How can you determine what is a high-ranking site—one which will help your own search engine rank if it links to you? Go to main page of Google and download Google Toolbar. It will install itself on your web browser. Everytime you visit a web site, look at Google Toolbar and it will show a section called, Page Ranking. If you see a grey bar, it means site is not included in Google's index. If bar is all white or has green, then pt your mouse over bar and you will see a page ranking number on a scale from 0-10. Yahoo has a 10 ranking, while a new site with no links to it may be 0. Average sites are usually 5-6, while very good sites have rankings of 7-9. If any of these high-ranking sites link to you then your own ranking will improve. (The Google toolbar has some other features that make it important in helping you to improve link popularity, which I will discuss in next article.)

Another measure of a site's importance can be found at www.alexa.com . This search engine gives traffic rankings of many of sites on Internet. If your site has a rank of 30,000, for example, then you are doing very well, because millions of sites are included in total survey. The Alexa search engine also gives valuable information about various sites, including number of other sites that link to it, when site was founded, contact information about owner, and reader reviews.

So, things to do if you want to improve your position in search results on popular search engines are 1. to get listed in important directories and 2. to launch a systematic campaign to improve quantity and quality of incoming links to your website.

3. Select two or three of your most important keywords related to your business and try to use them 3-7 times for every 100 words in your web copy.

4. Incorporate these keywords or keyword phrases in your title, description meta tag, keyword meta tag, alt tags (words that describe your images) comment tags, heading tags and main text of your web copy.

Search engines will spider heading tags in your web copy first (H1, H2, H3) because these stand out from your main text.

5. Write your web copy so that it not only satisfies search engines but also is compelling enough for your web site visitors to read (don't make it sound weird to read or obvious you are just writing for search engines). Repeat your keyword phrase or combinations of them every few sentences.

6. Write at least 250 words (or longer) for each of your web pages. Search engines will spider text near top of page, rather than at bottom. Therefore include your keywords in first 250 words on your page.

7. To avoid making your text hard to read, split your paragraphs into 2 or 3 sentences or make use of bullets.

8. Avoid using words that may be popular, but are not related to your site (i.e. sex). This will not improve your search engine ranking and will only frustrate your visitors who are searching for relevant content.

9. Keyword density analysis - use a keyword density analyzer to check keyword density of your web pages. This will tell you if you have used too many or too few words in your web copy.

http://www.keyworddensity.com

10. Realize that not all search engines treat keyword density same. Some will only place significance on keywords in your title, meta tags and web copy. Google (the most important search engine), places most significance on keywords in your web page text.

Conclusion: Achieving optimal keyword density throughout your web pages, will dramatically improve search engine rankings, therefore boosting your web site traffic. Try it..you will be pleasantly surprised!