Summary:
Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but using little tricks that
require little or no programming knowledge, could make a huge impact on
your website's keyword ranking.
Keywords:
search engine optimization, seo, website optimization
Article Body:
The lifeblood of any website/ecommerce business is traffic, and every
webmaster knows the best type of traffic is natural, organic search
engine traffic. There are two very important reasons for this: (1) it is
extremely targeted, and (2) It is FREE! The hard part is getting top
ranking for your sites keywords... or is it? The purpose of this article
is to provide a few simple, effective, and most important, search
engine friendly strategies to help boost your websites' ranking and
ultimately your traffic.
1. We will start with the Meta Tags. I know you have already heard of,
and are probably currently using meta tags on your site. This is great. I
just want to make sure you are using them effectively. We will only go
over 2 tags: the "title" tag, and the "description" tag. We will not go
over the "keywords" tag, as the major search engines have placed less
and less weight on this one, and some would argue this tag has no weight
at all. I still use this tag however, as I feel there is some merit and
no drawbacks to using this tag.
I have found it effective to use similar text in the "title" and
"description" tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these tags
(near the beginning and more than once). I have seen sites with
"sitename.com", "New Page 1", or "Welcome to my site" in the "title"
tag, which really does not help in their quest for higher rankings for
their particular keyword. Also, try not to use words such as "and",
"or", or "the" in these tags.
**Important note about your keywords. Search engines evaluate keyword
prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density when determining a
site's ranking. All three are calculated individually for the page, the
title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page.
Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of
your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular keyword
or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of the
keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want the keyword
weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to the search
engine as "keyword stuffing" and most search engines penalize sites that
stuff their keywords.
2. Place your navigational links (and JavaScript) at the right or at the
bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines
"read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right.
Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the
site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or
Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your
keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your
links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search
engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what's
important on your page.
3. Place alt tags on all of your images. Search engine spiders cannot
"read" pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an image is
about is by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance to place
more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page's keyword
weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a big
difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks like
this: alt="put your keyword phrase here." Search engines separately
calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt tags as well,
so optimize your tags.
4. Place your keywords at the bottom of your page. Just as search
engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also do
the same to the last words. The general thinking is this, if your site
is about a certain subject, then the main points, or keywords, should,
appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be prominent
at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational links and
JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end well before
the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the bottom of your
page is to include them in the copyright information. For example, if
you have a dog food website, you could have something like this at the
very bottom of the page:
copyright yoursite.com
World's best dog food
Search engines are not (as of this writing), penalizing sites using this
technique, and it wouldn't really make much sense for them to do so.
5. The Anchor Text of your links. Anchor text is the actual linking text
on a site. It is what the user clicks on to navigate to that particular
site or page. If a search engine finds many links to your site using
the term "dog food", then the search engine concludes your site is about
"dog food". This is overlooked quite often, but it seems to have a very
large impact on your search engine rankings for a particular keyword.
Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or phrase you are trying to
target. Try to avoid anchor text such as "Click Here" or "yoursite.com"
👉 >> Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Keyword Research, HQ SEO Content, Backlinks, Technical SEO << 👈
Also, if you're running a reciprocal link campaign, be sure to use
variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site is
identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially
penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give more
weight to "naturally occurring" links, and less to "reciprocal link
exchange campaigns". Using different, but relevant anchor text can
dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your links
appear more natural.
Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but as you have read above, little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge,
can make a huge impact on your website's keyword ranking.
