| 27 Quick Tips To Top Search Engine
Rankings
Last Update: Thursday, February 03, 2005.
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:
- 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.
You'll find a list of 297 commonly-used stop
words ignored by most search engines in my search
engine optimization book; Search Engine Optimization
Strategies: Top 30 Search Engine Optimization & Ranking
Strategies For Dummies.
- 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%. For more information on keyword
density read my article, "How
Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence And Proximity Affects
Search Engine Rankings."
- 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.
If you're unsure how to do this, check out my
Search
Engine Optimization Strategies ebook. You'll
discover exactly how to design such a table in my
book.
- 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. Visit The Web
Robots Pages for more information.
- 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. I hope you
found this report usful. For more indepth tips, you may like
to read my search
engine optimization book.
Michael Wong is a respected internet marketing expert, and
the author of a leading search engine optimization guide,
numerous marketing tips, and reviews of marketing tools and
ecommerce software. Visit his web site at
http://www.Mikes-Marketing-Tools.com |
