Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search
EngineOptimization

Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search
EngineOptimization
By Dave Carlson

Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come
from people who have gotten there from a search engine.
Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page
of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they
go to the sponsored listings.

There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the
search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the
right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the
search engines. The art is to make the site look and read
normal in spite of filling it with key words.

Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more
visitors:

1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases

These are the words and phrases that people will put into
search engines to try to find your product, business or
organization. Having good key words and phrases is
foundational to have good optimization. This takes research
using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword
Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people are
searching for and what you should focus on.

2. Use Good Header Tags

Header tags are hidden in the code within your Web page. The
most important one is the "title" tag, which isn’t considered
a META tag. It tells what’s within your page and it’s
important to have your keyphrases in it. It is also good to
have keyphrases in your "description" META tag, though it
doesn’t rank nearly as high as the "title" tag.

3. Use Keyphrases in Your Visible Page Title

Provide a unique title to each page on your site that is chock
full of key words and phrases. Search engines like this
because it means that there is a higher probability that your
site is a good match for what people are looking for. This is
should be placed within the H1 tag (top heading) of your page
and is visible to the visitor. It also pays to have your
keyphrases in subtitles on the page.

4. Provide Plenty of Content on Your Site

Shoot to have at least 450 characters on your page. Concentrate
on putting key words and phrases in the first paragraph and
last paragraphs.

5. Secure a Lot of Related Incoming Links

The more sites linked to your site, the higher you will be
ranked by the search engines. These links can be from
strategic partners, vendors, directories or other types of
sites with whom you exchange links.

If you are a web site developer, put in your contract that you
are going to put a developer’s link at the bottom of the site,
such as, "Web site design by Green Chair Marketing Group,"
with an active link to your site. This will help your site
grow in its link popularity.

5.5 Keep Optimizing Your Site

The more content on your site, the better. I suggest adding a
couple pages a month, whether it’s case studies, more product
information, testimonials, articles, press releases, etc. If
you add just five new pages a month, you will have 60 new
pages by the end of the year, and over 100 pages by the end of
the second year.

You are bound to catch some people you would have missed
because there is more content to choose from. And your site
will be more highly ranked by Google, because they highly
weigh sites that have more content.

While you’re at it, continue to get relevant links coming into
your site. Google loves incoming links. And you might have
people click through to your site from these other places.

If you don’t have time to work on the optimization or would
feel more comfortable having someone else do it, consider
strongly hiring a professional to do your search engine
optimization. That way you can focus your energies on sales or
creating more and better product.

One caveat, I would stay away from companies that initiate
contact with you through emails or phone calls. They often use
techniques that can get your severely penalized by the search
engines. Ask people you know who have been successful in their
search engine positioning who they use.

Dave Carlson owns Green Chair Marketing Group, an Internet
marketing firm specializing in driving visitors to web sites
by search engine optimization, pay per click, and web design/
redesign. 720-427-5660 Visit his site at http://www.GreenChair.
net (http://www.GreenChair.net)
links@greenchair.net (mailto:links@greenchair.net)