Good news! There are a lot of things you can do in order to increase your site rankings. Word of caution – always use white-hat methods! The opposite methods, black-hat, will result in you being seen as a spammer and may even result in a suspended site. Follow the tips in this article to do search engine optimization the right way.
Make sure not to just have a lot of links that really don’t mean anything, just to raise your numbers. People want to see quality work, not just the quantity. If you only build one high quality link a week, that will increase your Page Rank faster than 10 low quality ones will.
Figure out what your goal is on every single page and then design to that goal. For example, let’s say you are selling hockey equipment. Do you want to focus the page and copy towards equipment reviews, playing hockey with friends or the NHL? A more targeted page will garner more clicks, but a broader page will get more views. You have to figure out which works for each ad individually.
Good URL titles can encourage linking from other sites. URL titles should be easy to remember and descriptive. Other web site owners can make the URL itself the link . This makes their job easier and, most importantly, you don’t leave anything to chance in regard to how your site might be described in a link.
Make sure your articles cross-link internally with anchor text full of keywords so that search engines can index your site and know what each page was about. This is key to not only helping your search engine page rank, but also to helping your readers find other articles they’ll be interested in.
For search engine optimization use prominence. Prominence refers to how a keyword is placed in relation to the beginning of your website. Two ways to increase your prominence is to include your keywords in title tags that search engines can see and also in the title of the website, which is visible to visitors. Another way to make your keywords more prominent is to put header tags around your visible title.
Flash files can make your blog or website more attractive, but search engine spiders cannot read the keywords associated with Flash files. If you want to use Flash content, you should write an article and post it on the same page to have all the keywords related to the Flash content.
The quickest, easiest way to get your website noticed by search engines is by placing keywords in your domain name and title tags. Picked up by a search engine, these keywords bring visitors to your site who are interested in your subject. More visitors means more customers and more revenue.
Once your website is Search Engine Optimized (SEO), you also need to work on your off-site SEO. Maximize the number of good websites (not pages of links, or “spam” websites) linking to your website from content-rich pages. The better the site which is linking to you, the more “link juice” you will receive in return, boosting your Google Page Rank.
Once you get your site ranked where you want it you can never stop working on search engine optimization. If you aren’t improving your site then you are degrading its effectiveness. If you allow your site to slip down then someone will start ranking above you. Add new, relevant content continually and always work on improving your links.
Always check the link to your home page throughout every page on your website to make sure it’s working effectively in order to make your SEO better. If some links are connecting to one place and another is connecting to the other place than your splitting your links and your website isn’t getting as many hits as it should be. This means that some of your links are going to www.bob.com and some are going to www.bob.com/index.html. This will cause it to appear as though your main site is getting less hits than it really is.
Make sure that you use valid XHTML codes. If you’re not familiar with XHTML or don’t want to go through the hassle, it’s definitely worth while, and easy to do. Just click through the W3C Validator, type in your site address, and resolve all the issues that come up.
One way to enhance your standing in website search rankings is to improve the time it takes your website to load. Search engines are looking to deliver the best possible experience to their searchers and now include load time into their search ranking protocols. Slow loading sites get lost in the mix when searchers get impatient waiting for sites to load. Explore ways to optimize your loading process with solutions like compressed images, limited use of Flash animations and relocating JavaScript outside your HTML code.
Flash frames and other program-driven content are murder for search engine optimization. Since flash and similar programs display content as an image rather than text that can be parsed by computer programs, none of the content in these programs can be recognized by search engines, and thus your rankings will plummet. Stick to plain text wherever possible to improve search engine rankings.
Whatever you do, don’t overstuff your pages full of keywords. Search engines don’t like it, and they will penalize your site. Some people cram a ton of keywords into their pages just to increase search engine rankings. The problem is, the visitor clicks on the page, only to discover there is no valuable information for them, just a bunch of useless words. Keyword stuffing can get your site banned from search engine results.
So, now you know some of the ins and outs of search engine optimization. It’s not difficult to correctly optimize your blog or site for the search engines. It’s going to take some time and a lot of effort, but the tips you learned here were all fairly simple and very straightforward. Just remember to always implement them accurately and never to try any shortcuts in marketing. Avoid anything that may put you in the black-hat category! Always use white-hat methods!
