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Search Engine Ranking - How To Improve
Your Site's Placement
If you have a business website you will
know that there is
no such thing as too much traffic
(assuming, of course,
that your intention is to make a
profit). The majority of
targeted traffic comes via search
engines either as a
sponsored result through pay per click (PPC)
advertising or
through placement in the search engines'
organic or natural
results.
To get a decent amount of free search
engine traffic to
your website, you need to get your site
listed as high as
possible in the organic search results.
This means
preferably on page one and definitely
within the first
three pages. Statistics have
continually shown that web
surfers rarely scan through or click
links below the third
page of the organic search results.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when
you are trying to
get your website listed in a high
position in the search
engines.
Content Is King
You will undoubtedly have heard that
before: it's one of
the things the SEO (Search Engine
Optimization) experts
agree upon. However, it is not just any
old content:
the search engines love good original,
relevant content. If you
build a website by filling it with
articles that appear on
hundreds of other websites, your site
might eventually get
listed by the search engines but it
won't appear high up in
the listings. It will probably be
ranked so far down, no
human visitor will ever see it. You
need to write
your own articles or, if you are unable
to do this, pay a
ghost writer to write articles for you.
It is also
quite possible to get good content by
using
articles
from pros in your field and providing
linked by-lines
without
paying them for the content and with
exclusive rights.
Quality Links Improve Status
Remember that you need "quality" links
to improve your
website's standing with the search
engines. It is a waste
of time to buy links or create an
obvious "link farm"
swapping links with any and all who will
do so. Writing
articles helps here also by providing
linked by-lines back to
your web site. An excellent way of
obtaining one way links
back to your website is by writing your
own articles (or
having them ghost-written) and
submitting them to article
directories. Publishing articles is
arguably the best way
of obtaining links. Exchanging links
with other websites
is still useful but reciprocal links do
not impress Google
and, all too often, where Google goes
the other search
engines follow. The one possible
exception to this is
reciprical links where both sites are
about the same thing
and both have high quality content but
not identical content.
Keywords Count
If you target the wrong keywords, you
will be making life
harder for yourself and setting yourself
up to fail from
the start. Before you rush in to try to
stake a claim to
number 1 position with a hugely popular
keyword, take a
look at the competition. If a great big
established
website has been sitting at number 1 for
eons, do you
think your little newbie site has what
it takes to topple
the champ? Unlikely! You probably
won't even stand a
chance of getting in the first ten pages
within the
foreseeable future if the keyword is
really popular. Far
better to do some careful research and
find keywords that
are not only relevant to your website
content but also have
fewer sites competing for the traffic.
For listings to
really count, your website needs to be
ranked within the
first three pages of a search result and
the fewer sites
there are in competition, the greater
your chance is of
getting your website into a good
position.
Change Is Good
Keep adding fresh content to your
website and also check
that your links all work. Nothing
upsets the search engine
bots more that stale content and broken
links. If your
website becomes stagnant it will sink
into oblivion and
this will probably be a sudden massive
plunge rather than a
slow slide down into obscurity. Don't
be afraid to remove
content that becomes outdated or is no
longer strictly
relevant to your website. A website can
change direction
quite dramatically as it grows, so be on
the lookout for
redundant content and get rid of it.
The bots will like
this tidying up as much as they like
fresh content.
Getting your website high ranking in the
search engines
takes time and more than a little effort
but it is worth
it: it is deeply satisfying to know that
your website is
getting visitors through your own SEO
efforts. The fact
that this traffic is free is also
heart-warming.
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Generating traffic from the internet is
only possible
through great search engine rankings.
Shannan Hearne
has been helping online marketers do
just that for over
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