| |
|
|
| Webmaster Resources: Search Engine Optimization Information | |
|
|
|
Search Engine Ranking... Oh, the Mystery!
Rankings, Rankings, Rankings! How do you get your website ranked well by the search engines? Well, it isn't as hard as you think, but it may not be as simple either. It takes patience and an ongoing commitment to making search-engine ranking a long-term investment in your website. You will need to give it time and energy - it isn't a quick fix. One caveat before I dive into this: If you are a company that is working on attracting local customers, there are many other incredibly effective offline marketing tools to DRIVE people to your website. So, what if you really want to work on search-engine ranking for your site? Keep these points in mind: 1. Search engines often change their ranking formula. 2. Each search engine has its own algorithm (formula) to determine site ranking. 3. META tag keywords are not a magic bullet to improve your ranking. 4. Search engines can take many months to index new information, so patience?patience. 5. Be cautious with graphics-rich websites if search-engine ranking is important. How Do Search Engines Work? Let's start at the beginning. When you type a query into a search engine, what happens? Some people think that each time a search is entered into a search engine like Google, that the program hunts through the entire Internet to produce the answer. This is NOT what occurs. Let's say I type in the words "dog obedience" into Yahoo. Yahoo then takes these keywords and searches through its own unique database of indexed websites to find matches. To add to and update their databases, search engines have programs called "spiders" that crawl through pages on the Internet looking for pages and sites to index. However, they do NOT locate sites on their own. They find sites if someone has purposely entered a website into a search engine's "Add URL" form. They are also able to find a website if another site in its database has links to it. When a search engine finds a site, it considers the text on the website to be the number one thing to extract. It places data its database categorized by information it perceives as being important. So, if you have a company that has free articles teaching people how to train their dogs, but you don't have the word "obedience" listed anywhere, your site may not be listed in the above sample search. So then, after all of this - how do you get a high-ranking search engine? Your Keys to Search Engine Ranking You must think of search engine optimization as a long-term investment in your website. It is an ongoing marketing effort that takes persistence. As you begin to implement optimization techniques, remember it can take several months before you see the results, so be patient. Here are some tips to help you improve your website rankings in the future. 1. Plan Your Content: Before you develop your site, make a list of all the possible search words and phrases you think a potential customer would use to locate your website. A research tool such as WordTracker can help you in this process. Write compelling, professional marketing content for your site that is rich with these search words and phrases, especially on your home page. Make pages about 250 words. Tip: Hire a professional web copywriter to write your site content. 2. Meta Keyword Tags Are Overrated: Contrary to what many people believe, your META keyword tags in your HTML code have very little bearing on the words a search engine uses to reference your site. What does this mean for your site? Make sure your web pages have easy-to-understand paragraphs that describe your site and contain many of your important search words. These search words should match your META keyword tags, otherwise, the spiders tend to disregard the keyword tags. 3. Title Tags Are Vital: Most search engines give a lot of weight to your title tags. These are also the phrases that appear at the top of each web page. So, take the time to create juicy and precise title tags. Use words and phrases that people would be likely to use in their search for your business. Reflect what is actually on the specific web page. 4. Meta Description Tags: This is the area where you write HTML content to describe each of your web pages. Although it is not a major factor in search engine ranking, it IS what is displayed in the search results. People searching will use this description to make a decision to visit your site or not. Use this area for marketing purposes to entice people to click on your link. 5. Design a Site That Search Engines Like: Websites that have graphic Splash pages or are designed in Flash are not as friendly to SE indexing. For the most part, search engines do not index graphics. They read text (but not graphic text). Use small amounts of Flash animation and graphics in appropriate places, along with great HTML content. Along with these graphics, use text for your image ALT tags. If you have a graphic-based navigation system, make sure you have a site map that the spider can use to find all of your site page links. 6. Create a Compelling Site: If you haven't created a website with gripping content that speaks to your visitors in plain, easy-to-understand language, you won't get good long-term search-engine visibility. Nor, will visitors ever want to come back. Make your site so good that people will want to link to it. They will want to provide their viewers with your copious amounts of useful information. You can also go to sites that offer complimentary services or products and e-mail their webmaster to ask them to add a link to your site. This will enhance your link popularity, something search engines tend to consider important. 7. Submit your URL to the Directories: Read each search engine's FAQs and follow it exactly. Mistakes in the submission process can make things extremely difficult to change down the road. Keep your website description short and sweet. Be sure to include keywords, but don't use a lot of sales jargon. 8. Balance Your Online Marketing Approach: You will get the best results if you create a website that is content rich, popular with viewers, has a credible reputation, and is programmed using a smart approach to Meta tags. Search engine spiders can be extremely slow to index new information, so be patient! It may take months to see your changes affect your search engine ranking. Remember, a website is a dynamic marketing tool that you are building over time. Treat it well, give it a little love and attention, and your long-term rewards will be well worth your efforts! Wendy Maynard, your friendly marketing maven, is the owner of Kinesis. Kinesis specializes in marketing, graphic and website design, and business writing. Visit http://www.kinesisinc.com/resources/articles.html for more articles and free marketing wisdom. You can visit Wendy's marketing blog, Kinetic Ideas at: http://www.wendy.kinesisinc.com Want to harness the power of kinetic marketing? Sign up for Kinesis Quickies, a free bi-monthly marketing e-newsletter: http://www.news.kinesisinc.com
Add to these social bookmarking sites: 
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
8 Essential SEO techniques 1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it's own title tag. Utilizing Popular Directories as Free Link Sources If you're a webmaster, you've probably spent almost as much time going after link exchanges as actually building your website. Gaining in-bound links, especially from websites with a higher PageRank than your own, can increase your own PageRank on Google, and help your site attain a better overall ranking in Google search results. Google, Yahoo!, Pandoras Box And The Lottery In the fall of 1990, the musical group Snap had a monster number one hit record called, "I've Got The Power."Nowadays, a search engine and a directory (AKA) Google and Yahoo!--number one and number two respectively, have "the power," and we handed it to them on a silver platter. Optimizing Online Catalog Copy for the Search Engines It only makes sense. You have an e-commerce catalog site. 13 Tips For Good Search Engine Placements When used properly in combination with other basic search engine tactics, these tips can help to dramatically improve your placement with the search engines and increase the traffic to your web site.1. Submitting to the Search Engines and WebCrawlers When you want your brand new site to be indexed into major search engines, you usually go to their free submit page and submit your website, correct? Seems like the right thing to do, right?Well, many people fail to realize that not submitting your site is usually better than actually submitting it.Let, me explain. The Myth of Guaranteed #1 Ranking in Search Engine Marketing You've seen the ads: Guaranteed #1 Ranking! There are no guarantees in search engine marketing and website promotion. If anyone tells you different, you should check quickly to make sure they don't have their hand in your wallet. The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. Adding Content To Your Site Every Day If you have been a webmaster for more than a week, you've surely heard the saying "Content Is King". And it really is true! This article will explain why the regular addition of fresh content to your website is so crucial and explain several ways to do it easily and inexpensively (even free). SEO #1: Choosing THE Keywords to Optimize for This is the first lesson out of 6 that teaches you the most important elements of search engine optimization. You should read one of these 6 courses EVERY day so that you can have enough time to "digest" all the information and put them to the test. Google Ranking WITHOUT Ever Submitting To Google! A while back, I read an article that explained how to get a good google rating without ever submitting your site to their submission forms. Like you, I was kind of shocked by this statement so I decided to give it a try. The Search Engine Secret That Is No Secret At All It's common knowledge - we all know that it is important to rank well in search engines. Doing so can bring qualified, interested visitors to the web site you create. The Top 3 Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Websites Search Engine Rankings- and How to Fix Them! Getting your website up and running is hard enough. After spending hours getting the HTML code just right and trying to make sure that you provide a great user experience, the last thing you want to do is change everything around in order to get your site ranked higher on the search engines. Yahoos Back! I was all set to write an article predicting the future of search engines, when Yahoo dropped Google and replaced it with its own engine. Now that's big news. Have You Been Dropped By Yahoo? Yahoo has fairly recently updated its guidelines. You can read the full list at:http://help. SEO 101 SEO (search engine optimization) is a booming businees these days. Everyone wants to obtain top rankings in google, yahoo, and msn. Designing a Better System for Search Engines Designing a Better System for Search Engines and Information Distribution, information and knowledge are power. Having run out of things to study today, I thought about Researching and Research. Paris Hiltons Reputation is SHOT! Hows Yours? With apologies for the cheap trick of mentioning Paris Hilton to get your attention, coming to grips with the idea you're about to discover is critically important to your success with search engines!Because while it's true that there are many factors that determine how well a page ranks in Google - did you know that one stands out above the rest? It's link text. (Also known as anchor text?)So much so, link text can be the deciding factor when chasing top rankings for extremely competitive keywords. Here Today Gone Tomorrow Its a matter of here today, gone tomorrow at the moment with Google so don't get complacent if you are on the first few pages of the searches. Its great, you are making money and think now you can relax and forget about it for a while. The Role of the Robots.txt File to Improve Site Ranking! Not many web master take the time to use a robots.txt file for their website.
|
| Home | Site Map |
|
| © 2008 | |
