Search Engine Optimisation
Tips
|
Search
Engine Optimisation
|
Search
Engine Optimisation is the buzz word in the world of
Internet marketing. What is Search Engine Optimisation or
in acronyom SEO? SEO is to increase the numbers of
visitors to your website by ranking very highly at the
Search Engines using the most relevant keywords
describing the content of your site. The competition to
outdo your competitor lies in the best use of a few
keywords.
The tips employed to rank high at the Search Engines may
seem like rocket science, so you have probably avoided
this issue. A high ranking at the Search Engines for your
website is crucial for the success of your business, that
you can't avoid it altogether.
Here are some tips for SEO...
1. Choose your domain name carefully. Use
keywords or phrases in your domain name. This is one
factor that was found consistently in top ranking sites.
It is strongly recommended that you choose a domain name
with contains your major keyword.
Don't choose a long domain name. It is found that shorter
URLs ranked better. Focus on short domain names with
contain your main keyword or keyword phrase.
New domain name extensions are not always immediately
recognizable by Search Engines. In the earlier days, .cc
and .biz posed problem. But now they are gaining
acceptance. Still it is better to stick to the
conventional .com.
According to one source, Google is always looking for
ways to weed out spammers from legitimate websites. The
rationale is legitimate websites are committed towards
their business and domain names, so they register domain
names for a long period of time. Spammers are mostly fly
by night operations, so they only register their domain
names for a year.
2. Research and choose your keywords carefully. Find
exactly the right keywords or keywords phrases that would
be relevant to the theme of your website. Do not use
keywords that are too general or too competitive.
Keywords that are too general are normally oversaturated
with competition. Use keywords that are more specific.
For example instead of travel, you could opt for travel
to the Carribbean. Specific keywords will attract
targeted traffic(niche) to your website. However, do not
forget to check the popularity of specific keywords
against the number of sites competing for it. If the
competition is too great, you may have to consider
another option or create a better website that would
outdo your competitors.
Research and choose your keywords carefully. Think of as
many keywords that relate to your theme as possible. Make
a list. Evaluate them. Use the free tool NicheBot to research and evalute potential keywords.
Don't skip this all important step. This is the
fundamental of SEO. Your keywords are foundational to
your internet marketing strategy.
3. Keyword frequency. This is number of
times a keyword is repeated on a page.
A study to show the correlation between keyword frequency
and high Search Engine was carried out. Below is a graph
tabulated from the findings. Read the
full report here.
From the correlation
study, pages with their target keyword repeated 11-20
times or 81- 90 times rank best on the leading search
engine. (Note: This is merely a correlation study, so it
cannot be determined from this study whether the leading
search engine purposefully entertains this factor or not.
The actual factors used may be far distant from the
factor studied, but the end result is that this search
engine does, in fact, rank pages with the above keyword
counts higher than pages with other keyword counts used
in the study.)
3. Use keywords in your heading. The
heading text go from h1 to h6 in your html source code.
Use keywords or key phrases within them.
4. Create good relevant content with keywords. Create
content that is relevant to your website. Create good
relevant content with your keywords. It is no use to
stuff keywords on your web page if your content has no
relevance to them or to your website. Neither the Search
Engines nor your visitors would be fooled. Relevant
content created around keywords is the heart of SEO.
Without lots of keyword rich relevant content your
chances of being ranked highly at the Search Engines are
slim.
5. Use keyword phrases in linking text.
This is often overlooked. Linking text is the clickable
text that takes your website visitors to another page.
Keyword phrases tell your website visitor what the text
link is about. For example instead of using free gift use
keyword phrase that describe the free gift resulting in
higher click through rates.
Using keyword phrases in linking text gives Google and
other Search Engines as to what the page is about. This
simple tip can make a big difference in your Search
Engine ranking in highly competitive situations.
6. Use keywords in the URL. You can use
keywords in your subdirectories and filenames. For
example www.IstWebmarketing/article/tips-on-SEO.html.
Both article and SEO are keywords. The majority of Search
Engines convert URLs into text to index web pages.
7. Keyword proximity. This refers to how close
your keywords are together. This may not be a big aspect
of SEO, but still every little bit helps.
8. Link popularity. Page rank in Google case is
determined by link popularity. Link popularity is
determined by how many web pages are linked to your site.
Both quantity and quality are important factors in your
incoming links. Do these web pages rank high in the
Search Engines? Are these web pages relevant to yours? Do
the links contain keywords that matches those in your
content? Bad links, especially link farms, may hurt your
ranking with Google.
9. Update your website content. Make
sure to update or add content to your website
periodically. It would not only keep your visitors coming
back especially those who are looking for information,
but it may also keep your site on the top listing of
Search Engines. However, you should not add or update
content too frequently or else you will not know the
effect these changes have on your ranking. New pages will
only be indexed and changes in ranking be reflected,
after the robot re-visited your site. There is a meta tag
that tells the robot when to revisit your site.
<meta name>="revisit-after"
content="15 days">
You may set the days for the robot to revisit your site.
(Not sure whether this works)
10. Use a reliable web host. You cannot
afford to have your web host server to be down most of
the time. If the search engine robots come by and your
website is down because of server problems....urgh!!! To
be on the safe side, look for a web host with at least
99.8 percent uptime. And, yes, servers do need
maintenance work, but you should be informed well ahead
of time . Pay a little more and enjoy good reliable web
hosting service.
After all that has being said, there is much to be done.
There are three options. Option 1 - Use the services of
SEO consultants. Big companies hire SEO consultants to
keep their websites on the top listing of Search Engines.
SEO consultation fees and services can cost a few hundred
dollars to thousands of dollars. Option 2 - There are
sofwares available to make the work of SEO more
efficient, from page analysis to submission to Search
Engines and linking. Again this is cost. Option 3 - Do it
all yourself. Believe you me, this is one long, ardous
task. You have to do keyword research, write content,
plan and design your website, submit to Search Engines
for listing, monitor, fine tune until you achieve high
ranking (within page 1 of page 2 of search results), and
continue to monitor and maintain your ranking.
SEO is a marketing cost whether in terms of money or
time. And time is money!
Recommended
SEO Software
About
the Author
Gerrick W provides
information and tips to effectively market your Internet
business.Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Search Engine Optimisation Tips © 2005 http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
|
