Other Resources: |
|
Author: Craig Richey Article source: http://www.selfseo.com/. Used with author's permission.
If you have ever searched for a product, chances are you have used one of the three most popular search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN account for over 84% of all internet searches and provide thousands of search results that, more often than not, go unexplored. Getting listed as close to the top of the search results can be a tricky business but the process of getting you there is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
A highly complex and secretive series of algorithms hidden from public view make it extremely difficult to determine exactly what search engines are looking for, but assessing certain characteristics from sites that rank in the first few pages can be done with reasonable accuracy. By using key strategies like the domain name, keywords, meta tags, indexed pages, internal and external links, page-link alignment and ranking—SEO can significantly help your website respectively place among the top pages. Domain Name The domain name is the unique identifier for your website, e.g., 'my-site.com' is the URL and 'my-site' is the domain name. Studies have shown that containing keywords in your site's URL can boost your search engine ranking. This boost is most significant when your site is very new and has not yet established a good page rank. As your site grows and becomes more efficiently structured and linked, the URL becomes less important. There is also, growing evidence that website URLs will become less important in the future. Keywords While keywords are a more traditional form of search engine optimization, they are regarded as a significant consideration amongst the top three search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN look at the location and frequency of keywords within your pages' text. Simply having a high percentage of keywords will not increase your ranking but having your keywords in the right location can be far more effective. For example, words in the page title and header text can be more effective than in the body of your website. However, this is not to take away from the significance of adding keywords in the actual text on the page. Remember, never sacrifice the quality of your content for your customers to achieve page ranking. Another factor to consider when adding keywords is the type of words you should use. For example, the words 'gift basket' are searched almost 500,000 times a month but the words 'food gift basket' are searched 300,000 times a month. Gift basket companies that use 'gift basket' have greater competition than those companies that use 'food gift basket'. Surprisingly, adding more descriptive words like 'food' or 'Paris' or 'baby' have the potential to move your site up the page because there is less competition and fewer search results. Meta Tags Meta tags are another way for search engines to find and learn about your website, provide information about your page, how current the information is, what the page is about and which keywords represent the page's content. Typically, search engines display your site's meta tags under your page title in the search results, and a well-written meta tag can help convince customers to choose your website from the list of search results. Meta tags should be included in all of your web pages; if left blank, the search engines simply pull search result descriptions from the top of your web page. While the SEO benefits of meta tags are discounted compared to a few years ago, including relevant quality meta tags should increase your search engine rankings. When writing your meta tags, you should consider these points: •
|
|
Print this page