As everyone knows, whenever you use a search engine you usually find several thousand websites that match your query. As a webmaster it is important for your site to rank high up (in the top 30) for particular keywords, so that people will visit your site. After all, if your site shows up as number 153, and the search engine displays 25 results per page, what are the chances that someone will go through 7 pages just to find your site? There are, however, some proven methods that will boost your ranking greatly.

• Use Meta  tags. Meta tags look like:

  <Meta name="KEYWORDS" content="keyword1,keyword2,keyword3">
  <Meta name="description" content="Visit this site for the best widgets on the Internet!">

• Arrange the keywords in the Meta tags in order of importance.

• Don't use the same word within the Meta tags too many times. Choose a cut-off point, usually between 3-6 repetitions. Keep the Meta tags to a maximum 1024 characters, otherwise the excess characters will simply be ignored by most search engines. I generally keep my Meta Tags to 250 characters.

• When you have several occurrences of the same words in the Meta tag, use different capitalization such as: promotion, Promotion, and PROMOTION. The general rule of thumb, however, is to keep everything in lower case.

• It is also a good idea to add common misspellings of some of your keywords into your Meta tags if you have some room. For example "promotion" could be spelled "promotion" by someone who is typing fast.

• Use interesting descriptions in the Meta Description tag. Use words like "secret", "insider information" and "free". Don't just fill the description tag with keywords.

• Use comment tags which contain an identical copy of your Meta keyword tag, as some search engines do index them.

• Think of one or two main keywords for your site, and make them appear 5-6 times each on your front page.

• Some search engines will look for "keyword density", meaning how far apart the keywords appear. Some will only look at the first 200 characters of your site, and count the number of times the keyword appears. Others will index a bit from the top, middle, and bottom parts of your website, and search them for keywords. Generally keyword density should be in the 2-3% range.

• For those main keywords using <strong>keyword<strong> or a bigger font size, <h1>Keyword</h1> is especially effective.

• Think of secondary keywords. If your main keyword was "Promotion", reinforce it with smaller keywords on your front page such as website, webpage, free, and make them appear several times on the main page. Also, put them in the ALT image tags (explained below).

• Put a combination of main and secondary keywords in your title. Most search engines index 60 to 80 characters of the title. Use them.

• In the first two images on your website use ALT tags, and fill them with several important keywords in order of importance, and perhaps with different capitalization. However, it's important not to repeat the same word too many times within the Meta tags, alt tags, and the text on the website, as that could get you banned from search engines.

• If your site deals with many different topics, create sub-directories on your server. Put the different parts of your page in different directories, and use different Meta and Title tags optimized for the category that the particular page covers. Submit each sub-directory to the major search engines separately.

• One of the best strategies is to take a look at the Top 10 or Top 25 sites that appear under keywords that fit your site. Study their titles, Meta tags, comment tags, keyword density, alt image tags etc. looking for common things among the top ranking pages.

  I have had very good success with these techniques in Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler, AltaVista, and Excite. However it may be impossible to achieve a high ranking under highly competitive keywords such as "screensavers", but in that case you can probably find a niche keyword variation such as "Free Screensavers" or "Screensaver downloads" in which you can rank high.

I have also come up with a list of things not to do when optimizing your page or submitting to search engines.

Do not:

• Put hidden text on your website: meaning if the background is white, you put white text all over your site full of keywords that will be invisible to the human visitors to your site.

• Do not use other popular keywords in your Meta and Title tags that don't have anything to do with your website. Only use keywords that relate to the content of your website.

• Do not steal other people's Meta Tags and Titles.

• Be very careful with "entry" pages that you submit to search engines that are optimized to achieve a higher ranking. This is considered spamming by many search engines and might get you banned. This is especially true if the doorway page gets a high ranking under a very popular keyword. Your competitors will not hesitate to contact the search engine and report you.

• Do not use CGI-Scripts or other means to re-direct search engines to a different version of your site that would not be seen by your normal visitors.

• Do not make various versions of pages and submit all of them hoping that one of them will rank high for certain keywords.

It's also important for me to mention that once you get a high ranking for particular keywords, it will not last forever. Usually your high ranking will last 2 days to 2 weeks. Once your ranking drops out of the top 50 or so, re-submit your site and make changes if necessary. If you submit to a search engine, and after several weeks you don't have a high ranking, make changes to your page and re-submit. Good luck with your search engine endeavors!

AZS-Romania  UNIUNEA ROMANA

« Back =  Inapoi