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10 Steps To Higher Search Engine Positioning
by Dave Davies
There is perhaps no more level playing field in business than
the Internet. It is this fact that has created millionaires
from paupers. The amount of money that can be made depends
of course on your industry and your products and/or services
but to be sure, if it can be sold at all, it can be sold online.
While there are many methods out there for building a profitable
website, from banner ads to email campaigns, by far the most
cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be search
engine positioning. That major advantage search engine positioning
has over other methods of producing revenue online is that
once high rankings are attained and provided that the tactics
used were ethical and that continued efforts are made to keep
them, they can essentially hold and provide targeted traffic
indefinitely. Your site will rise and your site may sometimes
fall in the rankings but a solid and complete optimization
of your site will insure that through algorithm changes you
may fluctuate but you will not disappear.
I have been ranking websites highly on the Internet for quite
a few years now and there are some essential rules that, if
followed, will insure that over time your website does well
and holds solid and profitable positions on the major search
engines.
Here are the 10 steps to higher search engine positioning:
Step One - Choosing Keywords
You first must choose your keywords. This is perhaps the most
important step of the process as incorrectly targeting phrases
can result in traffic that is not interested in your product.
There are three tools that I use virtually every day to help
pick the most appropriate keywords:
Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)
WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
A Brain
The last in the list is the most important. Look through the
potential keyword phrases and think, "Who would be searching
using that phrase?" If the answer is, "a student
looking for information" then chances are it won't result
in a sale. If the answer is "Someone who is looking specifically
for a product I offer," then obviously this is a prime
candidate as a targeted keyword phrase.
Step Two - Site Content
Even before I optimize websites I like to get a good deal
of new content down in order to insure that I know exactly
where I'm going and exactly what I need to do to get there.
Creating some of the new content before starting the optimization
process can be doubly helpful in that it can reveal potential
additions to your website that you may not have considered
(a forum or blog for example). If you already have a site,
perhaps simply sit on your back deck, sip on a coffee and
image what you would do if your whole site was lost and you
had to start again (other than launch into a very colorful
discussion with your hosting company).
Step Three - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site
that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive
to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding endeavor.
To adequately structure your website you must "think
like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound.
A search engine spider reads your web page like you would
read a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and
then moves down.
Priority must be given then, to what you place near the top
of your page.
Step Four - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and
your site structure established you must now move on to the
most obvious step, the optimization of your content.
As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads
highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that
includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said,
stuffing in keywords in hopes that it will add weight to your
page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density"
refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of
your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according
to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata
ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to
12% (quite a gap isn't it).
Personally, when it comes to keyword density I prescribe to
one rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you
can while keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.
Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do
it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your
content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify
the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight
and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your
actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the
heading but don't shy away from also adding additional words
(though not too many).
Step Five - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to
make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your
website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text
(the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy
to that page for the words used to link to it. For example,
if I ran a website on acne and had a treatments page I could
link to it with an image, with text reading "Click for
more information on how to treat this skin condition"
or simply "Acne Treatments". When a search engine
spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and,
while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight
to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain
the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying
the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image,
but if you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link
to your acne treatments page you are attaching relevancy to
that page for those keywords.
There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well
spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to
place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main
internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The
second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and
link to it from your homepage. Both methods have advantages
and disadvantages but that's a whole article unto itself.
Step Six - Human Testing
So now you have your site, it's optimized and you have your
navigation in place. The next step is to put it past someone
who has never seen your site (and preferably who won't know
how much work you've put in and tell you it's great even if
it's not).
Ask them to find specific information and see how long it
takes. Ask someone else to just surf your site and watch which
links they click and ask them why they chose those ones.
Most importantly, find out how the content reads to them.
You've spent hours working through the content at this point
and are probably not the least biased on its readers. Find
out how it reads to someone who has no invested interest in
the site and correct any issues they may bring up.
Step Seven - Submissions
I take a different philosophy than most when it cones to search
engine submissions. I submit to directories (both general
and topic-specific) and to a few topical search engines but
for the most part I've found submitting to Google, Yahoo,
MSN and the other major engines has proven to be a bit of
a waste of time. The major search engines are spidering search
engines which means they will follow links to wherever they
go. Simply having sites that are spidered by the major search
engines linking to you will get your site found.
When I have spent time submitting my sites I have found they
get picked up in about a week. When I have simply skipped
this step and sought out reputable directories and other sites
to get links from I have found that at least the homepage
of the site gets indexed in as little as two days.
Neither will hurt your rankings but simply to make the best
use of your time, seek our directories and other websites
to get links from and leave the spiders to find you on their
own.
Step Eight - Link Building
All of the major search engines give credit to sites that
have quality links pointing to them. How many is enough depends
on your industry and targeted phrases. Running a search on
Google the reads "link:www.yourcompetition.com"
will reveal approximately how many links a competitor has.
The first place to seek links is with general and topic-specific
directories. After that you may want to move into reciprocal
link building. Reciprocal link building is the exchange of
links between two websites. Some webmasters will simply link
to any website that links back to them. I highly recommend
being more particular than that.
Find websites that you believe your site visitors would genuinely
be interested in and you've probably found a good link partner.
You want to find links from sites that are related to yours.
There are obviously many more methods to building links than
directories and reciprocal link building. Again though, this
is a whole article (or more) in itself.
Step Nine - Monitoring
Whether you use WebPosition Gold (http://www.webposition.com/)
or just run searches manually by hand you will have to monitor
the major search engines for your targeted phrases. Also,
you will need to review your stats to see where your traffic
is coming from and what search terms are being used to find
you.
If a month passes and you don't see any changes then more
work needs to be done. I'm certainly not stating that you
should take a month off, a solid search engine positioning
strategy involves constantly adding content, building links,
and insuring that your visitors are getting the information
they want to have and finding it as easily as possible.
Step Ten - Reward Yourself
So you've done it. It's taken many many hours of work but
you're rankings are doing well. What you've created is a solid
position that will stand the tests of time provided that you
continually revisit the above noted steps and insure that
your website is always one step ahead of your competition
(who have noticed you climbing and succeeding as you would
notice others climbing up around your ranking).
Now it's time to turn off your computer, take your partner
out (you haven't had much time for them lately) and have a
great week(end). You've got a lot of work to do to maintain
and build on these rankings but the hardest part is over.
Congratulations!
About The Author
Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/). He has been optimizing and
ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history
of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that
you may have about your website and how to get it into the
top positions on the major search engines.
info@beanstalk-inc.com
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