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The methods employed to increase your search engine
rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you
have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am
here to tell you - the time has come to face your website!
A high search engine ranking for your website is so
essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually
succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue
to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services
on the Internet find websites through search engines
such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing
your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract
targeted customers to your site who will be more than
likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes
up in search engine results, the greater the traffic
that is directed to your website. That's what search
engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information
available online to figure out how to optimize your
web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look
at a few simple items on your pages, make some small
adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite
rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title
bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the
page. Look at the words that appear there when you access
your home page. To increase search engine rankings,
the words on your homepage's title bar should include
the most important keywords or phrases, one of which
would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title
bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every
single page of your site should contain the most important
keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However,
avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to
six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than
once in the title bars, and make sure that identical
words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your
website content. Search engines generally list sites
that contain quality content rather than scintillating
graphics. The text on your site must contain the most
important keywords - the words that potential customers
will be typing into search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if
this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at
least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve
a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential.
However, the search engines must be able to read the
text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not
graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take
your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you
are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will
not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this
case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML
format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know
this sounds like something out of science fiction, but
it is really just simple code. Many people believe that
meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings,
but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still,
it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine
will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with meta tags,
you must access the code. To do this, click the "view"
button on the browser menu bar, and select "source."
This will pull up a window revealing the underlying
code that created the page. If there are meta tags,
they usually appear near the top of the window. For
example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords"
content=. If you do not find code that reads like this,
ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much
for your search engine rankings, but any little boost
helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity.
This is a factor that is extremely important in terms
of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines
use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity
is based on the quality of the sites you have linked
to from your links page.
If you type in "free link popularity check" in a
popular search engine, the search engine will then show
you what sites are linked to your site. In the case
that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or
that the sites that are linked up have low search engine
rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.
Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and
requesting that they exchange links with your site.
Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of
the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular,
quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking,
but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for
a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you
go out and hire a search engine optimization company,
try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and
see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't
ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.
Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the
more quality customers will be directed your way.
Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing
Consultant and author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael
has been marketing online since the early days and he
knows what it takes to make money and succeed online.
Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Fr*e monthly
newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful
web site promotions that can help YOU!
Go to
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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