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Quick
Tips to Top Search Engine Rankings
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.
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About
The Author: Michael Wong is a respected