The lifeblood of any website/ecommerce business is traffic, and every
webmaster knows the best type of traffic is natural, organic search
engine traffic. There are two very important reasons for this: (1) it
is extremely targeted, and (2) It is FREE! The hard part is getting
top ranking for your sites keywords... or is it? The purpose of this
article is to provide a few simple, effective, and most important,
search engine friendly strategies to help boost your websites' ranking
and ultimately your traffic.
1. We will start with the Meta Tags. I know you have already heard
of, and are probably currently using meta tags on your site. This is
great. I just want to make sure you are using them effectively. We
will only go over 2 tags: the "title" tag, and the "description" tag.
We will not go over the "keywords" tag, as the major search engines
have placed less and less weight on this one, and some would argue
this tag has no weight at all. I still use this tag however, as I
feel there is some merit and no drawbacks to using this tag.
I have found it effective to use similar text in the "title" and
"description" tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these
tags (near the beginning and more than once). I have seen sites with
"sitename.com", "New Page 1", or "Welcome to my site" in the "title"
tag, which really does not help in their quest for higher rankings for
their particular keyword. Also, try not to use words such as "and",
"or", or "the" in these tags.
**Important note about your keywords. Search engines evaluate keyword
prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density when determining a
site's ranking. All three are calculated individually for the page,
the title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page.
Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of
your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular
keyword or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the
ratio of the keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want
the keyword weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to
the search engine as "keyword stuffing" and most search engines
penalize sites that stuff their keywords.
2. Place your navigational links (and JavaScript) at the right or at
the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines
"read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right.
Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the
site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or
Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your
keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your
links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the
search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to
what's important on your page.
3. Place alt tags on all of your images. Search engine spiders
cannot "read" pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an
image is about is by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance
to place more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page's
keyword weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a
big difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks
like this: alt="put your keyword phrase here." Search engines
separately calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt
tags as well, so optimize your tags.
4. Place your keywords at the bottom of your page. Just as search
engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also
do the same to the last words. The general thinking is this, if your
site is about a certain subject, then the main points, or keywords,
should, appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be
prominent at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational
links and JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end
well before the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the
bottom of your page is to include them in the copyright information.
For example, if you have a dog food website, you could have something
like this at the very bottom of the page:
copyright 2005 yoursite.com
World's best dog food
Search engines are not (as of this writing), penalizing sites using
this technique, and it wouldn't really make much sense for them to do
so.
5. The Anchor Text of your links. Anchor text is the actual
linking text on a site. It is what the user clicks on to navigate to
that particular site or page. If a search engine finds many links to
your site using the term "dog food", then the search engine concludes
your site is about "dog food". This is overlooked quite often, but it
seems to have a very large impact on your search engine rankings for a
particular keyword. Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or
phrase you are trying to target. Try to avoid anchor text such as
"Click Here" or "yoursite.com"
Also, if you're running a reciprocal link campaign, be sure to use
variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site
is identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially
penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give
more weight to "naturally occurring" links, and less to "reciprocal
link exchange campaigns". Using different, but relevant anchor text
can dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your
links appear more natural.
Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but as you have read above,
little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge, can
make a huge impact on your website's keyword ranking.
Noah Ulrich is webmaster of http://www.informativeresources.com His
site maintains top rankings in all major search engines, and has
maintained an online presence since 2001. His site provides top
quality resale rights, guaranteed signups, and web traffic to
businesses worldwide.
Article source: ArticleWorld.net Free Articles
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