Obviously, placement of your listing in the search engines is
critical to being found by your customers and top 10 placement will make a
significant difference in the traffic to your Web page. At a minimum, you need
to be placed in the top 30. A listing further down is not of much use as most
users will only view results from the top 10 to 20 positions.
- Search engine positioning was the top
method cited by web site marketers to drive traffic to their sites
(66%), followed by email marketing (54%). (Direct
Marketing Association, Aug. 2000)
- In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999,
Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website
promotional method used by eCommerce sites.
- Meta tags are the most popular search
engine optimization technique, used by 61% of those surveyed, followed
by optimizing page titles (44%) and link building (32%).
(Iconocast, Nov. 2000)
How do you get a top-10
listing?
Quite simply, you've got to really, really want to get
there. By that I mean you have to be willing to spend the money, and take the
time to learn the secrets of getting there. Simply putting a page on the web
won't get you there. Making a one-time submission to the search engines won't
get you there. It takes time, effort, and knowledge -
there is no other way!
You have
to know the many techniques that will move your web page to a top 10 position.
We have spent countless hours studying the search engines and spend countless
more hours keeping up with their changes. We have tested our submissions and
have a proven track record of achieving that coveted top 10 position for many
of our clients.
Basically, you've got to discover
what the search engines want, create a page that gives them what they want, make the submissions, monitor
your placement over a period of time and modify and resubmit your pages to make
sure you stay on top.
The best way to optimize your web pages for
search engines is relatively simple and follows many of the basic SEO
principles. When it comes to search engine optimization, there are two main
factors that determine you websites ranking.
- “On page” factors that you can easily control in
your favor.
- “Off page” factors such as backlinks and how other
sites link or “point” to your website.
Being able to formulate effective relevant meta-tags and on page
elements is important to pulling a good ranking. Always keep in mind the
following as you optimize your web pages:
- Make each page unique and its meta data different for each
page.
- Make your pages meaningful for the visitor and that they
contain good relevant content.
- Create search engine listings that communicate to the
searcher what the page is about.
Competition
for that coveted top-10 position is fierce and there are others out there doing
what they can to get a better position than you and in some cases to bump those
who have better positions.
Learn What the Search Engines
Want
Since each search engine catalogues the web differently, it is
necessary to understand the individual search engines and how they "look" at
your page. Check Search Engine Watch for details and the latest information
on the various search engines.
In general, your copy should be high in
keyword rich text, and there should be at least 5 pages, your site should be
static and not have dynamically delivered content that the engines can't read.
Flash and over usage of graphics also pose a problem for the search engine
spiders as well as sites in frames that can often not be read.
When you
submit your website to a search engine to be indexed in its database, it sends
a "robot" to scan your page. Using complex algorithms to rank your page for
keyword relevance, the "robot" determines whether you'll be ranked number 1 or
1,000,000 when potential visitors conduct a search looking for sites like
yours. These robots generally look at four key elements in your web page: URL,
<TITLE>, <BODY>, and <META> tags. The keywords you use in
these tags are the pieces that most search engines use to index your page and
are the words that people looking for your page will use to find it.
Search Engine Tip: Yahoo is a human
edited directory, not a search engine. The ranking of your site in Yahoo! does
not depend on your meta tags or alt tags or the body content of your site. It
depends mainly on whether the Title and Description of the site's listing in
Yahoo! (which is not the same as the Title tag and the Meta Description tag of
the home page of your site) contains the keyword, on whether the name of the
category in which your site is listed contains the keyword, and on the click
popularity of your site.
OnPage Factors
Title
The
<TITLE> tag is the single most important phrase you will write for your
website. It is weighted heavily by all the search engines and is usually the
hyper linked sentence that leads to the site from the search engine results
pages. The title is vital to identifying the web page and should be created to
describe the individual page in a meaningful way enticing users to click on it.
It is crucial to include your company’s top key terms within the title
tag. The title should be a maximum of 10 words total or a maximum of 50-70
characters. Make your titles clear and specific to what the page is about. Do
not stuff keywords in your title just to put something there. Ask you self a
question on each page, "what is this page communicating to the searcher?"
Format the title to answer that question.
META Tags
Make your
meta tags descriptive and relevant and your site
will generally rank higher in search engine listings. Many search engines use
your site's meta tag key words, to determine if your site should be included in
someone's search results. If your key words closely match the words entered in
a search, your site will be ranked in the results.
NOTE: The importance of
meta tags has diminished in recent months as current algorithmic studies have
shown that the meta tag is no longer such an important part of your
optimizations. However, since most engines do display them in the results which
can help with getting people to click onto your site, keeping the meta tags
strong, relevant and descriptive of your content is too important to ignore.
Choosing the right
keywords in the META tags can mean the difference between a highly-visible
website or one of those websites that get lost at the bottom of those long
search lists. Your META Tags should be absolutely first and come before images,
javascripts, wav or flash streams, etc. Spiders and "bots" that index pages
cannot read these files.
The <DESCRIPTION> tag is one of the most important sentences
you will write for your web page. It is the best place to formulate a more
detailed explanation of the page that is being optimized. Think of this
sentence as your “hook” and in most cases is what is used as content
in the search engine listings - so write a sentence that makes the reader want
more - to go visit your website. Keep in mind the following when crafting your
description. The description tag should be between 15-20 words and should
emphasize the keywords used in the title tag. Keep the description concise and
specific to the contents of the page. DO NOT use the same description for every
page. Make each one unique.
The <KEYWORDS> tag serves as the location for your
key terms and phrases on topics that are covered in the document. This META tag
seems to be decreasing in importance and some search engines no longer use them
in their ranking algorithms. I do suggest you still use them and more
importantly focus on using good keywords in other areas of your web site. The
best advice for use when utilizing the keywords meta tag is to highlight
QUALITY keywords in your list. Keep in mind the following when creating the
keywords tag. Use quality keywords that are specific to the page. Formulate the
keywords tag as if someone would be searching for information contained within.
Include misspellings and other ways keywords could be used in the keywords tag.
DO NOT use the same keywords tag for every page of your website. Begin your
keywords tag with the primary keywords you are wishing to target.
Choosing
KEYWORDS!
|
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in ANY market so you can keep track of WHO is making money and exactly what
they are selling, and much more. This is a MUST-HAVE tool if you want more
powerful keywords on your web pages. |
I can't emphasize enough: choose your
keywords wisely!! It cannot be emphasized enough that TARGETED
keywords are critical and your keywords must be relevant to your content and
should attract the kind of traffic you can actually convert into customers.
Select three to six key words or key phrases that your customers would use in
searching for you. Find out some popular synonyms for each keyword. Every page
on your website should be focused around a theme. If you don't know the theme
or keywords a particular page of your website is targeting, visit one of the
many keyword density analyzers that are freely available.
- WordTracker is a database of terms that people search
for. You enter some keywords, and Wordtracker tells you how often people search
for them and also how many competing sites use those keywords.
- Good Keywords is a free Windows software for finding
the perfect set of keywords for your web pages.
- NicheBOT can help you gain better search engine
placement by finding the right keywords.
|
Keyword Density Analyzer Tool is a FREE tool from Article
Underground that will show you what words appear on your web pages and how many
times they occur. It will even check your meta tags and warn you if it finds
errors! |
KEYWORD Density
Your body text MUST include the keywords and phrases that tell about your
business, its products and services. Keyword density is an important
variable that many search engines use when determining
how relevant a page is when returning search results.
Keyword
density refers to the number of times a keyword appears on a web page
relative to the other words on the page. If your keyword/phrase is "Internet
Marketing" and appears along with 9 other words, your keyword density would be
10%, if it appears with 99 other words, it would be considered 1%. If it
appears on the page all by itself it would be considered 100%.
It
would appear that if keyword density is kept somewhere around 2 - 5%, that
element of your web pages should generate decent results.
Other elements that can
control how your web site is ranked in the search engines include:
- How early on a page is the keyword? Keep you target
KEYWORDS at the TOP of the page. Be sure and make each page headline <H1>
tag a keyword(s) and have additional lines of text, repeating the keyword(s),
immediately following your headline.
- How many times does the keyword appear on the page?
- How close do the keywords appear together on the page.
- BOLD keywords that are important and unique to the
page.
- Where are the keywords located? In the title, in the META
tags, in headers <H2, H3, etc.>, within links, in "ALT" tags, or in
comments tags?
- Hyperlinked TEXT can also help your page optimization. Be
sure to include keywords in meaningful links to other pages on the site. DO NOT
use the keywords in more than 50% of the links however, because this could be
identified as spamming.
- Select domain names and file names that contain your main
keywords. Big points can be scored when the url or domain name has the primary
target keyword contained within. When building individual pages within your
site -name the pages with the main keyword of that page.
- Site maps can be highly effective when created properly.
They are a keyword rich static page that lists all the pages and topics on your
site, with links for your visitors and the engines to follow through out your
site. If you link to your Site Map directly from your homepage then you can be
sure that the search engine Spiders will be able to easily reach and index all
your pages.
Some Things to Avoid
- Some people will try anything to get a top-ten listing
including "spamming" the index by stuffing keywords to trick and fool them into
putting their page on top. Most search engines discourage this practice and in
some cases will ban the submission from their index or otherwise penalize
you.
- Hidden text is a spamming technique that is easily
detectable. People change the font color to the same as the background, and
then fill the pages with enormous amounts of key term text that some believe is
appealing to the search engine spiders. This will result in you being banned
from the engines.
- DO not use the same page title on every page in your web
site. Each title should be focused on the actual content of that particular
page.
- DO not use image or javascript navigation to link together
pages of the site. The robot may not be about to follow these links.
- Affiliate links can also present a problem for robots, in
that they might not be able to follow them and penalize the page for such
use.
Some Helpful Reading
Off Page Factors
Link POPULARITY
|
Link popularity
check from MarketLeap is one of the best ways to quantifiably and
independently measure your website's online awareness and overall visibility.
Simply put, link popularity refers to the total number of links or "votes" that
a search engine has found for your website. |
This is a very important factor in how well your site ranks in
many search engines. The more people linking to you, the better placement you
will have in the search engines. When the search engines assess your site for
ranking they often take your popularity into consideration. The more links you
have on other sites the higher your ranking, which means more visitors to your
site.
In-bound Links
In-bound links are one of the most
important factors for getting good rankings in the search engine these days.
The very best way to increase the number of similar themed websites linking
back to your site is thru the use of articles. You should have topical articles
written with the resource box of the article pointing back to your website
– written and distributed at a minimum of once per week. Whether you write
it yourself or have it written, it is the one single tactic that will do more
for increasing search engine rankings and targeted traffic than any other
single tactic.
Another excellent way to get more inbound links to your
site is to post articles on a
blog dedicated to your web site. By posting regularly to your blog you will
send the search engine spiders crawling all over your blog as well as your main
site. Fresh content is exactly what the search engines are looking for –
give them what they want.
Reciprocal Links
The Internet works on links and
trading links with other sites is important. Every time you exchange links with
another site you increase your link popularity.
Most people get around
the web by following links they find while surfing. Web surfers visiting other
sites you've exhanged links with are oftentimes looking for just what you have
to offer and may click to your site when they see your reciprocal link. This
process of navigation means the more links you have the better.
Research other sites that
are similar to yours and begin developing links to your site at other pages.
Don't be afraid to link to other sites, even your competition. You will find
that having good links on your page add value and increase business.
For
some search engines, links to your home page are good enough. At least some of
your links, though, should be targeted at your internal pages. For example, if
your site sells tools for gardeners, get some links set up to your "how to" and
FAQ pages too. This will help you get more of your site's content into the
search engine, and increase referrals significantly.
Yes, this can be a very
tedious process but posting your page to all the directories, search engines
and free for all pages is probably the best start to traffic after you get your
site in order. Dedicate 10 minutes a day to locating and contacting other
webmasters to swap links and adding your site to directories. Link building is
a slow ongoing process that pays off over time.
Internal Links
It's also important to
focus on your own internal links. While not as powerful as in-bound links from
other sites, they are counted by the search engines and have some effect on
your ranking.
A common
mistake is to have every navigational link to the home page use the anchor text
"Home" or "Homepage" or something like that. Search engines use the anchor text
of internal pages to rank your site, too, so using "Home" won't help you rank
for anything but the term "Home"!
It is better to use keyword
rich anchor text in your navigation.
Check Your Position in the Search
Engines
Once you get
a good position, pat yourself on the back - but don't quit yet. You will need
to revisit the search engine occasionally to monitor your position and resubmit
if necessary.
More ways to bring traffic to your
site
Gateway Pages: A good gateway or bridge page can have a
dramatic effect on the traffic that comes to your site.
Plan
Implement
Promote, Promote, Promote