The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings 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.
http://seos.awardspace.com
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