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At least 85% of buyers of goods and services on the Internet locate websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. It stands to reason that the higher your page comes up in search engine results, the higher the volume of traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is about.
You can get bogged down 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 coloured 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 yourcompany 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. You should 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 examine is your website content. Search engines give greater weight to sites that contain quality content rather than fancy 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 possible 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.
Next we need to consider meta tags. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. It is still worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
Finally, 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 web pages.
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. If 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. Also, posting to online forums creates valuable links from your signature file.
Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the basic steps listed above, and see if you can boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this massively important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed to your site.
Category: Search Engine OptimizationImproving Your Search Engine Ranking was written by:Author:Cameron JohnsonAdded: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:12:15 -0500 This Article Has Been Read 453 times View all Cameron Johnson's articlesAbout the Author: About the Author: Cameron Johnson is the owner of a number of Web Sites aimed at helping people find profitable money making opportinities on the Internet. To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.NetCashMadeEasy.com |
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