Higher Search Rankings

Each page of your site should be optimized to get higher rankings for the particular topics discussed in that page. Even though the criteria to rank web sites vary from service to service, they can be summarized as follows.

Unique page titles. Give each page a unique page title (XHTML <title> element) that describes the page. Place your most 3 or 4 of your most important keywords in the title. This is the most important thing you can do to get good rankings. Keep the titles relatively short. This title is usually by search engines to create the link to your site in the search results.

Page text of interest to your visitors. Search engines have changed how they index sites. The second most important thing at the present time is the text that you put on your pages. Most search engines are ignoring the keyword meta tag and are extracting keywords from your text. Thus, for each page choose 3 or 4 keywords or phrases that are important to the page and scatter them (and variations of them) throughout the page. Pages that have quality text that is of great interest to your visitors will likely get good rankings.

As you add keywords and phrases to your page text, do it so the keywords and phrases are appropriate to the topic of the page. Vary the order in which the words and phrases appear so the search engine spiders won't think you are merely repeating keywords. Include jargon and unusual words that pertain to the theme of the page.

Do not stuff a lot of keywords and phrases into your pages in the hopes of getting higher rankings from the search engines (you'll probably decrease your rankings if you do stuff). Make your pages meaningful to your visitors, and visitors do not want to read repetition after repetition of keywords.

Site map. Have a site map that links to every page in your site. Search engines give greater importance to pages that can be accessed with just one or two clicks (the idea being that if it is easy for a person to access it, it deserves a higher ranking). Thus, your more important pages should be in the first one or two sub-levels of your site and should have direct links to them from the home page. If you have additional pages that are further down in your site hierarchy, a site map will give direct links to them, making it easier for both persons and spiders to locate the pages.

If your site map is automatically generated by your editor program, it will probably just contain links in the order dictated by your navigation scheme (the map for this site is that way). However, if you hand-build the map, you can group the links according to your marketing strategy and can include topic headers that contain your important site keywords. If your navigation scheme is based on your marketing strategy, you can have the best of both worlds, in terms of the order of the links in the map.

Popular sites. Popular sites (those that are linked from many other sites) are ranked higher. Find ways to get other sites to link your site, such as trading links. However, links to your sites must be from important sites, i.e. sites that have material relevant to your topic. If you link to sites that are not relevant, you'll probably decrease your rankings from search engines. To read more about this, go to

	http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol3/promo_no16.htm
	http://www.highrankings.com/linkpopularity.htm

Keyword meta tags. Even though search engines are now extracting keywords from your text, it doesn't hurt to put your keywords and phrases in the keyword meta tag in each page. Put synonyms and variations of your keywords in the meta tag. The keywords should be ordered in importance, with the most important words being at the first of the list. Use both keyword phrases and individual words. Separate the words and phrases with commas, without spaces after the commas. Keywords should be unique with each page as well as unique with the site, and they must be relevant to the theme of the page. Do not repeat keywords.

Short pages. Keep pages, especially the home page, short. Short pages are considered to be more popular than long pages because they are more likely to be read. However, the pages must contain content of interest to your visitors and not just be lists of links (the site map is an exception to this).

Alternate text. Place alternate text (HTML alt attribute) on each graphic, and place your most important keywords in the text.

Keywords at top. Place your most important keywords at the tops of the pages and at the beginning of the sentences. The tops of pages are more likely to be read than the bottom of pages and are thus more popular. Again, do this in a way that makes the content of your pages of interest to your visitors.

Keywords in headings. Place your most important keywords in HTML Headings ( <h> elements), especially in the larger headings (<h1> is the largest). Do this in a way that is appropriate to your page themes.

Description meta elements. Place the description meta tag in each page. Keep the description short (less than 200 characters), but include your most important keywords in the description. Write the descriptions to entice people into your site. The descriptions should be unique with each page and should be honest descriptions of the pages.

Some search engines use your description meta element as the source of the description given in the search results. Other search engines extract a description from your text. Some search engines, e.g. Google, do both. If the exact keyword phrase used in the search is in your description element, Google will use that for the description in the search results. If not, Google will use the sentence in your text that contains the exact keyword phrase (if that phrase exists in your text). Thus, place your most important keywords in both your description tag and your text (place the keywords in a nice marketing statement near the top of your page).

Noframe pages. Pages that are framed might not be indexed by search services. Have a noframes version that will be indexed.

Multiple listings. Some search services want you to submit only the home page, and their spiders will index the other pages in your site. Other services only index the pages submitted, and you can submit more than just the home page. Do your submissions accordingly.

Site Map. Have a site map that links to every page in your site. Search engines give greater importance to pages that can be accessed with just one or two clicks (the idea being that if it is easy for a person to access it, it deserves a higher ranking). Thus, your more important pages should be in the first one or two sub-levels of your site and should have direct links to them from the home page. If you have additional pages that are further down in your site hierarchy, a site map will give direct links to them, making it easier for both persons and spiders to locate the pages.

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