Search Engine Rankings
27 Quick Tips To Top Search Engine Rankings
Last Update: Thursday, August 21,
2003.
In this article I show you how to
improve your search engine rankings using 27 quick search engine
optimization tips.
- Increase your site's link popularity by
increasing your internal and incoming links.
- Internal links - Cross link all your
sites and important pages within each site. This will maximize
the PageRank of all your pages within each web site.
- Incoming links that you control - Create
several small web sites related to your main site. Each
site should only consist of a few pages. Then cross link
them all together using the most important keywords. Don't
forget to include links back to the main site.
- Incoming links that you don't control:
- Ask sites that link to your competitors
to link to your site. To find out which sites are linking
to your competitors, visit a search engine and enter,
"link:" followed by the competitors' domain name.
For example:
link:www.yourcompetitor.com
- Exchange links with sites listed
in the same category as yours in the major web directories,
such as the Yahoo!
Directory and the Open
Directory.
- Find sites that accept site submissions.
Visit your favorite search engine and search for:
"add url" "your
keywords"
Also try searching for the actual
submission page using its page name.
For example:
addurl.html, addsite.html,
addlink.html, etc.
- Include a TITLE tag as the first META tag,
directly after the HEAD tag.
For example:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Mike's Marketing Software Tools Reviews</TITLE>
...
Try to avoid stop words in
your TITLE tag. Stop words (a, an, and, but, he, her, his, i,
in, it, of, on, or, she, the, etc.) are common words and characters
ignored by some search engines to enhance the speed and relevancy
of their search results.
You'll find a list of 297 commonly-used stop words ignored by
most search engines in my search
engine optimization guide; Search Engine Optimization
Strategies: Top 30 Search Engine Optimization & Ranking
Strategies For Dummies.
Include a META DESCRIPTION tag, directly
after the TITLE tag. Include the most important keyword phrase
for the web page as close to the beginning of the description
as possible.
For example:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Mike's Marketing Software Tools Reviews</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Mike's Marketing Tools
is the leading review site for the very best internet marketing
tools for web marketers and webmasters.">
...
If you use a META REFRESH tag, make
sure it is set to refresh after 30 seconds.
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh"
CONTENT="30; URL=http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com">
Some search engines consider pages that
refreshes under 30 seconds as spam. I recommend using a JavaScript
redirect tag, if you require a quicker page refresh.
For example:
Step 1 - Paste this code into the HEAD section of your HTML
document. Change the 3000 to whatever number you like. 1000
represents 1 (one) second.
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"><!--
function redirect () {setTimeout("change()",3000);}
function change () {window.location.href="http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com";}
//--></SCRIPT>
Step 2 - Insert the onLoad event handler
into your BODY tag, so that the JavaScript code is executed
when the page loads.
<BODY onLoad="redirect()">
Remove all other meta tags (author,
date, etc.), unless you're sure they are absolutely necessary.
The only meta tags I ever use are the META DESCRIPTION and occasionally
the META REFRESH tag.
Include a site map with links to all
your pages. This will help search engines find and index all
your pages.
Limit the number of links on a
web page to 50.
If you have more than 50 links,
limit your links to your most important pages.
Include text on the page as some
search engines, such as AltaVista, have been known to kick
out links only pages.
Use one or more header tags in your
main page body and include your most important keyword phrase/s.
Use large header tags, such as
<H1> and <H2>.
Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
to alter the appearance of the header tags to fit the look
and feel of your site. For more information read this CSS tutorial.
Check the first couple of lines of
the first paragraph to see if it's appropriate to be used as
a description of your page. Many search engines utilize the
first couple of sentences of the body text as the search results
description, instead of the contents of the META DESCRIPTION
tag.
Try to achieve an overall keyword
density of 1-2%. For more information on keyword density read
my article, "How
Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects
Search Engine Rankings."
Try to achieve a minimum word count
of 300 and a maximum of 750 words on each page.
Register a domain name with the exact
keyword phrase you wish to target, using hyphens to separate
the keywords.
For example, if the keyword phrase is "search engine rankings,"
then register:
search-engine-rankings.com
If the domain you want is unavailable,
either try a different extension, such as .NET, .INFO, or .US,
or add a keyword to the end (preferential) or beginning of the
domain.
Name directories after your keyword
phrases, using hyphens or underscores to separate the keywords.
For example, if an important keyword phrases is, "search engine
rankings," name your directory:
www.yoursite.com/search-engine-rankings/
or...
www.yoursite.com/search_engine_rankings/
Name web pages after your most important
keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores.
For example, if the keyword phrase is "search engine rankings,"
then name the page:
search-engine-rankings.html
or...
search_engine_rankings.html
Name your graphic files after keyword
phrases. Again, separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores.
For example:
<IMG SRC="search-engines-rankings.gif">
Include an ALT (alternative text)
atrribute in image tags. Include the most important keyword
phrases.
For example:
<IMG SRC="search-engines-rankings.gif"
ALT="search engine rankings.">
If you use an image map, include HTML
links, as some search engines do not follow image map links.
Plus image maps do not offer search engines any link text to
index. So, try to avoid the use of image maps as they do not
help with your search engine optimization efforts.
Use the longer or plural version of
a keyword, where possible. Word stemming is a concept used by
some search engines to return search results that include keywords
that extend beyond what you searched for.
For example, a search with the keyword "engine" might return
results for, "engines," "engineers," and "engineering." If someone
searches for the longer version of a word and your page only
uses the short version, then your page will be excluded from
the list of possible results.
Sprinkle a few uncommon keywords and
synonyms in your main body text. Less popular keywords have
less competition in the search engines. So your web page is
has a greater chance of being listed amongst the top results.
Do not repeat keywords or keyword
phrases over and over again on a web page, as this would be
considered as spam by search engines.
Keep your pages as close to the root
domain as possible. Do not set up more than 3 directory levels.
For example:
www.yoursite.com/index.html
(1st level - excellent)
www.yoursite.com/html/index.html (2nd level - Good)
www.yoursite.com/html/marketing/index.html (3rd level - OK)
www.yoursite.com/html/marketing/search/index.html (Too many
levels down - search engines will find it difficult to find
and index pages this far down)
If you have a persistent (on most
or all of your pages) navigation bar at the side of each page,
your table is almost certainly set up in such a way that it
pushes your page's body text down the HTML document. Search
engines give prominence to keywords nearer the beginning of
a HTML document. So, design your HTML table so that the navigation
bar is placed after your main body text.
If you're unsure how to do this, check out my Search
Engine Optimization Strategies ebook. You'll discover
exactly how to design such a table in my book.
Move Javascript code to a separate
file, or the end of the HTML document after your closing BODY
or HTML tag. Yes, this technique actually works!
Follow these instructions to move the JavaScript code to a separate
file and link to the file from the HTML document. Then place
the following code in between the HEAD section:
<HEAD>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="file-name.js"></SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
This procedure also reduces your file
size, and therefore your download time. In addition, it allows
you to reuse the code on other pages by simply link to the JavaScript
file. Both of these techniques will move your important body
text nearer to the top of the HTML document.
Although not always practical, you
may like to try naming your cascading style sheet tags after
keywords.
For example:
.search {
color: #ff0000;
}
Use Robots.txt files instead of Robots
meta tags, as some search engine robots do not recognize the
tag. Visit The Web Robots
Pages for more information.
Do not use font size one (1) text
as the default text size. Many search engines consider tiny
text to be spam. It's OK to use some font size one text.
Do not participate in link farms or
link exchange programs. Search engines consider link farms and
link exchange programs as spam, as they have only one purpose
- to artificially inflate a site's link popularity, by exchanging
links with other participants.
Do not confuse link farms and link exchange programs with reciprocal
linking. Reciprocal linking is the exchange of links with individual
sites, and is certainly an accepted technique for improving
your site's link popularity.
There you have it. My 27 quick
search engine optimization tips to improving your search engine
rankings. I hope you found this report usful. For more indepth tips,
you may like to read my search
engine optimization guide.
|
|
QUICK
TIP:
"Are You Looking for
tools to improve your web site's
search engine rankings?"
Here’s what you need to look for:
|
|
*** Special Report ***
"How To Attract 15,650 Visitors to
Your Website In 30 Days
With #1 Rankings In Google!"
Click
here now to read a special report that reveals how
you can drive 1,000s
of eager shoppers to your website in the next
30 days... for FREE!
... You won't spend a DIME on pay-per-click
advertising -- and you will NOT spend $1,000s on SEO experts!
Instead, you'll discover how EASY it
is to get #1 and #2 rankings in popular search engines
like Google, Yahoo, and MSN by STEALING the SEO
secrets that cost one guy over $13,750 to discover!
Click
here now to get the report!
|
|
Internet
Marketing Center have developed Affiliate / Associate Program software
from scratch and been using variations of it for the last 3 years
(they call it 