Search Engine Optimization - How to Increase Your Web Site’s Rankings
What can you do when your Web site isn’t getting the kind of traffic you want? Find ways to increase your rankings in search engines. Basically, if your domain name doesn’t figure among the top 10 results of a search query - the results displayed on the first page of a search - your chances of getting traffic are drastically diminished.
There are a few things you can do to increase a Web site’s ranking in Google and similar search engines. There are also many pitfalls you should be aware of and avoid.
When they start a search on the Internet, most people will go to a search engine. The most popular are those provided by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Some people use others, but frankly, if your Web site is ranked pretty high by one of these three, chances are you’re on your way to success.
To increase your rankings among these engines, you can choose either an easy way - i.e. spamming in its different forms - or a hard way, which will probably be more profitable in the long run. Spamming can artificially inflate your rankings and the number of visitors your site receives. But unless the services you offer are really worth it, you’re not going to stay on top of the rankings for long.
Do not participate in text spamming. Text spamming can be described as repeating key words over and over on one Web page in the hope that a search engine will rank the page higher when someone does a search with certain key words. Many Web sites use this technique. Even respectable companies like BMW used to do it … until Google blacklisted them. The fact is that the companies in charge of the search engines are fully aware of this unfair tactic. So they try to fine tune their programs to weed out these obnoxious Web sites from the result pages. There is a free program that looks out for the most common types of spamming. Enter any Web address in this program, and in half a second it will tell you whether the site participates in any spamming practice.
Do not participate in bogus Web rings. Another attempt to fool the search engines spiders is to create links with other Web sites just because Google and the like give credits to links. In the same style, some people go to blogs to write comments just so that they can put a link to their Web site. Here again, Google engineers are fully aware of this trend and have come with an answer: many of the links that you can find in blogs are now made worthless; the search engine won’t consider them to determine rankings.
Do not pay the services of companies that promise to put your Web site on hundreds of different search engines. What search engines? From the top of your head, cite all the search engines you know. Chances are, other people know just as many as you do. Many of these “search engines” are actually spamming Web sites themselves, and working with them could actually decrease your rankings.
On the other side, there are some things you can do so that it will be easier for the search engines to determine what your Web site is all about. Google actually has a Web page full of advices on ways to increase your page rankings.
Do not waste your time trying to trick search engines. Spend it instead on applying the guidelines provided by the search engine companies; this will help you make a better Web site that will better serve your visitors.
Kris Beldin is a PR coordinator for 10x Media, a marketing solutions company.
Estatblished in 2003, 10x Media has expanded its online presence through consumer information networks Inside Real Estate, Inside Finances and Grab Real Estate, which contain thousands of pages for city and state specific real estate information across the nation.
May 19th, 2008 No Comments posted in Computers and Internets
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