5 Simple Steps to Great Search Engine Rankings

5 Simple Steps to Great Search Engine Rankings

by: Jason A. Martin

Having your website rank well in the major search engines is crucial to a successful Internet business. However, the information on doing so, which abounds on the Internet, can be perceived as complex and contradictive. Many website owners end up overwhelmed by all the data and simply quit and move on to other areas of promotion. By following the handful of steps presented in this article you will be well on your way to solid rankings.

Primer

Each webpage is its own unit, which has its own title and theme. A theme is most commonly referred to as keywords or a keyword phrase. The theme should be based on the most dominant data for that webpage. Therefore, if you have a webpage that lists ten types of coffee cups, ขcoffee cupsข would be the likely choice for the theme. However, if the theme is too general then you should work to compact it as there will be far too many results in the search engine to contend with. Perhaps your webpage lists ten types of coffee cups which all have American symbols on them. Two of the various possible themes would then be ขAmerican coffee cupsข and ขpatriotic coffee cupsข. To determine if a theme might be too broad, search for the theme at a popular search engine and see how many results come up. It is typical to see up to a few million results for any theme. However, one hundred million results would be extremely high and a different theme should be chosen.

Step One: The title of your webpage means a lot.

A website should never have a loose and thoughtless title. The title should be clear, compact, and related directly to the main theme of the webpage. Let us look at three title examples for a webpage that sells different types of red coffee cups.

Bad Title: Welcome to Joe’s!

Better Title: Joe’s red coffee cups.

Best Title: Red coffee cups.

Notice how we trimmed the title down to simply the main theme. In the bad example, the title does nothing to describe the products offered on the webpage and therefore will end up hurting the search engine rankings for this webpage.

Step Two: Use the tag.

On the top of your webpage put the main theme in a tag. This will help establish what the webpage is about and Google will take the data enclosed in the tag more seriously which helps boost the overall theme in its ranking algorithm. This should be at the very top of the webpage if possible and include only the main theme. Using our title example above, you would insert the following on top of the webpage: Red coffee cups

Step Three: Utilize the written word properly.

The main keyword phrase (theme) must be printed on your webpage multiple times. It must appear natural in the flow of writing and not just thrown on the webpage somewhere a few times. After massaging your keyword phrase into the copy, bold one instance, underline one instance, and italicize one instance. Again, basing this example from the one above:

Bold One Instance: My name is Joe and I sell red coffee cups.

Italicize One Instance: Our red coffee cups ship directly to your front door.

Underline One Instance: Order today and receive free shipping on all red coffee cups!

By doing this you will help enforce the theme of the webpage and achieve better search rankings.

Step Four: Establish incoming links.

Before going any further, I recommend you visit google.com and install the Google toolbar. This will allow you to see what is called PR (page rank). Knowing a website’s PR is extremely helpful, and basically mandatory, for this step. It is more important to have links today than ever. To rank high in the search engines, you must have people linking to you. Failure to acquire incoming links results in low or nonexisting rankings. Here are some techniques to build up incoming links:

Submit your website to directories. Once listed, directories, such as the ODP (dmoz.org) and business.com, will increase your incoming links. When viewing a directory, check to see if they have PR. The higher the number the better.

Purchase text links. Many websites today sell text links at varied rates. Purchasing a text link can help you gain traffic and will increase your incoming links. Text links must be purchased or placed only on websites that have either the same or related theme as yours. If your website is all about coffee—a link from a website about oil changes is not going to help you much—and could actually harm your website rankings in the future.

Link Research. Find out who is linking to top ranked websites under your keyword phrase (theme) and try to get listed on them. The idea here is to not reinvent the wheel, rather do what already works. To find out who is linking to top websites, visit Google and type the following text in the search box: ขlink:site.comข—where site.com is the website URL.

Step Five: Work to ensure anchor text from incoming links contains your main theme.

When other websites link to you, try to get them to use the keyword phrase for the webpage they are linking to as the anchor text. This is not always possible and that is ok. You simply want to try and get as many links on target as possible. Not all links need to go to your homepage because having incoming links to a webpage within the website is beneficial also.

Conclusion

It is possible, I believe, to go certifiably insane trying to deal with the all the information out there on search engine positioning. Everyday the game changes as search engines alter the way they rank listings. Can you do more to improve your rankings? Yes, but I have listed the more powerful items. Following the above, especially the link steps, will help you build a solid foundation that will withstand the changes—and keep you out of trouble.

Getting listed in the search engines and some directories takes time. Changes and new listings can take weeks to a few months to appear. The best way to get your website in a search engine is to let the search engine find you. Do not waste your valuable time trying to submit to search engines or paying someone to do so. By gaining incoming links, the search engines will find your website and rank it accordingly.

For more information on marketing and all the aspects of running a business on the Internet, please visit Internet Business Entrepreneur—a website I setup to aid those doing business on the Net.

©2005 Jason Andrew Martin LLC

About The Author

Jason A. Martin has been conducting business on the Internet for 11 years. He is a freelance writer on many topics and is currently working on obtaining a degree in Journalism and Law.

His official blog can be viewed at: jasonamartin.com

This article was posted on February 23

by Jason A. Martin

Link Popularity A Thing of the Past?

Link Popularity A Thing of the Past?

by: Courtney Heard

Iกve found myself involved in a lot of discussions about the dropping importance of link popularity lately. Numerous people have said to me that they think incoming links no longer hold as much weight as they once did, and that the only links worth obtaining are relevant links. I have to vehemently disagree.

First of all, before Sergey Brin or Larry Page even learned the word กalgorithmก, there were web sites that practiced the fine art of reciprocal linking. PreGoogle link exchanges served only one purpose and that was to develop direct traffic from those links. This still works! Somewhere in our PR worries and link popularity ambitions, we forgot one important fact : you never know when the next link you obtain for your site will be a direct traffic producer. For example moving.ca, provides daily traffic to www.abalone.ca through a small, text link on their links page. This does not come up on Google as an incoming link to Abalone Designs, but it is one our most valuable incoming links, nonetheless.

Now, as far as your ranking is concerned on Google, links still hold weight. Search for just about any term or phrase and check the #1 ranked siteกs incoming links versus the others. 9 times out of 10, The first ranked site will have a few more links than the others. The times when I see lower ranked sites having more incoming links than the #1 site, generally speaking, the #1 site has better content, and more of it or this siteกs incoming links have anchor text that contain the exact search term or phrase you searched for and the others don’t. Itกs still the same old formula. Offer a contentrich, userfriendly site with incoming links that have relevant anchor text and your siteกll do alright.

Relevant anchor text is important, but what about having your link on relevant sites? Links on relevant sites or pages have one tremendous bonus and that is targeted traffic. This is providing, of course, the link produces direct traffic. Other than that, I say links on relevant pages aren’t that much more important than other links. Take, for example, the incoming links to seoinc.com the very first page that shows up on Google when you search for seoinc.comกs incoming links, is csmonitor.com. A Christian Science magazine! If Iกm missing some link between religion and SEO, please inform me, but otherwise, these two sites couldn’t be more different. Google has deemed this an important incoming link for seoinc.com, regardless. You think you know the algorithm, but you don’t. You never know when links will count.

Letกs not forget about the other search engines, though. Still a few steps behind Google, MSN places a lot of weight on incoming links. So does HotBot, Yahoo! and now, apparently, Become.com. This is just a handful of places that take a critical look at your link popularity. And I hate to say it kids, but I think thereกs a chance that MSN might slightly outdo Google this year. As of late, Iกve noticed different rankings on Google for clients based on where you’re searching from geographicallyspecific search results against our will. I haven’t spoken to one individual who likes this idea. This could be the giant mistake MSN has been waiting for Google to make, and you don’t want your perfectly Googleoptimized site to miss the MSN bus when itกs usage tops Googleกs.

This brings me to my last point which, quite frankly, is a nobrainer. The Internet is nothing but a massive network of links, hence กnetก. To turn your back on this is one of the hugest mistakes you can make on the web. The more links you have around the web, the more often your site will be seen. Itกs just like the real world, ‘thereกs no such thing as bad publicityก. Think of incoming links as cyberpublicity thereกs no such thing as a bad incoming link.

About The Author

Courtney Heard is the founder of http://www.abalone.ca, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtneyกs articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 29

by Courtney Heard