Search Engines: Getting a Top Placement; Key Tips!
The search engines reward a good, clean design, readability and sticking to the goals. They punish attempts to mislead, confusing layouts and clutter.
Keywords
Keywords are the words within your page that are the same as or similar to words that people will type in search engines to find your page.
Choose Your Key Words Carefully
A page about peanut butter and how to choose a healthy variety, should contain keywords like:
- peanut butter,
- peanuts,
- choosing,
- healthy
Positioning Your Keywords
Keywords near the top of the page are given greater weight than those far down the page.
Keep Your Content Relevant
If your page rambles all over the place, talking about unrelated topics, it is likely to be hurt in the search engines, unless it is a blog and , well, nothing in particular (and how many people are looking for that 4? May be 5?)
Search Engine Obstacles
"Over-teching" your website, filling it with loads of code, javascript and widgets adds to the clutter and "noise" that dilutes the keywords and causes a lower ranking. A simple static page that is focused and meets visitors needs will always rate higher than a whiz-bang page filled with gadets that people don't want or don't understand.
Building Links to and from other websites
It may be obvious to you that the more websites that link to you; especially large, popular websites and those that attract visitors who would be interested in your website's topics; the better. But it also helps your ranking if your website puts links to other websites, too - IF those websites are good websites with content that is likely to appeal to people who visit your websiet!
Do not Spam the Search Engines
Pretty obvious, too, but attempts to mislead or trick the search engines (for example, by repeating a keyword hundreds of times in your code, or resubmitting your website to Google every day) will result in your website being kicked OUT of the search engines. Don't do it.
Submit Your Key Pages
You do want to submit once every 45 days. See this page for information about how to submit.
Verify And Maintain Your Listing
You can test to see if your website is listed in a given search engine just but entering your website's url in the search engine, like "www.example.com" in Google. (WITHOUT the quotes! Need we say that?)
Further information about search engine placement and ranking
Here are some great articles for more information from SearchEngineWatch.com - Search Engine Placement Tips-
Who
Powers Whom? Search Providers Chart
Shows which major search providers power the web's major search engines, in chart format -
ComScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings
The latest comScore Media Metrix ratings for search engines, showing which search engines are most popular, based on search volume. -
Hitwise Search Engine Ratings
The latest Hitwise ratings for search engines, showing which search engines are most popular, based on visits. -
Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings
The latest Nielsen NetRatings statistics for search engines and portals, with a look at reasons for gains and losses. -
WebSideStory's StatMarket Search Engine Ratings
A compilation of ratings data released by WebSideStory's StatMarket and similar web traffic analysis firms. -
Searches Per Day
Shows how many searches are performed each day at some major search engines. -
Search Engine Sizes
Page with charts showing how large the search engines are and how much coverage of the web they provide. -
Web
Directory Sizes
Directories are usually human-compiled guides to the web, where sites are organized by category. The chart below compares the size of directories such as Yahoo at various services.
Essentials of Search Engine Optimization
- Intro to Search Engine Optimization
- How Search Engines Work
- How Search Engines Rank Web Pages
- Search Engine Placement Tips
- How To Use HTML Meta Tags
- Major Search Engines and Directories
- Search Engine Results Chart
- Who Powers Whom? Search Providers Chart
- Buying Your Way In: Search Engine Advertising Chart
- Checking Your Listing In Search Engines
- Measuring Link Popularity
- Search Engines and Frames
- What Are Doorway Pages?
- Search Engine Features For Webmasters
- How Major Search Engines Regionalize
- Search Engines And Capitalization
- Search Engine Optimization