Improving your site's link popularity, and search engine rankingWritten by Donald Nelson
Have you ever wondered why one web site (maybe yours) is buried deep in search rankings for a particular keyword, while another site (your competitor's) is at top? Both sites may have similar content and even similar metatags, but one is number one and other is number 131.The answer to this disparity may lie in a factor known as link popularity. When search engines determine rankings, many things are taken into consideration and one of them is how many sites are linked to your site. The quantity and quality of these incoming links is weighed heavily by some search engines, such as Google. If many sites are linked to yours, your site is considered to be an important resource in that particular field and that is why search engines would like to give such a site a high ranking. Also if links to your site are coming from "important" or high ranked sites, then your web site is considered still more important. In this factor of link popularity, new sites are somewhat at a disadvantage as older sites have been around a while and have acquired more links over years. However, with a bit of "elbow grease" (sustained effort) it is possible to boost your site's link popularity and position in search engine results. One of first things that should be done is to submit your site to Open Web Directory (www.dmoz.org). By doing this you will get one link! But a listing in Open Web Directory is considered to be an important link, because it comes from a very high-ranking source. It takes a while to be listed in this directory because directory gets thousands of inclusion requests, and it uses volunteer editors to process them, but sites with good content and design generally get included. Similarly, a single listing in Yahoo directory will also boosts your site's ranking, but this will cost you $299. So if you have a big advertising budget, a paid listing in Yahoo is an option worth considering.
| | Improve Search Engine Ranking with Correct Keyword DensityWritten by Herman Drost
If you are serious about improving search engine rankings, you need to check keyword density of your web site. In order to do this you must integrate proper keyword phrases within your meta tags and web copy. What is keyword density? This is ratio of a keyword or keyphrase to total words (depth) on a page. It is one of most critical aspects of search engine optimization. To improve search engine ranking, your keyword density must not be too high or too low. Try to aim for a keyword density of 1% to 7%. To achieve 1% you would need to insert your keyword or keyword phrase once for every hundred words. If you only used your keyword once in one thousand words, this would result in diluting your keyword density. Don't try to stuff all your keywords together, separated by commas. Search engines may see this as spam, penalizing your rankings. How to improve your search engine ranking The best way to achieve good rankings, is to research appropriate keywords or keyword phrases related to your web copy before you even begin building your site. If your site is already built and it's on Internet, you may want to consider reviewing keywords and make necessary changes to your meta tags and web copy. It makes no sense to have a site that is not targeted to right audience and expect high search engine rankings. If your site has a lot of graphics or flash and is short on content, you should consider redesigning it. Search engines love content rich pages, so use images and flash sparingly. 1. Use Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) or overture suggestion tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion), to research your keywords. These tools will show you how many times a particular keyword was searched for each month. It's no point including keywords in your web pages that nobody searches on. 2. The best keywords you SHOULD include on your site, are those that are very popular (high number of searches when using tools above), but have a low number of competing web sites.
|
