Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) Articles
Five Tips for Improving Your Site’s Search Engine Positioning
By Donald Nelson
Almost all webmasters or website
owners are looking for ways to get better results from their
websites. They wish to improve their site’s standing and get
better rankings in search engines. This quest for improved
results, known as search engine positioning, can be satisfied
by following a few basic procedures.
Before you even
begin, you have to realize that you are competing against
hundreds, and in some categories, thousands of websites
offering similar products and services. In the case of
affiliate marketing, many of the competing websites may even
be identical! If you want to get the edge over these
competitors and improve your search engine positioning you
have to fine-tune your website and actively work to make it
better.
1. Make Sure that your design is search
engine friendly: Your design may look good to your eyes,
but it may also be the cause of you present difficulties and
poor search engine positioning. How is that possible? Look at
your web page using a text editor or the html view of popular
editors such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. On what line does
your first line of copy begin? If your actual copy is pushed
far down the page, it is more difficult for search engines to
pick up the crucial information that would have helped you to
improve your web page ranking.
If you have this difficulty, first
take out all unnecessary spaces in the html code. If there are
long strings of java script, put these in external files.
Similarly, put style information in external Cascading Style
Sheet files. Simplifying your table structure may also help.
If this starts getting too complicated for you, then consult
with a professional search engine positioning specialist or
your web designer.
2. Make sure your keywords are
strategically placed in your copy: It is not possible to
improve web page ranking if the readable copy on your web page
does not contain the words you wish to be found by. Many
people erroneously think that just putting your important
keywords in meta tags is enough. This is not true, some search
engines hardly use the meta tags and look more to the copy on
the page. Make sure that your important copy is in the first
paragraph of text, in headlines (using headers such as H1, H2,
H3) and in the active or clickable portions of link text on
your page.
3. Use a site map and text link
navigation on your pages: If you want to improve your
search engine positioning for all the pages of your website
then you have to be sure that these pages actually get indexed
or included in the search engines. You can help this process
along by making a site map, a web page that has text links to
all the sub pages of your site. Another good practice is to
include a text link navigation system on your web pages, even
if you already have a graphics based navigation bar elsewhere
on these same pages. Remember, search engines follow text
links more easily. A robot that lands on your main page or
site map page will follow the text links and then visit and
index your lower level pages.
4. Increase the
quantity and quality of inbound links: In fiercely
competitive categories it will be difficult to improve web
page ranking without obtaining a good number of links to your
page from other websites. If you have very good and valuable
copy, other sites may link to you because you are a valuable
resource. However, if you want to speed this process along you
will have to actively request links from other websites,
either by trading links or by getting your content (with a
link back to your site) placed on other websites.
When it comes to links you should
keep in mind one important principle: it is not the quantity
of links that is important, but the quality. One good link
from an authority site such as CNN or Wikipedia is worth more than dozens of links
from other sites. To get these quality links, there is no
short cut. You will have to earn it by having a site that
provides a lot of useful information.
5. Keep up
with Search Engine Developments: The challenge of
improving your web page ranking and search engine positioning
is dynamic. Search engines are not static. Most of the big
search engines of yesterday have disappeared or are only minor
players today. You should keep up with changes in the world of
search engines by taking part in online forums or subscribing
to newsletters which deal with topics such as search engine
optimization, web ranking, and general webmaster related
issues.
Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has been promoting web sites since 1995 and now runs A1-Optimization.
© Copyright 2002, Donald Nelson, all rights reserved.
