5 Tips for Improving Your
Site’s Search Engine Positioning
By
Donald Nelson, copyright 2006
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.
For years I
have been getting great information from the Led Digest, a
subscription list which is sent out several times a week. You
can see samples online at
www.led-digest.com
If you do not have the
expertise or the time to tackle these matters by yourself then
you should take advantage of skilled professionals who can
help you to improve your site's performance in search engines.
Whether you rely on professionals or are able to do it
yourself, these five tips can provide a good point of
reference for starting the work.
Donald
Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has
been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the
director of A1-Optimization (http://www.a1-optimization.com),
a firm providing low cost search engine optimization,
submission and web promotion services.
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