Let me say first of all that there are a lot
of books, sources and tutorials that make
promises of getting your website into the top 10
spots on the major search engines. Most of these
are self promoting and the end result is that
you have to hire these people to accomplish the
things they say you can do on your own.
So I want to preface this by saying that this
article on how to improve search engine rankings
is not necessarily a do-it-your-self guide. In
fact, the art of SEO can be time consuming and
irritating to say the least. Some methods
require the help of companies like mine so I
write this in hopes that you will understand
what it really takes to gain exposure, realize
what you can do on your own and determine when
you need assistance.
One final point I want to make is "Don't use
any SEO Company that can't explain what it is
doing and that makes claims of using secret
software that you can never see or use". Yes,
SEO can be complex but not to the point that you
can't understand what is being done. A good SEO
company is able to educate you on what is being
done and explain that it is best to leave some
techniques to the experts.
My 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking
1. If you are using a shared host,
ask your host for a dedicated IP address for
your site. This means that no one on the net
shares this IP with your site. It is yours and
yours alone. Many shared servers have tons of
related sites on them. Having your own IP
separates you from those sites.
2. Make sure your site validates
as a search engine friendly site. The best site
to use for this purpose is
The World Wide Web Consortium. Their
markup validation service will tell you if
your site conforms to W3C standards and whether
or not the search engines can read your site. If
your site has errors, these may stop the bots
from properly indexing your site.
3. Make sure you have a contact
page with an address and telephone number and a
form of some sort so people can contact you.
Don't list your email on the site unless you
want spammers to send you tons of junk mail.
Make sure the form you use on the site uses
captcha (challenge-response system). Have a
Privacy Policy Page and Terms of Services page
and ensure that they have at least 300 words of
text each. Most sites have these pages, but I
strongly recommend you not copy. Find examples,
but use your own words and include keywords
related to your site. Make the pages personal to
the reader
4. Every page on your site should
have at least 300 words or more. Don't write a 2
paragraph page that has little to no real
information. Provide details and give examples.
5. Create a FAQ or Tutorial page
on your site. Make each subject link to its own
page and focus each page on 1 or 2 keywords. As
a start, try to add 10 of these types of pages
to your site. You can come up with ideas for
FAQ's or Tutorials by reviewing your industry
and trying to determine what people might not
understand about it and the kinds of questions
they might ask. Then post the questions and the
answers. This is an easy way to add great
content to your site and to help potential
clients feel secure about your service.
6. Add a blog to your site. Have
your blog designed to match your site so that as
it draws traffic your readers know this is your
main site of business. This will add value to
your site, plus improve your search engine
rankings. Create categories and write frequently
about your industry to keep your readers
interested and your content fresh.
7. Create Link Bait using your
blog. There are very few services that offer
this on a professional level and it can be very
complex. I suggest leaving this service to the
professionals because it requires time and
knowledge and can be difficult and frustrating
to do. The idea is to add unique and detailed
content about your industry which creates enough
buzz through various channels to motivate others
to refer and link back to your blog. This can be
a huge asset to your business because many
writers love to provide plugs to quality
content.
8. Post to Directory sites that
have good inner page rank, especially on the
page where your site will be listed. Use unique
anchor text for each posting. Again, this may be
one of those tasks best left to professionals
because, if done correctly, your site's search
engine ranking can be dramatically improved and,
if done incorrectly, can be a waste of time,
effort and money.
9. Text Link Brokering is another
creative and effective way to build more anchor
text back links. Find related and quality ranked
sites that will list your site in text format.
Generally, this requires a one time, monthly or
yearly fee.
10. If you have a product or
service to sell, offer affiliate incentives.
Post these incentives on affiliate forums and
elsewhere to generate interest in getting others
to promote your service for you. Be sure you
have a solid affiliate back end in place to
provide your affiliates with dependable stats
and access. Then, have people write reviews on
your program's tracking and payout reliability
to generate additional buzz.
The 10 points noted above are by no means a
complete list of what you could do to improve
your site's search engine ranking, but if you
focus your efforts on these 10 areas, rest
assured you will see both an increase in traffic
and higher rankings.
About The Author
Darren Dunner -
www.the-content-writers.com has been writing
and providing these services for over 7 years.
