How to Improve Search Engine Rankings
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
You finally got your web site listed in the major search engines, however it is
buried amongst millions of others and you still have not seen an increase in
traffic to your web site. Why not? You need to improve your search engine
rankings.
Here are the steps to increase your search engine rankings:
1. Check your listings If you are going to see an increase in traffic to your
web site, you need to be listed in the top 20-30 sites. Go to http://www.marketleap.com
to see if you are listed in the top 30 sites on the major search engines. If you
are not listed in them, you should at least submit your site to the major search
engines. (read “How to get listed in the major search engines”). If you are
already in the top 10, then keep monitoring your site's rankings to maintain
your position. If you are not in the top 30, continue with the next step.
2. Select the right keywords and phrases Go to www.wordtracker.com or the
overture suggestion tool to find the most popular words and phrases that suit
the theme of your web site.
Weave these words and phrases into your meta tags (title, description and
keyword tags), web copy (particularly the first 200 words of your web page) and
links (i.e. if your site is called camping.com and you have a page for camping
tools, name the link www.camping.com/campingtools.htm, instead of
www.camping.com/generic.htm).
Optimize each web page with different keywords. Visitors can then enter your
site from different pages, depending on what keyword they entered in the search
engines.
3. Exchange reciprocal links Search for other sites that compliment your own
site and ask for a link back to your site. Ideally the site should have the same
keyword phrase as yours and already have a high search engine ranking. These are
quality links.
Having many sites linked to yours, will increase the popularity of your site in
the search engines, resulting in a higher ranking. Subscribe FREE to Marketing
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Related Articles
How to Get Your Site Listed in the Major Search Engines
How to Use Meta Tags for Search Engine Optimization
How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
4. Write articles Choose your best keywords and weave them into the theme of
your articles. Include a link to your web site in the resource box at the end of
your articles. Submit your articles to ezine publishers and article announcement
lists. This gives your article the potential to be read by thousands of ezine
subscribers. Your article will become linked to many web sites, resulting in
higher rankings.
5. Participate in forums Find a forum that is related to the theme of your web
site. People visit these forums to look for content that answers their
questions. Once you have provided helpful information, you can leave a link to
your site in your signature file. If this is a highly trafficked forum, leaving
your link there, will increase your site's popularity.
6. Monitor your rankings The best way to check how your site is doing in the
search engines is to check your web site statistics. A high quality web hosting
service will show you which pages receive the most traffic (hits and visits) and
where it is coming from (which search engines).
7. Exercise patience Search engines typically take one to three months to spider
your web site, so your changes will not be seen immediately. Think of the steps
outlined above, as a long-term marketing strategy for your web site.
Tip Generating a massive amount of traffic to your web site, doesn't guarantee
sales. Here is a short list of factors that will also help convert your visitors
into sales:
Professional site design
Well-written web copy
Fast loading times
Simple navigation
No broken links
Optimizing for different screen resolutions
Optimizing for the main browsers
As you can see, improving search engine rankings that result in sales means the
continuous monitoring and refinement of your web site. Since 85% of your sites
traffic (this is very targeted traffic) comes from the search engines, it is
well worth the investment.
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design and Low
Cost Web Hosting
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original
articles. subscribe@isitebuild.com.
You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
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Article reproduced with kind permission from Herman Drost
