Keys to Increasing Your Sites Search Engine Ranking
by Maxine Hough
(c) 2006 All Rights Reserved
When you discuss search engine ranking, the first thing you need to think about is the market place. Many people ask, how many keywords should I put in my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have on my page? Should I use 200 words on my copy or should I use 600 words? Can I use flash? How many keywords should I put in my "alt" text? And so forth and so on.
Generally speaking there are no magic numbers. The most important thing you can understand as it applies to search engine optimization is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a search phrase in a search engine, something changes, and you end up spending months or years trying to find out the engineering of the algorithm again.
It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm instead do something much easier, observe your competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using that are making them rank on the top positions.
So what those things are?
- Number and quality of inbound links pointing to the site
- Keyword density
- Fresh content
The first thing to observe from your competition is their back link index. This would be the number of sites that have a link pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to Google and typing:
"link://www.yourcompetitorssite.com"
But it would be a mistake to limit this only to Google since Google discriminates sites much more than other search engines. Yahoo and MSN are much more accurate for measuring the back link index so do include these engines when you check back links.
Observe not only what the links say, but where the links come from. What categories do those links come from. If you start seeing recurring patterns, you should start actively searching for links coming from those categories.
Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation. They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their sites. This practice is very dangerous because Google often penalizes unnatural linking as a violation of their terms of service. If a site has 50 links one day and the following day it has 2,050 links, all saying the same thing and coming from the same IP address, this sends up a red flag with Google and can get you penalized or banned.
If you understand how to observe, this will never happen to you. You will learn how to look at your competitors, and observe how they are getting linked to.
The second thing you’ll want to observe is the keyword density of your competitors. How many times should we repeat our main keyword? In which part of the web page should our main keywords be mentioned? Remember there are no magic numbers, it's all about observing and measuring against your competitors. So what should we measure?
- Meta tags
- Alt tags
- Titles
- Names of the images on the page
- Highlights: h1, h2, h3...
- Frequency and position of the keywords on the body text
Each one of these items should be measured independently. There are tools to run keyword density against your competitors. If you run them against the top 3 or 5 sites, you may start to understand the secrets of top rankings.
Again, your keyword density needs to look natural, otherwise you may fail in over optimization. This is when you use keywords too often or too early. If you look unnatural, your page ranks will suffer as a result.
The key to success is to understand what Google likes about their top 5 pages, and to apply this to your own website promotion.
The last thing to observe is how much fresh content the top sites have. If they have many articles and they are continuously adding new content to their sites, then it is a sure bet that the search engines like content and are ranking those sites better which have more updated information.
People surfing the web are searching for one thing: information, and web marketers know that content is the "fuel" or “king” of internet traffic. If you want to attract more customers to your site, then you need to make sure that you provide enough content that is relevant to their interests.
Copyright 2006 Maxine Hough
----------------------------------------------------------
Looking for effective internet marketing tools that work?
Maxine Hough has created the ultimate web site of "cutting
edge" internet marketing tools designed to increase your
sites traffic flow and revenue significantly!
The Internet Marketing Tool Site
For more great articles or to submit your own:
Visit the My Wizard Ads Library
Keywords: search engines, advertising, marketing, classifieds
(c) 2006 All Rights Reserved
When you discuss search engine ranking, the first thing you need to think about is the market place. Many people ask, how many keywords should I put in my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have on my page? Should I use 200 words on my copy or should I use 600 words? Can I use flash? How many keywords should I put in my "alt" text? And so forth and so on.
Generally speaking there are no magic numbers. The most important thing you can understand as it applies to search engine optimization is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a search phrase in a search engine, something changes, and you end up spending months or years trying to find out the engineering of the algorithm again.
It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm instead do something much easier, observe your competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using that are making them rank on the top positions.
So what those things are?
- Number and quality of inbound links pointing to the site
- Keyword density
- Fresh content
The first thing to observe from your competition is their back link index. This would be the number of sites that have a link pointing to their website. You can easily measure it by going to Google and typing:
"link://www.yourcompetitorssite.com"
But it would be a mistake to limit this only to Google since Google discriminates sites much more than other search engines. Yahoo and MSN are much more accurate for measuring the back link index so do include these engines when you check back links.
Observe not only what the links say, but where the links come from. What categories do those links come from. If you start seeing recurring patterns, you should start actively searching for links coming from those categories.
Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation. They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their sites. This practice is very dangerous because Google often penalizes unnatural linking as a violation of their terms of service. If a site has 50 links one day and the following day it has 2,050 links, all saying the same thing and coming from the same IP address, this sends up a red flag with Google and can get you penalized or banned.
If you understand how to observe, this will never happen to you. You will learn how to look at your competitors, and observe how they are getting linked to.
The second thing you’ll want to observe is the keyword density of your competitors. How many times should we repeat our main keyword? In which part of the web page should our main keywords be mentioned? Remember there are no magic numbers, it's all about observing and measuring against your competitors. So what should we measure?
- Meta tags
- Alt tags
- Titles
- Names of the images on the page
- Highlights: h1, h2, h3...
- Frequency and position of the keywords on the body text
Each one of these items should be measured independently. There are tools to run keyword density against your competitors. If you run them against the top 3 or 5 sites, you may start to understand the secrets of top rankings.
Again, your keyword density needs to look natural, otherwise you may fail in over optimization. This is when you use keywords too often or too early. If you look unnatural, your page ranks will suffer as a result.
The key to success is to understand what Google likes about their top 5 pages, and to apply this to your own website promotion.
The last thing to observe is how much fresh content the top sites have. If they have many articles and they are continuously adding new content to their sites, then it is a sure bet that the search engines like content and are ranking those sites better which have more updated information.
People surfing the web are searching for one thing: information, and web marketers know that content is the "fuel" or “king” of internet traffic. If you want to attract more customers to your site, then you need to make sure that you provide enough content that is relevant to their interests.
Copyright 2006 Maxine Hough
----------------------------------------------------------
Looking for effective internet marketing tools that work?
Maxine Hough has created the ultimate web site of "cutting
edge" internet marketing tools designed to increase your
sites traffic flow and revenue significantly!
The Internet Marketing Tool Site
For more great articles or to submit your own:
Visit the My Wizard Ads Library
Keywords: search engines, advertising, marketing, classifieds
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