Improve Search Engine Rankings

If you have a website, you probably want it to be seen by as many people as possible. If you didn't want anyone to see what you've put together, you could just as easily post whatever information you have in your personal journal and shove it under your bed. You didn't want that, so you put together a website. Now, how do you get your words, photos, and videos in touch with the masses?

Roughly 85% of all visited websites are found through search engines. The remaining 15% of hits are made through links between pages or through email connections, but the grand majority of hits come through web search engines like Yahoo or Google. So, if you improve your search engine rankings you're going to improve the number of hits your website gets every day, guaranteed. But how do these search engines work? And more importantly, how can you use the way they work to improve your page's rankings?

Search engines work by "crawling" web pages, keeping track of relevant keywords, links, and the site's popularity. Knowing this, you can start to take steps to position your page to improve its search engine rankings. First, put yourself in the position of someone who is searching for a site like yours. What search words would you use? Make a list of search words; these are your strategic keywords. To improve your site's rankings, make sure these keywords are prominent and often close together. Be sure to put some of the keywords in the site's title, as well as in the heading and on the first page of text. Also, when placing these keywords be sure to use HTML text. Search engines read HTML, but they can't read any text located in graphics or in Flash interfaces, so it's a good idea to have as much text as possible formatted in HTML.

Relevant content is also important; if your site is plastered with keywords but doesn't have any content to go along with them you won't improve search engine rankings.

Links are also important, both within your own site and in conjunction with other sites. Be sure that internal pages within your site are well-linked. It makes your site easier to navigate to users and more attractive to search engines. Sometimes frames housing links won't be read by search engines, so you'll want to have them in the main body of your page. Also remember to format your links in HTML; like text, search engines can't read links which aren't in HTML formatting.

Once your site is finished, submit it to as many search engines as you can think of. Verify the listings, and update them as your site changes.