Improving Search Engine Rankings
By Brett J. Daly |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the latest trends in
marketing. Websites have proven to be successful drivers of traffic and revenue.
Naturally, companies are examining how to improve the number of quality leads to
further drive profits on the web. Given the overwhelming amount of traffic that
Google and Yahoo's search engines receive, the focus is often on improving
rankings on these search engines.
Now, let us take a quick look at how
you can improve your webpage's rankings. First, figure out what keywords your
customers are likely to enter. Good keywords is a freeware program that can help
you find words that are commonly searched for in your business. Once you have
created a list, the next step is to optimize appropriate web pages to those
keywords.
Find the pages that best fit the keywords. Don't force words
in, simply look for ones that will potentially benefit those who search. Include
the word or words in the title and meta description. While most search engines
do not consider the meta key words, it is still probably worth entering. Search
engines often look for the term in the title, meta description, and copy. If you
overstuff key words into the copy, many search engines catch that and penalize
you.
Your PageRank (by Google) is also considered. This basically
examines the number of sites that link to you. Linking to link farms will not
work, as they have no benefit, and will result in a penalty if you are linked to
them. They often have a PageRank of zero. Linking to quality sites is the key.
Partner and exchange links with reputable sites where both sides can
benefit.
Finally, it may be worthwhile to consider bidding in pay per
click programs such as Google Ad Words and Yahoo Search Engine Marketing. The
sponsored words you see at the top and on the right side of search engines come
from these programs. You can set maximum bids to stay on budget. This will at
least put you on the radar while you wait for your site's rank to improve. Yahoo
(of course) claims that both being ranked highly and having the ad word has a
significant impact on the campaign's effectiveness.
There are other small
items. One example is a new page takes about nine months to be ranked well
within Google. Essentially, seniority is a benefit in their algorithm. On the
whole, the aforementioned items are most critical for trying to boost the number
of hits from search engines. It is a powerful and cost effective technique, one
that certainly warrants some effort.
About
the Author
Brett Daly is a Marketing
Specialist for a software firm in the mailing and printing industries. He has a
MBA and a B.S. in marketing with a minor in political science from the Rochester
Institute of Technology. http://brettdalybusiness.blogspot.com
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