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| TIPS
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.
- 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%.
- 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.
Order
Submission Now!
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