| by: Dechen
Lau
Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking may
seem like rocket science to you, so you
have probably avoided dealing with this
issue. I am here to tell you - the time
has come to face your website! A high search
engine ranking for your website is so essential
that if you have the slightest desire to
actually succeed in your business, there
is no way you can continue to avoid this
issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods
and services on the Internet find websites
through search engines such as Google, Yahoo,
and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages
for high search engine rankings is to attract
targeted customers to your site who will
be more than likely to make a purchase.
The higher your page comes up in search
engine results, the greater the traffic
that is directed to your website. That's
what search engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical
information available online to figure out
how to optimize your web pages to achieve
higher rankings. Or you can look at a few
simple items on your pages, make some small
adjustments, and most likely see improved
rankings quite rapidly. The first item you
should examine is the title bar on your
homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the
top of the page.
Look at the words that appear there when
you access your home page. To increase search
engine rankings, the words on your homepage's
title bar should include the most important
keywords or phrases, one of which would
include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine
the title bars on the pages you access.
Each title bar on every single page of your
site should contain the most important keywords
and phrases taken from the page itself.
However, avoid very long strings of keywords,
keeping them to six words or less. Avoid
repeating keywords more than once in the
title bars, and make sure that identical
words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope
is your website content. Search engines
generally list sites that contain quality
content rather than scintillating graphics.
The text on your site must contain the most
important keywords - the words that potential
customers will be typing into search engines
to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page,
but if this is not desirable due to your
design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen
words. If you want to achieve a high ranking
on search engines, this text is essential.
However, the search engines must be able
to read the text, meaning that the text
must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format,
take your cursor and try to highlight a
word or two. If you are able to do this,
the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight,
it is probably in graphic form. In this
case, ask your webmaster to change the text
into HTML format in order to increase your
search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags.
I know this sounds like something out of
science fiction, but it is really just simple
code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings,
but in reality, they only have a limited
effect. Still, it's worth adding them in
the event that a search engine will use
meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with
meta tags, you must access the code. To
do this, click the "view" button
on the browser menu bar, and select "source."
This will pull up a window revealing the
underlying code that created the page.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear
near the top of the window. For example,
a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords"
content=. If you do not find code that reads
like this, ask your webmaster to put them
in. This may not do much for your search
engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity.
This is a factor that is extremely important
in terms of search engine rankings. Almost
all search engines use link popularity to
rank your website. Link popularity is based
on the quality of the sites you have linked
to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity
check" in a popular search engine,
the search engine will then show you what
sites are linked to your site. In the case
that there aren't many sites linked up to
yours, or that the sites that are linked
up have low search engine rankings, consider
launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially,
this entails contacting quality sites and
requesting that they exchange links with
your site. Of course, this requires checking
out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality
sites not only boosts your search engine
ranking, but it also directs more quality
traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important
for a successful Internet marketing campaign.
Before you go out and hire a search engine
optimization company, try taking some of
the simple steps listed above, and see if
you can't boost your rankings yourself.
Don't ever ignore this all-important factor
in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher
your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.
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