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20 Quick Tips To Top Search Engine Rankings
Last Update: Monday,
February 2, 2004.
In this article we
show you how to improve your search engine rankings using 20 quick search
engine optimization tips.
- Increase your site's
link popularity by increasing your internal and incoming links.
- Internal links
- Cross link all your pages within your site by linking words to all your different pages.
This will maximize the PageRank of all your pages within your own 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.
- Incoming links
that you don't control:
- Ask sites
that link to your competitors to link to your site. To find
out which sites are linking to your competitors, visit a search
engine and enter, "link:" followed by the competitors' domain
name.
For example:
link:www.yourcompetitor.com
- Exchange
links with sites listed in the same category as yours in the
major web directories, such as the Yahoo!
Directory and the Open Directory.
- Find sites
that accept site submissions. Visit your favorite search engine
and search for:
"add
url" "your keywords"
Also try
searching for the actual submission page using its page name.
For example:
addurl.html,
addsite.html, addlink.html, etc.
- Include a TITLE
tag as the first META tag, directly after the HEAD tag.
For example:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Marketing Tools</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.
- 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>Marketing Tools</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Marketing Tools for
web marketers and webmasters.">
...
- 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
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. You can have several domain names pointing (parked) to your hosting account.
For example, if the keyword phrase is "Marketing Tools," then
additionally register:
Marketing-Tools.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. These additional domain names will improve your site ranking.
- Name directories
after your keyword phrases, using hyphens or underscores to separate
the keywords.
For example, if an important keyword phrases is, "marketing tools,"
name your directory:
www.yoursite.com/marketing-tools/
- Name web pages
after your most important keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using
hyphens or underscores.
For example, if the keyword phrase is "marking tools," then
name the page:
marketing-tools.html
- Name your graphic
files after keyword phrases. Again, separate the keywords using hyphens
or underscores.
For example:
<IMG
SRC="marketing-tools.gif">
- Include an ALT
(alternative text) attribute in image tags. Include the most important
keyword phrases.
For example:
<IMG
SRC="marketing-tools.gif" ALT="marketing tools improve search engine rankings.">
- 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 "market" might return results
for, "markets," "marketers," and "marketing." 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
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
There you have it.
20 good quick search engine optimization tips to improving your search engine
rankings.
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 Including a site map page that contains links with descriptions to all your pages will help search engines find and index your pages properly.
For best results submit your site map as one of the pages you ordered to be submitted today. View our Site Map as an example.
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