How to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings
When talking about search engine rankings many people ask
themselves questions like; how many keywords should I put in
my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have
on the page? Should I use short copy or should I use long copy?
Can I use flash or not? How many keywords should I put in my
"alt" text? Etc...
A general statement to answer the above questions is that
"magic numbers do not exist." The most important thing you
can understand as a search engine optimization expert is that
algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is
going to make you number one for a keyphrase in a search engine,
something could easily change, and you might have to spend months
or even years trying to figure the new algorithm.
It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm, do
something much easier instead... observe your top competitors.
All you need to do is to understand what elements your
competitors are using to make them rank in the top positions.
The main elements to getting top search engines rankings are:
- Number, quality, and relevance of inbound links pointing to
your site
- Fresh, relevant, quality content (needs to be added frequently)
- Keyword density of your home page or any page you want to rank
highly
Links, Links, Links
The first thing to observe from your competitors' sites is their
inbound links. This means 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". However
do not only do this on Google because they don't show all actual
links pointing to a site. Yahoo and MSN tend to show a lot more
of the back links to any given website.
Part of the observation should be not only what the links say,
but where the links come from. Think about what the category is
that those links come from. If you start to see a recurring
pattern, you should start actively searching for links coming
from that category.
Some marketers use special software for robotic content creation.
They generate thousands of pages with links pointing to their
sites. This practice can be very dangerous, as Google will
penalize unnatural linking or violations of their terms of
service. And what happens is that those links do not look
natural. One day one site may have 50 links and the following
day have 2000 links, which all say the same thing and come from
the same IP address.
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. Then, just do what they do.
Fresh Quality Content
The second thing to observe is how much fresh content the top
sites have. Search engines love quality relevant content that is
added and updated frequently. You will probably notice that the
top sites in your niche have many articles and other quality
content, and are continuously adding new content to their sites.
People that surf the web are usually searching for information,
so content is the "fuel" of internet traffic. If you want to
attract many potential customers to your site, then you need to
make sure that you provide enough content which is relevant to
their interests. Updating it frequently with more quality
content will keep visitors coming back to your website over
and over again.
Keyword Density
The third thing you need to observe is the keyword density of
your competitors. How many times should you repeat your main
keywords? In which part of the web page should your main keywords
be mentioned? Again, there is no magic number, it's all about
observing and measuring against the top websites in your market.
But what should you measure?
- Meta tags
- Alt tags
- Titles
- Names of the images on the page
- Heading tags: h1, h2, h3...
- Frequency and position of the keywords in 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 overall optimization. This is when you use keywords
too often or too little. If you look unnatural, your rankings
will suffer as a result.
So, what did we learn here? Basically that the key to ranking
highly in the search engines is to understand what the top 5
websites in your niche are doing and to apply this to your own
website optimization.
What do you do now? Get out there and start getting inbound
links for your site. Add quality content to your site daily.
And be sure that your on-site optimization, such as keyword
density, is similar to that of your top competitors. Continue
to do this every day and you will be ranking at the top of the
search engines before you know it.
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Trent Brownrigg is a successful internet marketer. Learn more about
all aspects of online business by reading his free business tips
(http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com/home-business-blog.html)
