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17 Highly Effective Strategies to Increase Search Engine Rankings
Copyright by Herman Drost
(Part 1 of a 2 Part Series)
Search engines are still one of the most effective ways to drive
traffic to your web site. This is because it is highly targeted
traffic. A person searching for a particular phrase on a search
engine, gets taken to your web site.
It makes sense then, to make your site as attractive as possible
to the search engines, so your rankings will improve, giving you
more visitors which leads to more sales - your ultimate goal.
Here are 17 powerful strategies you should implement, to
substantially increase search engine traffic:
1. Keyword Density - the ratio of keywords to on your visible
page to non-keywords is called Keyword Density. i.e. if you have
100 words on your page and 3 of those words are "boat" or
"boats", then you will get a keyword density of 3% of your text
for the word "boat".
Try to aim for a keyword density on your site from 3-20%. This
will give you a good range. You can analyze your keyword density
by using these online tools:
http://www.keyworddensity.com
http://www.keywordcount.com
2. Keywords in your domain name - try to incorporate one of your
keywords or a keyword phrase in your domain name. i.e.
www.isitebuild.com (building web sites) or
www.ihost-websites.com (hosting web sites). This may also help
people to memorize your name when they are looking for this
service.
3. Page Title - write a short descriptive title of 5-8 words for
your web site, containing your primary keywords or keyword
phrase. The page title is the first thing that people see when
your site appears in the search engines. Begin your title with a
capital letter, then follow with lower-case letters. This makes
it easier to read than titles with all words capitalized. Place
your most important keyword phrase toward the beginning of your
title tag.
4. Description Meta Tag - some search engines will include this
below your title. Choose 20 of your most important keywords and
write a 200-250 character sentence about your site. Don't repeat
your title description but write a different one with different
keywords. Some search engines will just take this description
meta tag, some will use both the title and description tags.
5. Keywords Meta Tag - research 50-100 keywords people would
insert in the search engines to find your site. A great tool for
doing this is the keyword suggestion tool:
(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) or
Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). Refine this list to your 20
best keywords or keyword phrases.
Leave out the commas between your keywords, so the search
engines can group the words into any phrases that seem
appropriate. This positions your words for minimum space with
maximum combinations.
6. Header tags - search engines tend to place emphasis on the
header tags so make sure you have your h1 tag at the top of your
web page. Use CSS (cascading style sheets) to avoid the problem
of the your text appearing too large when just using html for
this tag.
Use the other header tags (h2, h3, h4) throughout your web copy.
7. Comment Tags - these are mostly used by the web designer to
remind him how to structure the web page. Write a sentence using
some of your most important keywords and insert the comment tags
in your body copy.
8. Use the ALT Tag for Images - some people surf with Web with
the graphics turned off. Therefore placing alt tags in the html
code for your images enables them to see the description of that
image.
Incorporate keywords in the alt tag of your images. WARNING:
Make sure the words relate to the graphic, otherwise you could
get banned for "keyword stuffing".
9. Image File Names - change your image file names to your
keywords.
In Part 2 of this article series we'll look at the remaining
7 strategies to Increase Search Engine Rankings.
Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer (CIW), owner and
author of iSiteBuild.com Affordable Hosting, Site Design and
Promotion Packages (http://www.isitebuild.com)
Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original
articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his
in-depth articles at: www.isitebuild.com/articles
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