Search Engine Rankings for Beginners by: Niall Roche Search Engine Ranking for Beginners Search engine optimization is best left in the mystical land of the Intenet Marketing Guru right? Good Search engine rankings are tough to achieve. Understanding search engine marketing takes years of studying and only people with true insider knowledge and secret tools rank well in Google right? WRONG. Pure c--- as a matter of fact. Ranking well in the search engines is not difficult. In fact search engine optimization is relatively easy. What stops most people from ranking well in search engines is misinformation. Every week there's yet another quick fix to ranking well in search engines and people jump from one quick fix to the next hoping for that Top 10 position in Google and never achieving it. There are 6 key areas of search engine optimization that you need to know about. These are the basics. Getting these right will help you achieve the Google rankings that you've always wanted. Domain Name - The jury is still out on the how relevant a keyword rich domain name is. What I mean by keyword rich domain name is say for example your site was going to be about money making ideas then an idea domain name could be either www.moneymakingideas.com or www.money-making-ideas.com. My own personal preference is with the hyphenated approach e.g. www.money-making-ideas.com simply because I believe that search engines can read it more easily. To registed your domain name I would suggest using either 000Domains.com or GoDaddy.com Content - Useful content. Not keyword stuffed, spammy pages. Write something useful for your visitors. If you can't write then you'll need to learn. Turn Words Into Traffic is a great resource for learning how to write content and is a resource that I use personally. Turn Words Into Traffic gives you an A-Z on article writing - from a writers perspective. If you don't want to learn how to write content then you could always use Create Website Content Fast to help you speed the process up. Keywords - Keywords are the words or phrases that you expect people to search for your site/service/content with. There are two distinct factors to consider when choosing keywords for your site. 1. You need to target specific keywords. For example if you have a website about dating then you'll probably find it quite difficult to achieve high search engine rankings initially with that single term. However if you were to refine an area of your site to target say Gay & Lesbian Dating that's more specific. You could also regionalize your keywords or key phrases e.g. Gay & Lesbian dating in Toronto. This refining process is often referred to as niche (pronounced neech) marketing. 2. You need to choose the keywords that you want people to find your site with. Put yourself in your visitors shoes - think about what they might use to find you in the search engines. What keywords or key phrases would you type into a search engine to find your site? What keywords or key phrases would your potential visitor use to search for you? Always, always think like a typical websurfer. If you're interested in seeing what people are searching for on the web and how profitable that might be for you I would recommened that you check out Good Keywords. It's free and does a wonderful job of helping you find good keywords I would also suggest that you try Wordtracker also. It's a brilliant service for tracking down specific, popular keywords. Keyword density - This is how often your keyword is used on the the page itself. For example if you have 100 words of text on a single page and you mention your keyword 5 times then you have 5% keyword density. Opinions vary on this but anywhere from 1% - 7% is considered ideal. If this doesn't make sense to you then it's ok. The simple rule is this: less is more. Do not alter the text on your webpages to include your keyword over and over again because.........well.... it looks stupid, won't instill any confidence in your prospective customer and might also get you penalized or removed from the search engines. Page title - Your tag is critical to your page being ranked well. Stuffing your tag with keywords in the hope of ranking well is pointless. Your tag, once constructed properly, will see you moving up the search engine rankings quickly. Bear this simple fact in mind when building your websites and it will serve you well. Links - Having good links pointing to your site and good links within your site (an often overlooked aspect of search engine optimization) is pretty important as far as search engine ranking goes. Having other sites linking to yours proves the importance of your site to the search engines i.e. if the content on your site is so valuable that other site owners want to link to it then it must be important. META Tags - Meta tags are dead baby. Well not quite dead but they are only used as a point of reference for search engines. It's a shame to see websites that have their META tags still stuffed with keywords. It's pointless. Put your primary keywords in the Meta Keyword part of your webpage but apart from that don't lose any sleep or waste any energy on them. There's not enough space in this article to explain all of the above in the detail that I'd love to. Also I'm not a search engine expert so some of the explanation is best left to those that I learned from (Sean Burns and Jay Stockwell take a bow please Having learned the basics of search engine optimization and submission I have achieved Top 10 Rankings for all of my websites. It's not hard to do this. It just takes work, a little patience and a little common sense. Recommended reading: Rankings Revealed Microsite Miracles
I think thats a really good explanation that really makes the essential parts stand out. In all the rest of the forums theres so much talk about trying to uncover the movements of the search engines that it normally clouds people's judgement and gets them going in the wrong course. Thanks for clearing things up man
Confine links to signature. Also you will not rank well if you just post the links in the forums because you need permanent links. Of course signature in a way are permanent but the benefit from search engines is not as much as the direct traffic.
WOW!! great tool i just found! exactfactor.com , the most reliable google placement tool i've been using so far! check it out and tell me what you think or if u know any other tools, thanks!
Found the article ok for us beginners. Thanks Search engine ops makes me want to understand it better. Cheers
i hate when ppl talk like that i really do also you could purchase your site to be on a advertisemnt for life just gotta pay i think its monthly tho
Hello Mr Linux, it's a really good article, you explore each point very clearly, keep posting these types of informative posts
Great tips you got there!.. Doing both On-Page and Off-Page Optimization is a great combination!.. The proper use of keywords, meta tags, title tags, and description together with building links will surely help your site to get to your desired rankings and get higher PR value..
Im also a newbie Seo and im glad there are people who are sharing their knowledge about their profession..thanks and continue doing that man..
Good tips there. Basic SEO doesn’t require specialized knowledge of algorithms, programming and taxonomy but it does require a basic understanding of how search engines work.
Search Engine optimization is the best way of promoting a website. Keyword density is the major part and must be used in a proper way in a content.
Before any search engine optimization (SEO) work is performed, it is critical to first conduct keyword research and analysis. Identifying relevant and attainable keywords is vital for any SEO campaign. Focus on keywords that will direct targeted visitors to your site, and don’t concentrate on keywords that do not represent what your site is offering. The second part of keyword research is competitive analysis. Focusing your SEO work on highly competitive keywords can be virtually useless, especially for new sites. On-Site Optimization Because search engines "crawl" your website when determining its relevancy to keywords, website elements are important for search engine ranking. On-site details such as title tags, meta descriptions, keyword density and URL’s can have significant influence on search engine ranking. Targeted keywords should be placed in the title tags, meta descriptions and URL’s of your site. Additionally, the body text on the home page and on internal pages should reflect the title tag and meta descriptions in a relevant manor. Avoid duplicate content and assign different title tags and meta descriptions to each page. When developing page text, you should also consider keyword density. There are many tools that can help you analyze the competition’s on-site layout; however, if you simply observe the pages of top ranking sites, you can get a pretty good idea yourself. Link Building Increasing the number of incoming links to your website is one of the best tactics for improving search engine ranking. Depending on the competition, the number of links needed to boost ranking varies. Like on-site optimization, looking at the competition is a good way to determine how many incoming links you should aim for. Developing a link goal is fairly simple; attaining links, however, can be very difficult. There are several ways to acquire incoming links including article writing, forum posts, blog comments and press releases. Writing articles for submission sites , easy and effective way to gain incoming links and improve keyword ranking. Similarly, forum posts and blog comments should be limited to sites that are highly relevant to your keywords and that have a decent page rank. For any new product launches or company events, press releases are an excellent opportunity for increasing inbound links as well. On-site optimization and link building are just two of several search engine marketing strategies. Professional search engine optimization firms and consultants consider many more components than those briefly summarized above, but having a basic understanding of the structure behind search engine ranking is important for any professional involved in the online community.
Great article! But, are all of these items still working? If I'm not mistaken, some strategies are now outdated so we need to follow the new ones now.
Hello, That is really great information about search engine optimization.you gave very good tips and very good things so that beginners will improve and learn how to increase your ranking. SEO is the use of techniques that help to optimize the results of searches done online. SEO is just one way of doing internet marketing. The term internet marketing encompasses SEO and many more marketing techniques. While SEO is extremely important, it isn’t the entire story when it comes to getting your website noticed. If you have an online business, it’s important to create a marketing plan. Many people think they need a large budget to make a marketing plan, but that isn’t always true. Many internet marketing strategies are affordable and easy to do. thanks!!