Search Engine Optimization - How to Improve Your Ranking
by: Wendy Maynard
Rankings, Rankings, Rankings!
How do you get your website ranked well by the search engines? Well, it isn’t as hard as you think, but it may not be as simple either. It takes patience and an ongoing commitment to making search-engine ranking a long-term investment in your website. You will need to give it time and energy – it isn’t a quick fix.
One caveat before I dive into this: If you are a company that is working on attracting local customers, there are many other incredibly effective offline marketing tools to DRIVE people to your website. But, if you really want to work on search-engine ranking for your site then keep reading to learn more!
Keep these points in mind:
1. Search engines often change their ranking formula.
2. Each search engine has its own algorithm (formula) to determine site ranking.
3. META tag keywords are not a magic bullet to improve your ranking.
4. Search engines can take many months to index new information, so patience…patience.
5. Be cautious with graphics-rich websites if search-engine ranking is important.
How Do Search Engines Work?
Let’s start at the beginning. When you type a query into a search engine, what happens? Some people think that each time a search is entered into a search engine like Google, that the program hunts through the entire Internet to produce the answer. This is NOT what occurs.
Let’s say I type in the words “dog obedience” into Yahoo. Yahoo then takes these keywords and searches through its own unique database of indexed websites to find matches. To add to and update their databases, search engines have programs called “spiders” that crawl through pages on the Internet looking for pages and sites to index. However, they do NOT locate sites on their own. They find sites if someone has purposely entered a website into a search engine’s “Add URL” form. They are also able to find a website if another site in its database has links to it.
When a search engine finds a site, it considers the text on the website to be the number one thing to extract. It places data its database categorized by information it perceives as being important. So, if you have a company that has free articles teaching people how to train their dogs, but you don’t have the word “obedience” listed anywhere, your site may not be listed in the above sample search.
So then, after all of this – how do you get a high-ranking search engine?
Your Keys to Search Engine Ranking
You must think of search engine optimization as a long-term investment in your website. It is an ongoing marketing effort that takes persistence. As you begin to implement optimization techniques, remember it can take several months before you see the results, so be patient. Here are some tips to help you improve your website rankings in the future.
1. Plan Your Content: Before you develop your site, make a list of all the possible search words and phrases you think a potential customer would use to locate your website. A research tool such as WordTracker can help you in this process. Write compelling, professional marketing content for your site that is rich with these search words and phrases, especially on your home page. Make pages about 250 words. Tip: Hire a professional web copywriter to write your site content.
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Search Engine Optimization - How to Improve Your Ranking
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About The Author
Wendy Maynard, your friendly Marketing Maven, publishes REMARKABLE MARKETING, a free weekly ezine for entrepreneurs, business owners, and freelancers. If you're ready to skyrocket your sales, easily attract customers, and make more money, sign up for her FREE ezine and marketing report now at http://www.gomarketingmaven.com.
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