How to Achieve High Rankings in the Search Engines
By Sue Doughty |
A frequent question asked is “Why do some people
achieve a high search engine positioning and get plenty of traffic
while others do not? Simple. The people who have high search engine
positions in the major search engines selected keywords
1
that many people are searching with and placed those keywords in
the body of their content correctly.
This is what is known as search engine optimization
or keyword optimization.
Search engine optimization will be one of the most important investments
you will make. Whether you decide to take on the project yourself
or hire a professional service, we highly recommend search engine
optimization before you submit to the search engines.
Keywords: Do's and Don'ts
Here are some tips on how to optimize your web
pages and achieve high search engine rankings for your web pages
using keywords, meta tags
2 and effective copy
writing. This article is best suited for the webmaster or the author
of the web site content. It is usually the webmaster who is responsible
for making sure that pages are search engine ready. This article
contains web page code snippets (SHOWN
IN THIS TYPEFACE) given as examples to follow. Although this
article is technical in nature, it is vital to anyone who wants
to achieve a high search engine ranking.
Use of Keywords
Keywords and keyword phrases must occur often and near the
beginning of the TITLE tag, the DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS meta
tags and the BODY
5 of your web pages. The
more frequent the keywords appear and the nearer they appear
to the beginning of the tags and pages, the greater the chance
of achieving high search engine positioning.
The tags
3 that are most
important for page optimization are (in the following order):
1. The TITLE tag
Example: <TITLE>Plumbing
Supplies Company</TITLE>
This is the most important tag on your web page. It should
begin with the most important search phrase users will enter to
find your site. It is more important than the content and it is
more important than the description or keywords meta tags. Users
searching for “plumbing supplies” will stand a greater
chance of finding your site using the above title than if it were:
<TITLE>Plumbing
Supply Company</TITLE>
2. The DESCRIPTION meta
tag
Example: <META
NAME=“description” CONTENT=“Plumbing supplies for home and industry.”>
Use a plain English sentence of no more than 40
words for your description. Again, the description should begin
with the most important keywords. Search engines will often use
the contents of this tag to display results of a search. If there
is no description meta tag then the search engine will attempt to
build one from the content at the top of the body of the page. Words
like “Back Next Products Support” won't mean anything to users reading
search results. Also do not use a list of keywords as a description.
Search engines will see this as an attempt to achieve a high ranking
and will probably penalize you and your site may appear much lower
on the list as a result.
3. The KEYWORDS meta
tag
Example: <META
NAME=“keywords” CONTENT=“plumbing supplies, plumbers supplies, plumbers
pipes, valves, pipe wrenches”>
Although the keywords meta tag is important, most
search engines will derive keywords from the actual content of web
pages. Nevertheless, you should include the keywords meta tag in
all pages you want indexed. Do not “spam
4”
the search engines by repeating keywords. If you do you will most
likely be penalized with a lower ranking or even banned altogether.
Additionally, only use keywords that appear in the actual content
of the page. If the search engines detect that you are trying to
score a high ranking by using keywords that have nothing to do with
the content of the page then you risk being penalized or banned.
4. ALT
5
tags for images
Example: <IMG
SRC=“logo.gif” WIDTH=“200” HEIGHT=“50” ALT=“Plumbing Supplies Logo”>
Although having a lesser importance than the above
tags the <ALT> tag should also be used to achieve sufficient
keyword density.
Keyword Density and Copy Writing
Keywords and keyword phrases must occur often
and near the top the body of your web pages to be indexed. The more
frequent the keywords appear and the nearer they appear to the beginning
of the page, the greater the chance of high search engine placement.
Effective use of keywords in the body of the page is the second
most important factor for high search engine placement. As discussed
above the <TITLE> tag is the most important.
The Home Page is The Most Important Page
The home page should contain the greatest concentration
of keywords. If a user searches for “plumbing supplies” make sure
that the phrase “plumbing supplies” appears on the home page. Search
engines will list in order of importance all the sites having content
related to the search phrase entered by the user. If the phrase
“plumbing supplies” appears in one of the pages of your site, then
the search engines will place a greater importance on your site
and it will stand a much greater chance of getting a higher ranking
if the phrase also appears on the home page.
The goal of the webmaster is to discover the best
keywords to use in your content and meta tags. Try to figure out
the search words and phrases users would enter to find your site.
Don't Use an Image for the Body of Your Page
Since search engines use the actual content (words)
of your page as a basis for indexing, never use an image as the
main content of your page. Doing so will reduce your chances of
high search engine positioning.
Use Search Phrases
Using the above tags as a guide, a user may type
“plumbing supplies” in a search engine. This is a search phrase
because it is more than one word. Most users use search phrases
or keyword combinations, not single words.
Do Not Use Hidden Text
Never attempt to hide text to achieve greater
keyword density by making it the same color as the background or
use any similar “trick” to fool the search engines. Doing so only
risks your site being banned from the search engines. Always be
up front and straightforward in your web page design. Never attempt
to hide anything from the search engines. These tricks usually backfire.
Sue Doughty is the owner of Studio 1 Design and Hosting, a design,
hosting and Internet consulting firm in the Los Angeles area. She
has over 20 years of expertise in her field and has helped many
businesses achieve their goals.
http://www.studio1webdesign.com
1 keywords - The words users
enter into search engines to find web pages with content they are
looking for.
2 meta tags - Content in a web page that the search
engines can see but are not usually seen by the user when the page
is viewed on the Internet. It is common to include a meta tag with
a list of KEYWORDS to help the search engines properly categorize
it. Two other important meta tags are the TITLE and DESCRIPTION
tags described in this article.
3 tags - Web pages are written in a format in which
the text is “tagged” with codes that the browser can
read. These tags tell the browser how to display the page.
4 spam - The derogatory term for excessive and unwanted
communication on Internet lines derived from the canned meat product
with the same name. In this context it refers to the repeated use
of the same keywords in the meta tags to try to gain an unfair
advantage or to fool the search engines into giving you a higher
ranking. “Spamming” the search engines can get you
banned, so it is an unsafe practice.
5 alt tag - This is a tag used on images. Although
most Internet users have systems that can display images, some
cannot. The purpose of the <ALT> tag is to provide some text
which these users see in place of the image.
Related Articles
Sue Doughty is the Marketing Director of Studio 1 Design and Hosting
and has over 15 years experience in her field. Her advice in the
area of
search
engine optimization has helped businesses achieve high search
engine placement and success on the Internet. Visit Studio1
Design and Hosting on the Web at http://www.studio1webdesign.com,
email .
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