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Search Engine Optimization - Ten Steps to Follow

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Author: Daryl H. Bryant

How do I increase the rank of my website in the major search engines? This is probably the most commonly asked question relating to websites and the Internet and unfortunately is probably the hardest one to answer for most.

The art to successfully increase the rank of your website is a true science with no overnight solution. Some people believe you have to pay to be listed in the top of the search results. This is not true for the majority of search engines. The websites listed on the top are listed there because they are ranked higher and more relevant to a particular keyword search, by that search engine, than the websites listed below.

There are however separate areas for advertisers such as Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsorship Ads that you can pay for, but the main search area is normally free to be listed and one can increase their page rank by effectively performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for their website.

One thing you must understand is that it takes time to find what works for your site. If you make a change, you'll have to wait until it has been indexed in each search engine in order for you to effectively assess if the change has positively or negatively affected your page rank.

Below are ten steps to follow in order to increase your page rank in the major search engines. If these are followed, you will be sure to increase your rank. For help or more information on increasing your page rank, contact Hudson Horizons today.

Be Legitimate – Most search engines analyze your website to determine if you are trying to manipulate their engine in any way. Do not do this. I repeat, do not do this. Be legitimate about your search engine optimization otherwise you will be penalized and your page rank will decrease, no doubt about it. The following Search Engine Optimization tactics should be avoided at all costs.
Do NOT do the following:
- Keyword Stuffing
- Hidden Text
- Cloaking
- Doorway Pages
- Redirects
- Duplicate Sites
- Interlinking
Manage Page Titles - A page title is the heading of the page that will be listed in the search results when your site is located. It is also the title that will be displayed on the top of the browser window. It is important that each page contains its own unique title that is relevant to the content of that page. Having the same title on every page will not do you any good. The search engines might not properly index each page if they see your pages all have the same title. But on the other hand, if the engines see that each page has its own unique title, then it will realize each page is different and will index them accordingly. Also, make sure that the title is relevant to the content within that page.

Manage Meta Tags – Meta Tags are information placed in the HTML header of a web page, providing information to a search engine that is not visible to a user. The two most common Meta Tags, relevant to search engines, are the keyword and description tags. It is very important that each page contains separate keywords and descriptions that are relevant to the content of that page.

Google and Yahoo Sitemap Submission - Google and Yahoo Sitemaps offers a way for you to submit all your site's URLs to their search index to improve the visibility of your pages. With Google and Yahoo Sitemaps submission you can keep them informed of all the pages in your website and if done on a regular basis, provides fresher search results and a smarter crawl of your website.
Content Development – Content is the key to success with SEO! With good-quality content, that's relevant to your products and services, you will be liked by the search engines. When a search engine crawls your website, it analyzes the content on each page and saves a copy to their index. When a search is performed it will lookup your site and determine if its relevant to the keywords being searched for. With short, poorly written content it will be difficult to be listed on the top few pages of a search engine.

Write Articles – Writing articles and adding them to your website is a great means to providing more relevant content on your website. This will help your customers by providing them will relevant information in your industry while helping to index your pages. Be creative with you articles and be sure to list keywords and key phrases together that you feel prospective customers might search for.

Good Internal Linking – It is vital that the internal links of your website are search engine friendly. Search engines easily pick up basic HTML links unlike links generated by fancy scripting, commonly used in drop-down menu navigation. Also, to help a search engine crawl every page, all sites should include a sitemap page, which categorically lists your page names and an HTML link to each page within the site, providing the search engines with a page to easily get to and crawl every page in your site. If you have over 150 pages, you should create separate categorized sitemap pages for each set of 150 page links.

Reciprocal Linking - Exchanging links with other websites is an ok way to help increase your rank. It's not the best way but it may count. It's important to try and exchange links with more popular websites. A search engine will analyze the links on other websites that point to yours and determine the ranking of their website. If a poorly ranked site has a link to yours, it will not affect your ranking. But if you have a link on the homepage of a popular site like Yahoo pointing to your site, then it will definitely have a positive impact on your page rank.

Patience – Patience is very important. It takes time for a change that you've recently made to be indexed in the search engines. You must be patient to see how your recent change or addition has positively or negatively affected your page rank. Submitting a sitemap of your URLs to Google and Yahoo will greatly increase the rate at which your changes get indexed.
Do Not Overdue It – Sometimes it's better to do less than more and in some cases more will harm your page rank because search engines may see you as trying to manipulate their search engine and penalize your site. Follow all of these Search Engine Optimization tactics but start small and do not overdue it.