Give them Content - and lots of it

If your site is about cooking, then put as much cooking information as possible on your site. Put cookware reviews, stove recommendations, healthy eating guides, microwave tips, interviews with famous chefs, etc. You could even offer other related information such as: wine recommendations for certain meals, calorie guides, links to famous restaurants, nutritional charts, etc..

Make it useful, relevant and valuable to your visitor. If they are impressed, it is likely that they will come back and even tell a friend or two about "that great new site that I just found".

Where can I get this Content?

No, you do not have to write all information yourself. Although if you can put together original content it is even more effective.

Simply search around for top quality content by going to your favorite Search Engines, ezines, libraries, magazines, books, newspapers, etc. You can also get ideas for great material by tuning into radio and TV programs that specialize in your area of interest.

Always, always, always give credit to source of information. Plagiarizing will often get you wrong kind of attention. For a good example of ills of plagiarism check out this article... www.worlddealcenter.com/guides/integrity.html

Here are some tips that I have found to be especially helpful in drawing higher rankings for your content pages.

1) Use High Interest words in page title and first few lines

Even if you come up with a top 20 listing, you still must compete with 19 other sites for that visitors attention. Give them a good reason to click onto YOUR link.

2) Name Searches

Many web searches are done for peoples names. Historical figures, modern day personalities, authors, big name marketers, etc.. These get thousands of search requests. If you can sprinkle book reviews and articles that use famous names in your content rich site, you will see more visitors that might normally never find your site.

3) Speaking of book reviews...

On my site I have a section devoted to selling books for Amazon. As far as it being a moneymaker thing is a bust. It ain't working! Nobody is buying (please come and purchase a book from me - I'm begging). So why don't I just take it down and scrap bookselling business?

Well, it brings in tons of hits from people who are searching specifically for those books and authors that are reviewed on my site. Okay, so they don't buy book (the odd one might though), but they do click through to other pages on site and sign up for my ezine and other programs.

These 3 suggestions have worked wonders for my stats pages and ultimately bottom line too. They certainly won't replace your other marketing efforts, but can provide a nice supplement to them.

Your tags are also quite important. Image tags are used to display graphics like GIFs and JPEGs. You should include one or two graphics on your web page, linked to your home page. Here is an example of an image tag: . Notice “ALT” property of image tag. That text will be displayed if mouse cursor hovers over graphic. Search engines use this text in their ranking algorithms.

Form tags can also play a role in search engine rankings. Here is an example of an optimized form tag.

It is important that you have links on your entrance pages. Wise webmasters link both to their own home page and all their other entrance pages. Following is a good example of a link on an entrance page: keyword phrase goes here.

Last, but definitely not least, is your body text. Start your body text with your keyword phrase. Begin next sentence with a synonym. Different engines require different amounts of body text, so experiment and see what ranks best for you. Don’t just repeat your keyword phrase or synonyms over and over. It’s best to sprinkle them throughout your text lightly.

One of tricks professionals use is to analyze their page with a keyword density analyzer. There are several available. One that comes to mind is “Keyword Density Analyzer”. A keyword density analyzer is best way to make sure you are not repeating your keywords too many times on your entrance pages. For most search engines, a keyword density (number of keyword repetitions on your page compared to number of other words) is about 3% - 4%.

The final, most important thing to have on your entrance pages is a link to your website. DO NOT have a “meta-refresh” tag that automatically forwards people to your website and DO NOT use a JavaScript command to do it either… both will massacre your search engine ranking.

Once you have created your entrance pages, uploaded them to your server and submitted URLs to search engines (don’t do too many at once – you’ll be penalized), wait a month or two and you’ll have fantastic rankings. Be careful, unscrupulous webmasters search for high ranking entrance pages and like to steal code to get their own high placements. One way to protect against this is by using cloaking software. It’s fairy easy to set up and use, and has added bonus of never letting web surfers see your ugly entrance pages… they are automatically forwarded to your home page without ever knowing they went through an entrance page.

Check your rankings often, and experiment to get best results. One good way to check your rankings is to use software like WebPosition Gold. You can also check them manually by visiting each search engine and searching for your keyword phrases.

Final advice: be patient and don’t give up. It isn’t always easy to get top rankings, especially when competition for your keyword phrases is tough. Be creative, work hard, and you will get hits your website deserves!