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3 Ways (part 1) to Improve Search Engine Rankings

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:01:09 +0000

There’s lots of talk about ways to improve search engine rankings, and it’s clearly a very emotive subject with many people amongst the so-called ‘internet SEO (search engine optimisation) experts’ fraternity, all of whom often have differing opinions about what gets a website ‘ranked’.

From someone who has had all (yes all) his websites ranked on page one in the Top 5 search results for the Top 3 keywords I have targeted (and these are competitive, high traffic keywords), let me share with you now my thoughts on how to get highly ranked and get your websites listed amongst the top 10 search results for your keywords.

I have a simple 3-Stage Approach to getting ranked high. Here, in Part 1, is my first Stage…

Stage 1. Pick The Right Keyword Phrases:

Firstly I ensure I target keywords that have traffic. What I mean by that is it amazes me how many people think it’s all about being placed high up the page by being “highly ranked”, with no regard for the actual amount of traffic a keyword gets! What’s even more staggering are these ‘SEO expersts’ that offer their services, usually at exorbitant rates, with promises like “we’ll get you appearing in the Top 10 Results on 100 pages” when they don’t have any idea what keywords are being identified by you as their client.

Let me be really clear on this – anyone can have a Number 1 position for a keyword! …anyone – just type in a keyword phrase, say with 4 or 5 words in it (this is a ‘longtail keyword’), and it is likely to have very little competition that you could dominate the Top Number 1 spot for that search. But what you have to ask yourself is how many people are actually typing in that 5 or 6-word phrase? Probably no-one I suspect. So here’s the thing – yep, it is pretty easy to get highly ranked, like Top 5, for many keywords, but the first thing you need to do is identify if there are a whole bunch of people looking for that keyword, because if there isn’t, then getting ranked at even Number 1 spot isn’t going to make any difference to your business sales, because even at Number 1, if no-one is searching for that keyword phrase and searching for it, then there’s no-one that will ever see you at Number 1.

So, before anything – before you ‘optimise’ your website (I’ll discuss this in Part 2); before you look to get ranked high in the search results; before you do anything, make sure that you are clear on the keywords you are going to target actually have traffic, by which I mean there are lots and lots of people typing in that keyword phrase into a search service looking to find you. Get your keywords right first! …and make sure they are keywords people are using in their searches – in lots of searches!

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3 Ways (part 2) to Improve Search Engine Rankings

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:37:52 +0000

Continuing on from Part 1, here’s Part 2 of ‘3 Ways To Improve Search Engine Rankings’. I follow a straightforward 3-Stage Approach to getting ranked high in the search engines. Here, in Part 2, is my second Stage…

Stage 2. Get Your Website Seen:

If you goal is to get high up the search engine rankings (and it should be!) then you need to get the search services to ’see you’. This sounds an obvious statement but few people really think it through that much. In a nutshell, and avoiding all the techie jargon, search engines really want to find you, or more specifically your website. When someone types in a ’search query’ they are looking for some information. If your website is relevant to what the person searching is looking for (we’ll talk about this later), then the search engines really want to link your website to the searcher, which they do with the search results the search engine reveals.

The key then, knowing the search engines really want to find your website, is to set up your website in such a way as to make it be easily found by the search engines. The way you do this is to adopt some basic, but very important ‘optimisation’ tricks on your website – what is termed ‘on-page optimisation’.

The interesting thing is, even though it’s really important to do what I’m about to share with you, the on-page optimisation’ methods only really are about 15% of what contributes towards your search results ranking. The 85% of where you figure in search results is dependant on the ‘off-page optimisation’ which I’ll cover in stage 3. Even though ‘on page optimisation’ only makes up for 15% towards how you get ranked, it is still crucial to carry out these basic but key steps:

a) Ensure your keyword(s) appear in your pages ‘Title tag’ of the header code of your website (if you’re not sure what this is, ask someone to show you who does know – it’s that important). This is vital because it is one of the key things that search engines are looking for – matching the words the searcher types into their search (the keywords) with the title of a website, which in turn should be relevant to the search query. You can take this a stage further by adding in a description in the ‘meta description tag’ again incorporating your keywords, and then the ‘meta keywords tag’ which simply includes all your keywords, comma separated.

The search engines don’t put so much relevancy these days on the description or keyword tags, but they’re worth doing either way, but it’s vital you include your keywords in the Title tag.

b) Make the webpage you are pointing the keyword towards relevant to that keyword. In other words don’t have a keyword like ‘dog training tips’ and then have a webpage all about horses, cats, dogs and loads of other animals with little specific relevancy to dogs or dog training – make sure the webpage is relevant to your keyword.

c) Build into your website a simple Sitemap. Understand that the way search engines search the web is they look for (crawl) words and phrases in all the code of your website – they don’t understand pretty pictures, graphics, flash animations, etc – all they want to find is words and phrases relevant to want the searcher is looking for. So make it easy for the search engines to look over your website looking for those vital words and phrases. One way to do this and make it easier for the search engines to find the info they want is by incorporating a simply site map within your website. Again, if this doesn’t make sense to you, ask your webmaster about it.

Dramatically Improve Search Engine Rankings – 3 Ways (part 3)

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:49:12 +0000

Following on from Part 1 and 2, here is Part 3 of ‘3 Ways To Dramatically Improve Search Engine Rankings’. I have a simple 3-Stage Approach to getting ranked high in the search engines. Here, in Part 3, is my third Stage…

Stage 3. Aim to make your website ‘The Most Popular In Your Class’:

Stage 3 of my simple 3-Stage approach to getting my websites highly ranked in the search engines, is crucial because it’s the element that contributes about 85% towards how high a website is ranked up the search results.

I refer to it as getting your website to be ‘the most popular in the class’. What do I mean by that? Well, think about being at school, and being popular with everyone else was more about being what they wanted you to be. If you were how they wanted you to be, and they liked you, then ultimately you were perceived as popular. Fickle I know. And the more folks who thought you were really good, the more popular you became with everyone in your class, and more likely the school.

Same goes for your website – the more other websites like you, the more popular your website is going to appear to the search engines, and thus the more popular you are perceived to be for the information the searcher is looking for.

So, million dollar question – how do you get popular with a bunch of other websites? Well two things, and they’re equally important…

a) You need to get quality websites linking to your website. b) The websites that are linking to your website need to be as relevant as possible to the information on your website.

Let’s cover both of these…

One of the most effective things you can do to help your website get ranked is to get as many other quality websites linking back to yours, from links on their websites. Quite simply the more links pointing back to your website, the better.

But links alone are not enough – the links need to be on quality websites that in themselves carry good content, and the link is from a website that is relevant to what is on your website.

So, why is the amount of links, and they relevancy of the linking website important to search engines? They see it this way – the more links from high-quality web sites that point to your website, gives a strong indication that what is on your website is all relevant information. They also look at the link itself and that if it’s on a website that is relevant to your website, the search engines effectively say to themselves the website with the link is offering what is like a strong referral again about the quality of what’s on your website…

…and the more websites giving you these ‘referrals’ (links), the more the search engines rate your site, and so the higher it appears on the search results.

Obviously getting these quality one-way links is the key, as they play a massive part in where your website ranks in the search results.

How do you get them?… That’s the tricky bit – the ’scenic’ route is to write, call, bug and drive webmasters nuts, who have relevant sites to yours, to ask them to add your link on their website linking back to your site. Be prepared, that can be a long job, requiring a great deal of patience and resilience, as these webmasters are constantly getting asked for exactly that.

The other way is to use a specialist, who has demonstrated they know how to get these links, and they then focus on getting the links for you.

However you do it, getting these links is vital to getting high up the search results and enjoying all that ‘free traffic’ from organic search, as millions around the world type into the search services…

Get More Free Traffic to Your Website: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:26:52 +0000

Firstly, let me clarify now what a search engine ranking is. When someone makes a search in a search service like Google, Yahoo, MSN or many of the numerous smaller search services, they type in something they want to know about – this is called a ’search query’. When they enter that ‘query’ they are then presented by a whole list of results that search service has decided in their mysterious way are relevant search results to the query you want information on. This list of search results is often termed Organic Search Results. These are different to the Sponsored Search Results that often appear down the right hand margin of the search results page, and sometimes can appear at the top of the page shaded in a slightly different background colour.

These Sponsored Search Results are merely adverts placed by those whose websites are linked by the adverts. These advertisers pay to have their adverts appear when certain words or phrases (known as keywords) are typed into the search company’s services. Because these advertisers pay only when someone clicks on their specific advert, these search results are often referred to as PPC or pay-per-click results, which is why they are termed ’sponsored’ results.

Getting positioned (ranked) high with these PPC adverts is a completely specialised area, and one I’ll avoid discussing now as it’s a completely separate subject in itself, as this information now is focused on discussing ways to get highly ranked using the organic search results.

Getting “highly ranked” simply means that when someone types in a search query into a search service like Google, then the closer your website appears visible to being on page 1 of the search results, and then the higher up that page 1 you appear, the greater likelihood there is the person searching will then click on your website. If you appeared low down the results, say page 12, it’s pretty obvious that the person searching for results is highly unlikely to ever look that far through all the search results, especially when you consider that on each page of search results there is on average about 10 search results, so being on page 12 would mean the person searching would have to scroll through over 100 search results before they even came close to finding your website.

The key is pretty clear – aim to get on page 1 of the search results, and then as high up the page (preferably in the top 3 results), which then gives you the greatest chance that your website will get seen and people will visit it.

The obvious benefit over Organic search results as opposed to Sponsored (PPC) search results is whenever anyone finds your website and clicks on it with in the Organic results list, it costs you nothing! Whereas if you had placed a PPC ad to appear in the Sponsored results list, you have to pay every time someone clicks on your advert (regardless of whether you’ve sold them anything from your website or not).

There is also another great advantage to using Organic search as a way to drive people to your website, as opposed to Sponsored search, and that is the credibility of the results. People entering a ’search query’ will more often feel that the results that come back via Organic search results are far more believable and valid to solving what their query relates to then Sponsored search results. The reason for that is most folks are now aware that the Sponsored results are all adverts paid for by the advertisers of those websites, and so they believe that person is paying to get ranked (as in fact they are), which in turn undermines the true value of that search result as credible in the eyes of the person searching “oh, that only appeared on the search results ’cause they paid to be there” is in their minds.

The difference with Organic results is the searcher ‘believes’ that what appears in their organic search results list is true, real and of genuine value to their quest in solving the answer to their query.