27 Quick Tips To Top Search Engine
Rankings
So
you've got your self a website from
and you have
professional hosting
from
now
you want to submit it to as many search engines
as possible.
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.
-
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.
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.get2host.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.get2host.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.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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