fingers in every pie, it seems important to remind everyone that there is more to a website than just PageRank. Diary of a Google Gazumpee Back in November, when the Google Dance began, Barry Lloyd of makemetop.co. The Sandbox Effect What once many people thought they had a penalty, is now being called the Sandbox Effect and is causing new web sites not to rank very well in the search results of Google, not even for the least competitive phrases. Meaning that a filter is being placed on new web sites and cannot rank very high for most words or phrases for a certain amount of time. Link Popularity Pitfalls As we all know Google uses their PageRank technology to measure link popularity by counting the number of inbound links to your web pages, and it is one of the many factors influencing your ranking. Most website owners do not utilize properly what PageRank they already have. The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. A Link From An Ugly Duckling Website With A PR=1 Could Give You 10 to 80 Times More PageRank Whether you want to start a business and sell on the Internet or you're an old pro and want more Internet sales, here's the easy way to do it.To get the most sales on the Internet you need to have a high PageRank on Google. An SEO Checklist Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. Content Is King Over the past few years, there have been many debates about different search engine optimisation strategies, though it is highly important that a range of strategies are pulled together as one to form the best optimisation program possible. There is one particular factor that is becoming ever more important when it comes to reaching number one in the search engine results pages. Google Page Rank Is Dead - Part II In part I - Google Page Rank Is Dead - Or Ist It? http://web-marketing.smartads.
|
|
|
|
|
| © 2004 - 2008 "Web Hosting Geeks" | Web Hosting Reviews | Customer Reviews | RealMetrics Reviews | Hosting Articles | Directory | Partners | Contacts Over 7000 articles: web hosting, web development, domain names, ecommerce, web design, site promotion, ppc advertising, seo, site promotion and many others. Web hosting reviews, ratings and awards are not based on any incentives or commissions. Names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. A direct link to Web Hosting Geeks (http://webhostinggeeks.com) must be provided in order to use any of the above information. Contact us for more info. Partners: Hosts by speed, Cheap Website Hosting, Free Website Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting, Top 10 Web Hosts, Top 10 Web Hosting Deals, Best Website Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Adult Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discussions, Dedicated Server Reviews, Best Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discounts, HostProfessor.com, rsuog, halyava, PHP Website Hosting Services, Web Hosting Reviews, Hosting Uptime, Best Web Hosting Reviews, Cheap Webhosting, Web Hosting, Flash Templates, CMS Templates, Web Hosting Reviews, Website Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Providers, Best Web Hosting, Top Web Hosting, RSUOG Web Hosting |
