Getting your website ranking as high as possible with major search engines is crucial for your business. It also gives you winning advantage against your competition. We will discuss in this article several factors that contribute to how high you can go on a search engine query result.
Please realize there is no such thing as a magic silver bullet that will vault you to the top of the search engines – if there were, everyone would know it, they would do it, and it would cease to work because of saturation.
Several strategies contribute to this, as you can see from the following. First, we will discuss the general strategies and techniques used with all major search engine. Then we will discuss the specific the specifics of what is currently working on each of the major search engines.
Part One : General Guidelines
Choosing your domain name :
One of the most basic, yet critically important, strategies is to use your best keywords in your domain address. An example would look like…
http://www.laptopshome.com
http://www.notebooksforsale.com
The reason for doing this is because search engines and directories assume the domain to be relevant to the keyword. It’s something that, in practicality, can’t be faked.
Getting your keywords into your domain name is strategically critical and chances are it will only become even more important in the future. Remember, by registering all possible keyword combination domain names you can think of you not only have them available to your company when needed but you’ve also prevented your competition from securing them and using them against you.
If your company name is your domain name, then that’s fine but you should still register all relevant keyword-rich domain names pertaining to your goods and services. This will give you the option of setting up specialized sites that place your services into the paths of the engines and directories.
Getting Your Web Page Titles Right :
This is all about your pages <TITLE> tag. Note in mind that Title is the most important aspect of web page design in respects to scoring well on most search engines.
Always make sure every word in your title is one that is likely to be used by a person when doing a keyword search for your business or service. AND, keep in mind that unless the name of your business is prominently recognized or likely to be used in a keyword search – something like “SONY cameras”, it does NOT belong in the Title tags.
Keyword Selection Techniques :
Make a list of every possible search word (keyword) and search phrase (keyphrase) that your potential customers
might use when looking for your information, product or service. Remember to include synonyms as well as the common misspellings of your keywords and pay particular attention to noun phrases. Next, use these keywords and keyphrases to find your competition on the top search engines.
Keyword Relevancy :
Simply put, your keywords must be relevant to the contents, or theme of your web page.
Keyword Density :
By this I mean the number of times your keyword(s) appear in relation to the other words on your web page. Theoretically, a webpage that said only “Chicago” verses the “Eat at Chicago’s…” page would be given a higher score for the keyword Chicago due to a higher keyword density.
Description Meta Tag :
The meta description tag is used by many engines as the summary for your site when listed in the search results. It’s what tells a real person whether or not your site is relevant to their search. You should view it as a sales presentation for your link. If the meta description tag entices the searcher they will, theoretically, click your link and visit your site. Obviously that’s the purpose for being listed in the search engine in the first place.
Most search engines place a limit on the number of characters that a meta tag can contain. Once the limit is reached they typically ignore the rest of the tag contents. In general, 250 characters – including spaces and commas – is a good rule of thumb that falls within the guidelines of most engines.