Search
Engine Optimization for Dummies
By Daegan
Smith
Lets
face it. Search Engines rule the World Wide Web today. Anytime
you want to look up some information or a product you want to
buy, you put the relevant keyword in the search field of a major
SE like Google. And Violá! The efficient little engine throws
up pages and pages of website URLs which carry your keyword.
SEO
has become the most popular and the most effective strategy for
increasing website traffic today. It gives you more exposure,
pulls in more qualified visitors and helps you substantially increase
your income. So, if you are a home based business owner with a
serious web presence you would know the importance of attracting
quality traffic to your website. Among all the strategies and
tactics you can employ to attract focused web traffic to your
site, optimising your website to get in top SE rankings is the
most important. However to keep your rankings that way you have
to be on top of what is happening in the SE industry. To understand
how search engines work, spend some time at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,316408,00.html
Here
are some great ways to optimize your site to get to the top of
the SE rankings and stay that way:
-
Reciprocal
links: Fish out relevant (but non-competing) websites
that complement your services and products and ask them to
link to your site. It’s a big hit with search engines to see
a large number of sites linked to yours. However more important
than quantity is the quality of the linked sites. Search engines
look at how relevant the links are, that is, how much the
content of the linking site has in common with the content
on your site. The more relevant, the better. SE s also gauge
the importance of these sites; their online presence and the
number of hits they get. In a nutshell SE s believe that company
matters!
-
-
Keyword
is the king:however much the SE industry changes its rules,
algorithms, indexing methods…. the right keyword is still
the most important reason they will pick up your site to put
on their top result pages. So keyword inclusion and placement
is very important. The best places to place your chosen keywords
are:
-
Domain
name: Putting your keyword in your domain name is
both most obvious and the most important. But take care
to put it in the root of the URL, not in the stem…that
could SE s angry and do you more harm than good.
-
Title
tags: in the title tags of your source code
-
Meta
description: In the Meta description of your site.
-
Meta
keyword tags
-
CONTENT
CONTENT CONTENT: Create content rich information pages
to get traffic coming your way. A word of caution…unless these
pages contain information of some value to the potential visitors
SE s may not pick them up. Search engines hate "pointer pages"
that have no content and exist only to add to the number of
links pointing to a site.
-
Online
Directories: Almost all major portals have industry specific
directories. Submit your website’s URL to directories like
Yahoo and About.com as well as smaller directories. This will
increase your chances of getting a boost in your SE rankings.
-
Go
Forth and Multiply: Create your own community of sites
that point to each other. A good idea would be to have different
sites if you sell different types of products and services.
You can also concentrate on using specific keyword phrases
on each site. The more content rich sites that point to your
site the better. So that’s another great way to boost your
search engine ranking.
Now
lets look at some of the most common mistakes that can
prove to be the undoing of your website.
-
The number 1 mistake is not putting enough CONTENT. Your website
must have keyword –rich content that adds value to the visitors’
info search. Without meaningful content your visitors can click
out just as easily only to never come back again.
-
Using frames is a technique that makes the Webmaster’s life easy
but can easily prove to be a major put off for SE s. SE s may
find it difficult to move around in frames and will fail to include
all of the pages in their list. These missed out pages will never
show up to the people who are looking for them and defeat the
whole purpose of your exercise.
-
Enclosing text in graphics is another technique used by web designers
to give the website an even, uniform look for every visitor. Unfortunately,
SE s cannot differentiate between a photo in a graphic and text
in a graphic. Hence they will overlook it. There you go again!
Beat this problem by putting the real information in plain text
that search engines can recognize.
Being
visible the Internet is the first step to being found
on the Internet.
So
take advantage of these proven success tips and avoid the traps
that will make your rankings fall down in the SE abyss. What you’ll
be left with is a great website ranking bringing in focused qualified
visitors to help you boost your sales.
For
more information check out these websites:
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol127/optimization.htm
http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/productCd-0764567586.html
==========================================
Wanna
Learn the Secret of Creating Passive Income Online
From a man who made $3,244,842.32 from the Internet in Only 27
months? => http://www.the1andonly.biz
Presented
by:
Perfect
Home Based Business Opportunities
Article
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
