Beginners - Getting
Listed In Search Engines
Once you have your web site complete and ready to be listed
you need to take a slow step by step approach to get listed
in the search engines. If you do it right the first time and
then build on that formula, your profits and your site will
benefit in the long run. Those willing to spend the time and
put these techniques into practice are the ones that will
benefit and are more likely to be successful.
1. Your first page is where search engines will start and making
sure that this page is fully optimized is one of your first
goals. What's optimization your ask? It's making your site
as search engine friendly as possible. You will also see people
refer to this in the short form of SEO.
Your first step is the TITLE TAG. This is one item that search
engines look for to start getting information about what your
site is about. It is also what search engines will show above
a clickable line on their results page. It is also a major
consideration of where you will rank when certain inquiries
are made of the search engine. TITLE TAGS are one of the major
things to concentrate on and to make sure that you get it
right. Doing so will result in not only better placement in
the search engine, but enticing descriptions will also result
in more people clicking on your link and visiting your site.
Take a look at what your competition is doing in order to
get some ideas for your site. To see their TITLE TAG go to
their web site and in IE or Netscape click on View then Source
and you will be able to see their TITLE TAG. Don't copy theirs,
but let this help you get some ideas for your own site.
2. Putting keyword phrases into your pages - Finding the
perfect set of keywords for your web pages and knowing the
right keywords to use is very important because your site
should provide people with what they are looking for. A free
program to help you can be found at: http://www.goodkeywords.com
Good Keywords makes use of various tools provided by search
engines like Yahoo, Google, Teoma and other services like
Alexa. Using Good Keywords makes it all very simple, fast
and straight forward. Just remember...don't over do it or
you will be penalized.
3. Writing your web page copy - Your next step is to incorporate
those keywords into the copy on your web site. This is extremely
important as search engines need to see these keywords on
your page so they can then analyze these words and decide
where your site should be listed in their categories. Write
your content around the keywords and use them as many times
as possible, keeping in mind though...that it is not just
a search engine that is reading the copy but also your visitor.
4. META TAGS - Meta tags provide search engines with information
about the content and purpose of a Web site. A Web site that
uses meta tags to the best of their ability will appear more
often in search results and will also be seen closer to the
top on those search results. Many people feel that stuffing
keywords into the meta tags will help improve their rankings.
The original idea behind meta tags was to give a way to classify
the web site. The problem now is that many engines don't consider
meta tags to be as relevant to the ranking, therefore they
give them less weight overall because of the keyword stuffing
techniques used. That's not to say that you still shouldn't
use meta tags, just consider to use them for what they were
originally intended - that is to give your site an accurate
title and description with a few keywords (3 or 4 phrases
max) outlining what the page, or site is about.
5. ALT TAGS - The ALT tag or 'alternative text' is an attribute
of the IMG tag. (Any graphic on your web site) An ALT tag
should be included for every image within your web site. The
ALT tag provides an alternate message to your viewers who
can't see your graphics. Without ALT tags, images on a web
site are meaningless to these users. If you will be using
a graphic menu systems for navigation, these alternate messages
are an especially important aid to users without the ability
to see your graphics. Adding an appropriate ALT tag to every
image within your web site will make a huge difference to
the accessibility of your web site. Also, for those who use
Yahoo and Google image searches, your ALT Tags can be very
important and will help bring traffic to your site. Take for
instance one of my sites - http://www.spasoftheworld.com I
have loads of graphics of different resort spas and the graphics
all carry the name of the resort. People looking for information
on this resort may easily end up at my website because I names
a picture with the name of the resort.
On the reverse side, ALT TAG stuffing, which is using the
tags in an image to hide keywords will rarely help a site's
position. If you can insert a key phrase into the image description
then by all means do so. Remember that Alt tags do usually
count towards your overall keyword density so it's better
to have relevant keyword alt tags rather than something like
"image01.gif".
6. Linking - with more search engines coming online every
day, search engines are looking for ways to serve quality
links to visitors. This is where linking to other sites and
having them link to you becomes important to both you and
the search engine. People who assume that the more inbound
links to them will help them, are very wrong. This may have
been true at one time but not today. Search engines need to
give quality results. One way they have of rating your site
is by the quality of inbound links to your site. Therefore
sites that are closely related to your site and that link
to you will help boost your popularity in search engines.
With Google this is a huge issue in how you rank with them.
Having a hundred links from all sorts of site may result in
hurting your ranking and you may be viewed as a link farm.
7. Spiders - A search engine is a database that has been
put together by spiders. Spiders scour the Internet going
through pages and recording information available on web pages.
Spiders then give the information to the database and the
database feeds the results. Theoretically, the web site should
show up in the search results the next time the engine updates.
It is important that all links on your site be active. A dead
link may prevent a spider from doing your entire site.
8. Robots Text file - Search engines will look in your root
domain for a special file named "robots.txt" (http://www.mydomain.com/robots.txt).
The file tells the robot (spider) which files it may spider
(download). This system is called, The Robots Exclusion Standard.
9. FLASH - This has to be one of the top mistakes a web site
owner can do to hurt their search engine rangkings. Good content
will win over flash every time and getting visitors to your
site is what you are trying to accomplish. The only thing
the search engines will be able to see when visiting a site
where the first page is all flash are the title tags and links.
In most cases that will not be enough. Over and over it's
content rich pages that will get you the rankings you need.
You may have to decide between getting a high ranking or having
a "pretty" entry page. Remember that you goal is customers
and sales. It might be kewl the first time you visit the site
but when you have to go there over and over again it becomes
very annoying not to mention that people on dialup must cringe
when faced with such a page. They often give up because of
the length of time it takes to load.
10. Don't expect results overnight. It takes time to get
your ranking up there, even with paid inclusion. You may start
out with a low ranking when you are first listed but as you
continue to optimize your site and build "relevant" links
you will start to see a gradual climb. As you wait for your
rise to the top, concentrate on building as many relevant
links as possible. Beside increasing your ranking you will
be surprised at the number of referrals that you will received
from those linked pages.
If you are thinking of buying an
SEO software application, here are some programs that actually
work as advertised and the reason why they are recommended
by FreeSEOTutorials.com
Seo
Elite: New Seo Software! The Grand Daddy
Of All Seo Software! Get A Top 5 Google Ranking In Under
30 Days!
www.SEOElite.com |
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