Thursday, May 29, 2008

Tips For Search Engine Optimization

Ranking high in search engines is every webmaster’s dream. If your website was to be ranked in the top 3 positions for a given keyword, your website will be flooded with highly targeted traffic for free.

In the world of search engine rankings, your ultimate goal is to land the first spot in search results using a targeted keyword. One way to do that is on-page optimization. Lets see how you can do this.

On-page optimization refers to the improvement of both content and structure of the website so you can have better a chance of improving your page rank. There are numerous techniques available, but it does not mean that everything is actually applicable.

There are unethical practices known as Black Hat strategies which are frowned upon. Using those techniques will hurt your website on the long run. Thus, if you do not want to hurt your rank and even your reputation, here are some excellent techniques in on-page optimization which I highly suggest you follow.

1. Keep relevancy in your content. One of the major reasons why other websites would want to link to your website which in turn brings you a massive amount of traffic is because of your content. Another way to do this is to use your articles, and use a number of high-ranking keywords. Their purpose is to allow your article to show up once Internet users utilize your keywords in searching for information. The idea is to get your articles to appear on the first page of search results for a set of keywords that are relevant to your website.

When writing articles and playing with keywords, keep in mind that they should be relevant to the articles that you are writing about. As much as possible, your content should appear natural. Place your keywords at the right places. Most of all, do not over-stuff them. Not only does it make your copies sound incomprehensible, but you will likely get punished by search engines because of such technique. Remember to use keywords sparingly.

2. Validate your HTML. There are a number of disadvantages when you do not double-check your HTML code. One of these is you will never rank well in search engine results. What’s more, your website appears disoriented in some of the Internet browsers. There are many tools on the internet that will check your website for HTML errors. AnyBrowser is one of them.

To validate your HTML, you can also utilize a W3C HTML validator. All you need to do is to place your URL in it and allow the application to analyze your HTML codes and your HTML structure. In the end, it can give you a list of errors that you may have done in your webpages. You can then come up with the best solution to your problems.

3. Use bold text in your heading tags. One of the most effective ways to rank well with a particular keyword is to place it in your heading.

If your website is about Cats then place the word “Cat” in the heading of your website before your first paragraph. This is because search engine spiders “read” your content from top to bottom. And thus if you use bold text at the top of your web page you will have a better chance of getting a higher rank. However, to further increase your chances, set the keyword in bold. Spiders will view your keyword as highly relevant to the theme of your website which in turn will help you rank better.

There you have it. Those 3 strategies will help you optimize your website

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