Tips To Increase Your Google Page Rank

Are you looking into the best ways to increase your Google page rank? If you are, this article will give you some free tips on how to achieve this. I hope you enjoy the read.

There are many webmasters who are looking into ways to increase traffic and on how to obtain a higher page rank for their websites. I myself have many websites which I am always looking to promote.

PPC

Pay per click is where you agree to pay a certain amount of money when people click on an advert that you have created. Programs such as adwords from the search engine Google allow you to place an advert on the right hand side of their search results. Which position you are placed in depends on how much you are willing to spend per click, it is like a kind of auction. Be careful not to spend more on the adverts than you are likely to receive in income. This can be very popular especially if your website is fairly new and is low down in the natural search results.

Paid text adverts

Paid text adverts is another way of attracting additional visitors to your website and it also has the potential of increasing your Google page rank. If the advert is on a high ranking page, this may well on its own lead you to moving up a level in your page rank. If the page is a high traffic page, part of this traffic could well be redirected to your website. I personally would only ever consider paying for a text advert on a website which was related to my own and which had a page rank of five or six.

Writing articles

I believe that the best way of promoting your website is by writing articles like the one you are reading. People reading the articles are potential visitors to your website, as you are able to include a link to your website in the article. Other webmasters are able to use the articles on their websites which creates you a one way backward link. Google are more likely to increase your page rank if you have a large number of backward links, especially one way links.

Link exchange program

As I have just stated, it is vitally important to spend time building up the number of backward links your website has. Joining a link exchange program can seriously reduce your workload, and people have told me that linkmetro is quite good.

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Search Engines, Seo, Optimization And Page Rank: Do You Understand Them?

I have heard it said that your Page Rank is the most important aspect of your website SEO optimisation that gets you a high listing in the Search Engines. That gives me a problem!

The first problem I have with that is why should Yahoo, MSN and ASK care about Google PageRank. PageRank is correctly written since it is a trademarked term. These search engines do not use Google PageRank as part of their listing criteria, or if they do, they are keeping it close to their chest.

The second problem I have with that is that I know, but cannot prove, that I have had websites listed in the top 10 in the Google listings for competitive keywords without any links other than those received through one article submitted to one article directory. The reason my web pages (not websites, since true search engines do not list domains) earned such a high listing is that they were optimized for the keywords that each page was built upon, taking into account the fact that a high listing is the result of the culmination of many SEO techniques used on each page.

Keep in mind that Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp and MSNBot use a large number of different aspects of your web page in determining the position of your page in the index for any particular search term a customer has used. The way to get a high listing is to pay attention to every one of these. If you ignore even one, you will probably not rank as highly in relevance for that search term as web pages like mine that ignore nothing.

Don’t believe them when they tell you that Meta tags don’t count, because they could. It does you no harm to use them, so use them! In fact, use every aspect of SEO that you can, and do not take notice of anybody that tells you not to. I use to listen to others who knew best until I noticed that my web pages were listed higher that theirs for their keywords. I am just a simple article ghost writer, yet I can get my websites listed immediately on Google, and listed higher that many SEO experts self proclaimed!

I don’t care if your website is listed high or not, or if it is listed within 2 days or 2 months. However, if YOU care, then you should listen to people who have done it, and not those who want to tell you how to do what they can’t do for their own web pages! What credibility can they have if they have to pay for their advertising? I don’t.

Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips:

First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank as possible for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it.

Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. It is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’.

SEO, search engine optimization, Page Rank and any other term you can think of. Forget them up to a point. Write natural content, and then use on-page SEO techniques as much as you can, then on-site and external links to raise your Google Page Rank as high as possible, and you might get a high listing for a specific web page that is optimized for a specific keyword.

Every one of these has equal importance in my view, and it works for me. One last thought. If PageRank relied on back-links, how is that so many links are to pages on your site with zero PageRank? Surely they should have the Page Rank and not your home page?

Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then, your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips:

First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it.

Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. IT is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’.

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Keyword Finess, Broad, Phase Or Exact

Yes is the short answer. But lets take a closer look at keyword match options and examine why using all three types is one of the best ways to ensure a higher CTR, as well as a strong Google Quality Score.

Google has defined the three-keyword match options in a fairly understandable way. You need to know what each match type is, how Google uses them and how you can use them in your keyword selection process.

BROAD MATCH is the default option Google will use in determining the relevancy of your keywords to a users search. If you don’t specify, your keywords will be matched using this option. Broad refers to the span of keywords Google will consider when determining the placement of your ad. Plurals and other variations of your keywords are automatically included. Broad matches are the least targeted of keyword matching.

infant carseats will show your ad when a search for both words are used, in any order, or when either is used separately.

PHRASE MATCH refers to entering your keywords using quotation marks. Google will show your ad when a user searches for the phrase, in the order you placed it within the quotation marks, as well as other possible terms.

“infant carseats” will show your ad when a search for the complete phrase occurs. This allows a more targeted audience than broad match.

EXACT MATCH occurs when you surround your keywords in brackets. This will show your ad only when the exact keywords, in the exact order are searched, and will not include any other possible words. This is the most targeted search and should produce a higher quality (although a lower quantity) of clickthroughs.

[infant carseats] will show your ad when a search for infant carseats appears. It will not appear if the search has included any other words. The traffic you attract will be the most targeted to your keywords.

NEGATIVE KEYWORD gives you the opportunity to exclude words. For example, if you do not want the word used to trigger your ad, you may place a negative sign, -used, and your ad will not appear if that word appears anywhere in the search. This is helpful if you are trying to target specific traffic and there are certain very popular words that often accompany your keywords, but are not related to your ad.

So which option is the best to use? The very best option is to use all three, broad, phrase and exact matching for every keyword in your ad group. Doing so will result in impressions being calculated for every variation of your keywords. This produces a greater click-through ratio. Google will calculate statistics for each keyword, allowing you to track performance. Having a high click-through rate is a key element in raising your overall Google Quality Score, meaning your ads will appear more frequently than someone whose score is lower.

A standard recommendation of 25 unique keywords per Ad Group is then changed to 75 when all three-match options are used.

It may seem very redundant to include the three different match types, and it certainly means more data entry per ad group. But you are increasing the chances of the right people clicking on your ads. The quality of the traffic and your overall Google Quality Score are worth the extra effort.

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Link Popularity FAQ

Building links doesn’t always have to be so stressful. Many sites tell you that they’ll increase your links by 1000 overnight if you spend $39.99! I’m here to tell you, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality.

Although quality does help, it’s hard to judge what is quality and what isn’t. The first comes first, reciprocal links aren’t all that great, so don’t spend hours upon hours of sending hopeless spam mails to sites who, if you had good content, would link to you for free.

The best way to gain links quickly is article submission. One article, if well written and of high quality, can generate 10-15 links. Think of the possibilities! Write one article a day for a week and you may end up with 100 links. And that is, 100 non-reciprocal links.

Why are non-reciprocal links so important?
Well, I will tell you. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, are now counting reciprocal links for less. There is even speculation of the recent update that Yahoo! is penalizing sites which have links pages.

Even if this were not the case, non-reciprocal links are more important for one reason, visitors. Visitors don’t like to see sites with worthless links to websites they don’t want. Why have a link to a travel website if you are in entertainment (besides the obvious, but you get the point)? Even if you do have a reciprocal link to a site which is your competitor you may lose visitors by giving them a higher link popularity.

Should I not link to anyone then?
No. In fact, you should link to as many authoritative sites as possible (authoritative sites are sites which are ranked 1 or 2 throughout your genre).

Links are very important on every site. Don’t just give them away, choose carefully. Link to authoritative sites with great content you know your visitors will appreciate. Just ask yourself, "If the links are not for the visitors use, what use are they then?"

So, I’ve done the whole article submission thing, what other ways can I gain link popularity?
Directories and great content. Content is king and is becoming more-so with the evolution of Search Engines. When a site owner finds an article useful he or she generally places a link to it, even if it is just a blog, it’s still a link. But whatever you do, don’t do the silly thing and spam blogs, that will only get you banned.

Directories are also a major part. If you can write a great description and have an editor in your field at DMOZ.org, submit it and forget it. Either you will get in or you won’t. If there isn’t an editor, try becoming one. It will only take a few hours of your time, just don’t get too hopeful.

If you can’t get in DMOZ, don’t worry, there are tons of other useful directories out there. Tons of FREE directories. Don’t spend $10-$20 on a directory submission unless you know they are worth it and can generate quality traffic. Google and others are starting to crack down on directories who require a fee in order to get listed.

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Link Popularity Means More Traffic

The first place that a potential customer goes to find a product or service on the internet is a search engine. The higher you are listed in a search engine the better the possibility of your site being found. If the potential customers do not find you in their search, chances are that they will not visit your site and as a result you will not have an opportunity at making a sale with that prospect.

What has this all got to do with link popularity? Well, link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines. It determines the ranking or positioning your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine by a potential customer when looking for a product or service. The higher the position the more likely a prospect will find and click onto your site.

There are a few things you should be aware of and guard against in your quest for link popularity. These can be summed up in two words: Quantity and Quality.

You will not achieve link popularity just by linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may work against you. There are web sites that are known as “link farms” containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines will discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The quality of the site you are linking to is also super important. So be sure to check out the site you are linking to before you commit to linking. If you have any reservation about your visitors seeing that you are linking to a site that is indiscriminate and cheap, forget about it. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

Here are some things you need to do to achieve link popularity and improve your rankings on the popular search engines.

The fastest way to get your foot in the door is to get a listing on some popular directories. You can do this manually or with the aid of software. There are several excellent software products on the market and when you consider the cost versus the time, you can decide which course is best for you.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors. For instance, if you are selling life insurance, someone selling health insurance would be a good link choice. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a link or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with this crowd. Again you can do this manually, or with a software program.

There is a lot of hard work over an extended period of time invloved to get a high ranking with search engines. Other than some software programs to assist you there are no shortcuts to achieve link popularity. So be prepared for a long journey to the top. This is one of those areas where patience, commitment, and persistence pay off. Good Luck!

P.S.: You want to be sure to have an attractive and interesting site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.

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5 Tips For Improving Your Site’s Search Engine Positioning

Almost all webmasters or website owners are looking for ways to get better results from their websites. They wish to improve their site’s standing and get better rankings in search engines. This quest for improved results, known as search engine positioning, can be satisfied by following a few basic procedures.

Before you even begin, you have to realize that you are competing against hundreds, and in some categories, thousands of websites offering similar products and services. In the case of affiliate marketing, many of the competing websites may even be identical! If you want to get the edge over these competitors and improve your search engine positioning you have to fine-tune your website and actively work to make it better.

1. Make Sure that your design is search engine friendly:

Your design may look good to your eyes, but it may also be the cause of you present difficulties and poor search engine positioning. How is that possible? Look at your web page using a text editor or the html view of popular editors such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. On what line does your first line of copy begin? If your actual copy is pushed far down the page, it is more difficult for search engines to pick up the crucial information that would have helped you to improve your web page ranking.

If you have this difficulty, first take out all unnecessary spaces in the html code. If there are long strings of java script, put these in external files. Similarly, put style information in external Cascading Style Sheet files. Simplifying your table structure may also help. If this starts getting too complicated for you, then consult with a professional search engine positioning specialist or your web designer.

2. Make sure your keywords are strategically placed in your copy:

It is not possible to improve web page ranking if the readable copy on your web page does not contain the words you wish to be found by. Many people erroneously think that just putting your important keywords in meta tags is enough. This is not true, some search engines hardly use the meta tags and look more to the copy on the page. Make sure that your important copy is in the first paragraph of text, in headlines (using headers such as H1, H2, H3) and in the active or clickable portions of link text on your page.

3. Use a site map and text link navigation on your pages:

If you want to improve your search engine positioning for all the pages of your website then you have to be sure that these pages actually get indexed or included in the search engines. You can help this process along by making a site map, a web page that has text links to all the sub pages of your site. Another good practice is to include a text link navigation system on your web pages, even if you already have a graphics based navigation bar elsewhere on these same pages. Remember, search engines follow text links more easily. A robot that lands on your main page or site map page will follow the text links and then visit and index your lower level pages.

4. Increase the quantity and quality of inbound links:

In fiercely competitive categories it will be difficult to improve web page ranking without obtaining a good number of links to your page from other websites. If you have very good and valuable copy, other sites may link to you because you are a valuable resource. However, if you want to speed this process along you will have to actively request links from other websites, either by trading links or by getting your content (with a link back to your site) placed on other websites.
When it comes to links you should keep in mind one important principle: it is not the quantity of links that is important, but the quality. One good link from an authority site such as CNN or Wikipedia is worth more than dozens of links from other sites. To get these quality links, there is no short cut. You will have to earn it by having a site that provides a lot of useful information.

5. Keep up with Search Engine Developments:

The challenge of improving your web page ranking and search engine positioning is dynamic. Search engines are not static. Most of the big search engines of yesterday have disappeared or are only minor players today. You should keep up with changes in the world of search engines by taking part in online forums or subscribing to newsletters which deal with topics such as search engine optimization, web ranking, and general webmaster related issues.

For years I have been getting great information from the Led Digest, a subscription list which is sent out several times a week. You can see samples online at www.led-digest.com

If you do not have the expertise or the time to tackle these matters by yourself then you should take advantage of skilled professionals who can help you to improve your site’s performance in search engines. Whether you rely on professionals or are able to do it yourself, these five tips can provide a good point of reference for starting the work.

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Search Engine Optimization: Natural Linking Strategies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let’s face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It’s about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer – sure it will help your SEO but it won’t be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A

2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A

3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren’t willing to spend the time or don’t have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It’s possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page’s) but you won’t reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on “linking” pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 – 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn’t natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It’s most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don’t be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the “sandbox”. It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP’s from being cluttered.

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Keywords: How To Use Them Properly On Your Website

Because keywords help determine the ranking of your website, and therefore how visible your pages are to Internet traffic, it is important to use keywords properly in the creation of your site.

In today’s world of Internet lingo, you may frequently hear the terms “keywords,” “search engine rankings,” and “keyword search results” bandied about. However, not everyone knows what keywords are, and how important they are to the success of a website.

Keywords are essentially words or phrases that summarize the topic of a site. When a Web surfer types a word or phrase into the blank field of a search engine such as MSN or Google, the search engine returns a list of related sites. Each site on this list is determined by the presence of the search terms, or keywords, in the site’s meta tags, image tags, and content.

Keywords and Meta Tags

Meta tags are like a site’s “dog tags.” They identify the site’s title, description, and keywords. Meta tags are invisible to Web surfers, but they are instrumental in a search engine’s recognition of the site’s content.

Title Tags

A title tag gives the title of the Web page. A title should only be around six words long, and the primary keyword the word or phrase that the site is primarily identified with should be in this title tag. The closer to the beginning of the title the primary keyword is, the stronger the association with that keyword will be.

Description Tags

A Web page’s description tag provides the search engines with a summary of the content contained on the page. Once again, the primary keywords for this page should be contained in the description, as close to the beginning as possible. Description tags only allow 200 characters of text.

Keyword Tags

The keyword tag lists all of the keywords that can be associated with the Web page. The primary keyword used in the title and description tags should be first, followed by other keywords in order of importance and relevance. Although keywords can be separated by commas, they don’t have to be; however, keywords should not be repeated more than three times, lest the Web page be rejected by the search engines as spam. Between 800 and 1,000 characters are allowed for keyword text.

Keywords and Image Tags

Image tags are the text that shows up in place of an image, if the image fails to load for any reason. However, image tags serve a more important function: they allow the search engines to “read” your images. Without image tags, search engines have no way of interpreting your images. Therefore, image tags can also help boost the visibility and relevancy of your site to search engines.

Keywords and Web Page Content

The tags that you use on a Web page are important identifiers for search engines. However, in order to maintain a respectable search engine ranking, your Web page must establish relevancy. In other words, the keywords in your tags must pertain to the actual content on the page. Therefore, the same keywords you list in your tags must be used within the text your page displays.

The most important part of the content is the opening paragraph. The primary keyword the keyword that was used in the title and description, and listed first in the keyword text should be used several times in the first paragraph, and then occasionally throughout the rest of the page. Other, less important keywords can be used occasionally throughout the content, as well. This will indicate to the search engines that your page really is relevant to the keywords listed in your tags.

Another way to judge keywords is via a concept called “keyword density.” Keyword density shows the frequency at which a keyword is used. The density is calculated by taking the total number of words and dividing it into the number of times keywords appear in the text. The resulting number is multiplied by 100 to create a percentage. Keyword density can be a tricky business, however. Too low a density will fail to be noticed by the search engines, whereas too high a density can cause a Web page to be rejected as spam. Typically, a keyword density of around 5% is sufficient.

The Importance of Keywords

Keywords are a vital part of the creation of Web pages because they directly affect how visible the page will be to search engine traffic. The presence of keywords needs to be a consideration in every aspect of designing a Web page: designing the tags as well as writing the content. Because of the impact keywords can have on the success of your site, it’s important to know how to use them properly.

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Link Popularity and Search Engines

Link popularity has become increasingly important among the search engines. Because link popularity goes hand in hand with search engine optimization, it is important for any company with a web presence to build a link development strategy.

Many online marketing specialists believe that link popularity is simply obtaining as many links as possible. However, the quality of the link holds more “weight” than the quantity of links. You will get better results in the search engines if you have link popularity from sites that have considerable traffic.

To develop popularity for your web site, you should submit your site to the most visited directories. Yahoo (of course), LookSmart, About.com, and Open Directory are examples of major directories. Also, to further develop link popularity, you should consider sites/directories that are very industry specific, such as healthatoz.com for a health-related site.

Even more important, it can help your search engine ranking if your site is reviewed by a directory that is associated with a search engine. To be accepted into a major directory, we recommend that your site have content that can show credibility in your field. A tips page, links page, or a “how-to” page can showcase your credibility on your product or service.

For example, we can almost always tell when a new client site is added to Yahoo by looking at an Google ranking. Oftentimes, we will obtain a top 30 ranking for a client, then suddenly the site will move to a #1 position. Sure enough, when we go into Yahoo, we will see that the client site has been added. That’s one of the reasons that we think a listing in Yahoo is essential.

Obtaining links from other web sites is not enough to obtain long-term results on both the search engines and directories. People have to actually click on those links to your web site and browse your web site. AND they need to return to your web site when they see the quality content, products, and/or services that you offer, i.e. the usability of your web site. That is the definition of “popularity” according to the major search engines and directories. Other terms for it are “click” popularity or “click-through” popularity.

Therefore, both link popularity and click-through popularity are essential for obtaining optimal search engine placement.

Remember, a search engine position is not permanent since the search engine companies change their algorithms all of the time. Being listed in directories and other sites can significantly drive traffic and sales, particularly if your site is listed in specialized directories (health, financial, and travel, for example).

To check your link popularity in some search engines:

For AltaVista, in the search query field, type in:

link:domainname.com

For Inktomi’s services, in the search query field, type in:

Linkdomain:domainname.com

For FAST Search, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link.all:www.domainname.com

For Google, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link:www.domainname.com

Link development serves multiple purposes. It can drive traffic and sales to your web site and it can also help your search engine rankings.

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“Do-It-Yourself” Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Three Easy Steps

Ranking high in Google’s search results can have a phenomenal impact on the success of your business.
You can either engage the expertise of a Search Engine Optimisation company, or if you have the time, there are some changes you can make to your website yourself.

Step 1: Keyword Research
What keywords do you think your customers would type in to search for your products or services? A keyword can be one word (e.g. “optimisation”), but multiple keywords or keyword phrases are usually preferred, because they are more specific and more likely to be what your customers are looking for (eg. “ Search Engine Optimisation Australia“).

Write down as many as you can think of. Brainstorm with your team. Think of alternative words. Consider geographical phrases if they are important to your customer (e.g. “house cleaning Hornsby”). Also, get some ideas from your competitors’ websites. Try to make a list of 20-30 keyword phrases.

Choose the two keyword phrases you think would be searched for the most. But also remember, the more competition there is for a keyword, the harder it is to achieve top rankings. If you want to rank high in Google for the keyword “insurance”, you have a very long journey ahead. So try your best to select two keyword phrases that are the most relevant to you business but that are not vague nor competitive. It’s a good idea to have 2 or 3 words in each phrase (e.g. “wedding catering services”)

Once you’ve selected your two best keyword phrases the next step shows you how to make some improvements to your home page.

Step 2: Web Copy
Web copy refers to all the words or text on your website. Because content is king in the world of search engines, your keyword phrases need to be placed strategically on your webpage to convince Google that your content is highly relevant to those keywords. The more prominent they are, the better. (Keep in mind that as important as search engines are, customers come first, so make sure your copy also reads well.)

Here’s how you can increase each keyword’s prominence:

Place your keywords in headings, preferably at the beginning of the heading;

Include keywords towards the top of the page;

Bold or italicise keywords where appropriate;

Instead of having a link to another page that says “Click here to read more “, reword it to include your keywords, e.g. “Read more about our seo copywriting Services“.

An important tip is to also include these keywords in your HTML “title tag”. Use your content management system to make these changes yourself, or perhaps ask your web developer to do it if you’re unsure how.

Once you have fine-tuned your home page, consider adding new content, such as detailed descriptions of what you offer, FAQs and informative articles about your products and services. (If you don’t want to write these yourself, they can be located for free on the internet – do a search for “articles directory”).

It’s also good to bear in mind that search engines can only read text, not pictures. Often web developers embed words in images to look better for website visitors or use Flash for animation, but this is a major impediment to search engines.

Step 3: Linking
Each link from another website to your website (not from your website) is considered by search engines as a vote of popularity for your business and will improve your rankings.

But it is the quality, not quantity, of the links that is crucial. The other websites should be relevant to your industry, and preferably highly regarded themselves. Ten quality links count far more than 500 links from arbitrary websites. In the same way your personal business network can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so too the online network you build on the internet.

Brainstorm all the relevant websites that could link to you, such as non-competing companies, and industry bodies and organisations. Write a friendly email to each describing the benefit their visitors would get in knowing about your business, and request them to create a link to your website. Most people will not respond first time round, so a follow-up phone call is usually required.

How do I monitor my results?
Monitor your rankings in Google over the next few months by typing your chosen keywords into the search box, and recording your ranking. Also look at your hosting reports to understand what search terms your visitors are using to find your website.

The above process can be also be repeated for each page of your website. Remember to keep updating your content, and continually increase the number of links to your website.

As you see your rankings climb you should see a corresponding increase in web traffic and a substantial increase in sales enquiries. Be sure to record the source of your customer enquiries, so you can measure the success of your marketing efforts.

Remember, if you measure it, you can improve it.

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