Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be considered a process and over time you can build your ranking and traffic.

Remember, Rome wasnt built in a day.

This article provides 10 SEO tips that will build your search engine rank.

1. Title

The Title is (usually) the hyperlink provided in the search results so make sure its people friendly. Put the most important keyword first, followed by the 2ndIf you need to have your Company name there (branding), put it at the end.

2. Meta descriptions

Use the keywords once or twice in your Meta description. It can be the text that shows up in the description area of the search engine results.

3. H Tags (and proper use)

Have your keywords in an H1 tag at the top of your page embedded in a good description. Not only will it help your rankings but many times the search engines will actually display it in their results.

4. Keyword positioning (on the page)

Have your main keywords high up in the page (the higher the better). The most valuable real estate on a web page is top left corner people (& engines) read left to right starting from the top.

5. Number and Quality of inbound links

Each link from another web site acts like a vote of confidence A link implies that the site believes your site has value.

However, all links are not equal. You must get links from sites that have a similar theme to yours ONLY! Anything else may actually hurt your page rank.

6. Linking Text/Description

When building a link campaign, make sure to use keywords in the link. For example, a link with click here doesnt help you with search engines. A link such as Internet Marketing is much more effective (if thats your keyword).

Also, dont forget to use keywords in your linking description as well.

For the most thorough ebook on developing a strong linking campaign read Jack Humphreys Power Linking 2: Evolution! (http://www.money-teacher.com/PL2.htm)

7. Content is King

Not only is quality content what people are looking for, but content is also what the search engines are looking for. Content is basically food for the search engines.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT try to trick search engines with useless content. Not only wont this work, but it will bother potential customers. Also, while you want to mention your keyword, DO NOT keyword stuff. A too high word density will penalize you make it natural.

8. File size

Keep file size as small as possible. It will make for faster loading pages, happier visitors and the search engines like them.

9. Bold & Italic

Its good practice to highlight your keywords in your copy a few times, but dont overdo it.

10. Alt tags in image links

Search engines can read text but they cant see a pictures. Putting in Alt text for a graphic tells the search engine what it is about and also helps people who have their graphics turned off. Make sure to put your keywords in your Alt tags.

Here is an example:

Once your site is optimized for the search engines, you can then start submitting your site. Practice these tips and over time you will see your search engine rank increase.

Copyright 2004 Adam Waxler

About The Author

Adam Waxler owns and operates The Money Teacher web site and publishes The Money Teachers Home Business Tips Newsletter teaching others how to reach online success. To get your free newsletter subscription send a blank email to: newsletter@money-teacher.com or visit our web site at http://www.money-teacher.com.

Role of Link Popularity in getting Top Google Rankings

How many sites link to your site? In other words, state the link popularity health of your site. Have you ever been asked this question? And, did not know what to say?

Go to Google. Type in link:www.cnn.com in the search box. The number that Google throws up, namely, 115,000 (on the blue-colored bar present on top of the page) at the time of writing this article, is the total number of sites that are currently linking to www.cnn.com, and which have been indexed by Google. In other words, this number can be greater than 115,000, or more than 115,000 sites may have currently linked to www.cnn.com, but it won't show up with the (link: www.cnn.com), because those sites are not in the Google's Database.

Methodology for building link popularity through Reciprocal Link Exchange Programs

1. Create a html page, preferably named as "Resources/Links/Partners" and place a link of this page from Index Page of your site. This page should never be more than 1 click away from the index page of your site, else webmasters won't be interested in participating in the reciprocal link exchange program.

2. Target both "industry-related" and "non-industry-related" websites as your link exchange partners. For example, if you are providing SEO services, then try getting links from "industry-related websites (i.e. websites dealing with SEO, maybe your business rivals). This is important, because if 10 of your rival (here SEO) sites give link to your site, then Google will surely pay importance to your site, because getting links from rival companies are difficult. Your site MUST be of some high caliber, else the other 10 sites won't have linked! Also, try procuring general links as well.

3. Always exchange links with websites which have high PageRank (PR) (at least 4, the more the better!) (both Index Page as well as Resources/Links Page of the Link Partner's site should have PRs of >=4)

4. Have a link code ready for participating in link exchange program. Here is a sample link code for our SEO company.

Search Engine Optimization, Ranking, Placement Services - Offers Search Engine Optimization, Ranking, Placement Services to get top 10 ranks in various Search Engines.

Always prefer a text link (as given above) in comparison to a banner link, where your chance of Google spiders, i.e. Googlebot finding the potential keywords is limited only to the "alt tag" of the banner. Also, Google pays importance to the text of the incoming link/anchor text (i.e. the incoming link text must contain high potential, relevant keywords), so develop a link text with title ("search engine optimization ranking placement services") which will help you in Google Ranking.

5. Refrain from java script link code because Google spiders find it difficult to index.

6. There are various ways of approaching and procuring potential link partners. Firstly, how to get industry related websites to link to yours? Suppose, "search engine optimization", "search engine promotion" and "search engine ranking" are 3 of your core keywords. Go to Google. Type in each of the three keywords, and find the top 10 sites for each keyword. Now, you have 10 * 3 = 30 websites. Visit the links page (if applicable, since some sites refrain from participating in link exchange programs) of each of the 30 sites, and note down all the sites that are linking to these sites. For example, if each of these 30 sites have 10 sites linking to it, you have 10 * 30 = 300 potential websites to exchange links with. (Please note that our experience shows that conversion rate of successful link exchange is 1 in 4-5, i.e. if you approach 4-5 websites, 1 site will ultimately provide you with reciprocal link, so in order to get high incoming links, you must research extensively and find more potential link partners. Also, as mentioned above, always try to exchange links with websites having PR >=4).

7. If you request a link to a top-level page or the homepage of your site, this will have a positive effect on this page. If the PageRank of this page increases, then the page below it will increase (if the internal linking structure is correct), but it will still be one PageRank number below the page above it that was linked to.

8. Manually submit the page to Google where your link partner has placed the link of your site.

For example, if your link partner's website is www.abc.com and he has placed your website in his resources page, namely, www.abc.com/resources.html, then go to http://www.google.com/addurl.html and submit www.abc.com/resources.html. It is very essential for getting good ranks in Google that you submit the page where your site has been placed by your link partners.

Importance of Messageboards, General Forums and Guestbooks

Of late, you will find that some websites belonging to the "most-highly-competitive" industries (e.g. casino gambling industry, domain registration and web hosting industry) that have achieved top ranks through links from messageboards, general public forums and guestbooks. These techniques are sometimes highly profitable for Google Ranking and hence, it is wise to do some research in Google and find some popular messageboards/forums/guestbooks which are already in Google's Index. Here also the target should always be to get messageboards/forums/guestbooks which have a minimum PR of 4. After finding the potential messageboards/forums/guestbooks, submit your site's information, containing a description and URL in those messageboards/forums/guestbooks.

For example, let's say www.messageboard.com is a popular messageboard

After you have submitted your site's information in www.messageboard.com, it will generate a URL, say, www.messageboard.com/msgboard/1.html where your site has been placed. Here also, you need to submit this newly-generated URL (i.e. www.messageboard.com/msgboard/1.html) which contains information and links to your site to Google (http://www.google.com/addurl.html) for achieving good ranks in Google.

Note : Try targeting messageboards of educational (.edu)/governmental (.gov) institutions since they usually have high PRs and receive huge amount of traffic every day.

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Prabuddha S Raychaudhuri is the Founder & CEO of SEOguru Technologies (http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com), a search engine optimization and marketing (SEO/SEM) consultancy firm. Our services include top 10 SE rankings, Pay Per Click (PPC) targeted traffic campaign, Paid Listing Management, Keyword Advertizing, website development and designing. Prabuddha holds a Bachelor Of Engineering (B.E.) in Construction Engineering and can be contacted at prabuddha@searchengine-optimization-guru.com

Search Engine Optimisation: One Link is Better than Ten

That cant be right! Shouldnt ten links be better than one? It is usually the case where more is better. However, when it comes to gaining links, having more links isnt necessarily better than having a few good links. In fact, having too many irrelevant links could possibly harm your websites visibility within the search engines.

These days, search engines are placing more emphasis on incoming links to a website when evaluating rank. The reason being is because they are difficult to obtain from trusted sources (a "by the book" website such as the Dmoz directory) and it is a good way to partially eliminate the group of people who abuse the "on the page" factors of optimisation (page spamming). How is this so? Well, if you have someone who is abusing the "on the page" factors and they have no trusted links to their page (they will most likely not get any at all due to spam) then there is no chance of them getting a good listing. However, people have worked out ways in getting a large number of links, through link farms and other tactics, regardless of the quality of their website. As the search engines are aware of this, it brings us to the topic of how one link can be better than ten.

Obtaining one link from a trusted source can be very difficult in the sense that they do not issue links to just about anyone. If you have a good website with relevant information, then you will get them. It is for this reason one link from a trusted source can better a multiple of links from other websites. As a trusted source website is "trusted" by search engines, it will also trust the websites it links to. If you have ten links from your best friends, it will help you in some sense, but no where near as much as the one link from a source like Dmoz, unless one of your friends has a very reputable website amongst the search engines.

Having too many irrelevant links could harm your websites visibility in the search engines. What is meant by this is having links from websites that have no relation to yours. An example of this would be a site about cars linking to another site about medicine (unless the sites are reputable and have a good reason for the link i.e. there is a relationship made between cars and medicine). Search engines will pick up on this sort of link and will give it no weight in boosting your visibility. Obtain many of these irrelevant links, then it could be seen as spam (like a link farm tactic) and that will lower the popularity of your website within search engines.

The key here is to focus on quality and not quantity. Gaining a few good / relevant links will take you much further than a lot of irrelevant links. To get these quality links, start off by placing your website in directories, but be sure to avoid any "on the page" spamming as this will not get you accepted. Once search engines have acknowledged a presence of relevant links, follow up on it and research some ways to obtain more. As time passes, you will notice that your websites performance will increase, as the links age, provided you have carried out search engine optimisation. Avoid obtaining the irrelevant links even though it may be tempting to see fast results. It will only be a matter of time before a search engine realises the spam tactic, and as the saying goes "fast rise, fast fall".

About the author: David Touri works for SEO Sydney, who aims to improve search engine placement with search engine placement services for websites in Australia and overseas. He is currently working on the Loaded Technologies website, who specialise in ecommerce website development.

How to Start the SEO Process

The first step is to choose the most relevant keywords which you believe you target audience will search for. Keywords are terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. Only the right keywords describe the purpose and content of your website. This helps in showing your site as near to first page results as possible.

It not only depends on the choice of your keywords but also on the how well you position those keywords in your web page. And how many quality external pages link to you. Choosing a wrong keyword can completely disturb your search engine optimization strategy. So you need to devote a few hours in the selection of keywords and make sure it's the right combination of keywords.

Optimizing Page Content

The next stage is to optimize your page those keywords or key phrases. This is done by positioning your keywords in appropriate locations within your page. Include the key phrases in the Meta tag, description and title.

The next stage is to make a good page title. Create descriptive title for your webpage. This is very important because search engines displays this as link text as a search result. The title should include the main key phrases while at the same time it should describe your business very well and oblige the readers to click on it.

Navigational links - You must make your pages that are easy to navigate by search engines. Search engines favor text over graphics and html over other editing formats. Use text in your navigation bar and avoid placing text with graphic format as search engines may not be able to access it. Do not use frames as search engines have trouble on following them. Only the framed content page gets indexed and not the navigation frame by the search engine spiders.

Avoid flash and JavaScript as search engines do not follow these. In case you use flash, also make the html version of your website for your readers and search engines. If you use JavaScript navigation menu then include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the web page so it can be easily followed by the search engines Do not include spam in your content. There should be no repetition of keywords. The content should be specifically related to the topic.

Create a site map that covers all the pages in your site and place a site map link on the top or the bottom of the page. When search engine follows link of site map, it will find easily all other links and index all the pages in your website. In case you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page so make sure you include your most important keywords on that place.

Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage and do not try to describe all your products and services on a single page otherwise it will confuse the search engines and windup the page relevance to your selected keywords. It is better to create different pages each having its own unique content and key phrases and then optimize them.

Thus while starting and initiating a SEO process all the steps stated above should be kept in mind and then begin with the other works of web site optimization.

Rajeev Guglani writes articles for SEO. He has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing. He is working for NDDW. For Search Engine Optimization Firm, Search Engine Optimization Resources and SEO Process visit http://www.nddw.com