My website has a Page Rank of 3 and is in number 2, 7, 6 and 2 position for my keyword in AltaVista, Google, MSN and Yahoo search engines. Now that’s not really terrific, I’m still working on it, but it’s not bad either and I basically did it without resorting to any SEO program. The point I’m trying to make is that search engines want to post the best search results for you and me so they’re going to be particular about how they do it and I think to a certain extend, they divulge what the criteria is. For the most part though, they don’t. Imagine what it would be like if everyone knew the “secrets” and the “keys” Search Engines use.
So how do you really get a higher rank in search engine position when you’re starting off? All I can tell you is what I have done and continue doing. The way I see it, there are three (3) things that could be important to help you get there:
1.Meta Tags. You may have your website designed to be functional and beautiful and due to that effort you may have overlooked the important tags. Meta tags are read and followed by search engines and they are explanation and instruction by you to them. If you’re not familiar with them you can go to Free Web Submission to learn and use their free web service to generate them for you. There are also other web services available you could find by doing a search.
You need to be sure the title and description Meta tags are appropriate for each page. By that I mean the title and description for each page is unique to that page. Its real easy to just copy and paste the same thing for each page and be done with it but you’re liable to get an error from some search engines specially Google. Besides, it helps to index your pages right the first time. A good quality effort, something Google looks for.
2.Links. Or better, links back to you from other relevant sites. I set out to obtain links from all relevant websites I could. Most of the sites have a form you need to fill out, a program that does the emailing is fine for some sites but in general it maybe best to do this manually. I get peeved when a Webmaster sends me an email when I have a form I like filled out and sent to me. It is hard to believe they even looked at my site even though they say they did and oh how they liked it. Then they send me an email!
So here again I really see no need for a program to do that. You could use a database and a form to do all this where the data would automatically go into the database and then you would fetch it dynamically to display on the link page but I think text links work much better for search engine spiders so I recommend not using the database method.
Link building can be a real big pain in the booty, time consuming and down right laboring. My suggestion is start by submitting to directories then commenting on blogs to get a few links pointing to you. There are some programs that can automate the process and take some labor out of the chore. One I can think of is Fast Directory Submitter and Fast Blog Finder. Both are by G-Lock Software and a free edition is available too, which would get you started.
After that would be good to get started on link exchanging with relevant websites. This needs to be done over time because it’s both time consuming and search intensive so I would take it nice and easy. In fact that’s how search engines like it. Authority websites are not hard to find to link to, their acceptance of your link exchange offer is another thing! Start by doing a Google search using your most important key word. The top sites that show up are probably the authority sites you want.
Content management sites are another good source. Get registered and participate in such sites as digg.com, stumbleUpon, Facebook, etc. The participation needs to be genuine and helpful and not just for the sake of promoting your website even though that is a side benefit!
3.Key Words. Sometimes one is stuck with a key word and cannot change it but most often your key words can be added to or taken away from the list. This bears watching. The reason is due to the fact that we may not have picked the right one that our users are searching on. The Google Webmaster Tools has a good section on this or a third party keyword analyzer program can do the job. Whichever you like to go with, make sure you study which keywords your users are finding you on then change to them using the meta tags in the head section of your index page. Obviously this is not a one-time effort, as people will change the way they search and your key words will change with it. So this is something that would be good to do at varying intervals.
In addition to these, writing expert articles and publishing them in the various article directories would be very helpful in any SEO project you take on. I saved this for last because not everyone likes to or wants to write articles or tutorials. If you are the type that does then by all means go to it, write it and web publish it, it certainly will help you get valuable links and users or customers.
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