|
Article by: Matt Canham
Search engine optimization is the process of maximizing
the ranking of you site in search engine listings. The most important
factors to consider to achieve a high ranking are: the keywords
you use, your title, your description, the text of your site,
and the links others provide to your site.
To begin selecting keywords, consider what words and phrases
the people you are trying to reach will be searching on. When
placing keywords in your keyword tag, it is best to use phases
rather than single words. Almost all single words are in very
widespread use, thus will not tend to produce high rankings. Keyword
phrases can be better tailored to your business. Also, since phrase
searches produce fewer results, people are more likely to search
on them. It is also a good idea to produce a list of keyword phrases
for every page of your site. If you must include difficult to
spell words, it is a good idea to include some common misspellings
of these words as well.
The title is just as important, if not more important, than your
keywords. Most search engines place the highest level of importance
on the words found in the title when calculating the ranking.
You should place your most important keyword phrases first in
your title, as some search engines limit the number of characters
you can use. Make your title a readable sentence, as this is the
first text that will appear for your listing on the results page.
One thing you should avoid doing is simply listing keywords. This
could be regarded by the search engine as keyword spamming, and
may lower your search ranking, or even get your listing removed
from the site. As with keywords, it is a good idea to give each
page a unique title.
In your description you should once again make use of your best
keyword phrases. In this case, you can use more of them, since
search engines will give you typically around 1024 characters
for the description, while they will give you only around 50 to
80 for the title. Again, place your keywords as close to the beginning
of your description as makes sense.
In the text of your site you should make use of, yes, you've
guessed it, your keyword phrases. Also include any text you have
used in other tags, such as meta tags, alt tags, and headings.
Having a lot of content helps as well. A minimum of 200 words
per page is recommended. Having many pages of content also increases
your rankings.
Having many other sites link to you is another good way to increase
your search rankings. Both the links themselves and the increase
traffic which results will help. Also, having bloggers link to
your site is a good idea.
Although these practices will boost your rankings, there are
certain design elements that can interfere with your search rankings.
These include frames, dynamic URLs, Flash, using image maps for
navigation, and using javascripts for navigation. Also, there
are certain practices that search engines regard as spamming,
and these practices will get you permanently removed from the
site. These include using keywords in your meta tags that do not
relate to the content of your page, using multiple instances of
the same tag, and listing keywords in the text of your site.
This is just the briefest introduction to search engine optimization.
One book available on this topic is Search Engine Visibility,
by Shari Thurow. Software packages that can assist you with SEO
tasks include Bruce Clay's SEOToolSET and Web CEO's Web CEO. If
you prefer to have someone else do your SEO for you, Marinerblue
is ready to help you for free with your .ws domain.
Regards, Matt
Matt Canham
http://www.ws-domains.marinerblue.com
Join my free newsletter
and receive "Adsense Revenue Exposed", a $37 value,
ABSOLUTELY FREE! This free offer will not be available for
long, so don't delay! Your name and email address will never
be sold or given away and you can unsubscribe at any time.
|
