Thursday, January 29, 2009

How to Control your Search Engine Rankings

By Brent Sweet

Regardless of what is said on the internet there are several different ways to get good search engine rankings. It is also a lot easier that some people would like you to think. It simply amazes me how many sites are ranked that have no clue what they are doing. The ones that are number one, but it is obvious that they aren't really optimizing for that word. The reason I wrote this is to give you some things that you can focus on to get your site ranked well.

The main point is there are several things you can do that are withing your control to get your site ranked. If you have ever heard of six sigma you would know that really all you focus on is what you can control. It is not worth your time to focus on things you can only moderately control.

So what can you control when it comes to SEO?

- The title tag is the first thing. It influences your rankings more than anything. I like to pick 5 phrases that I want to rank for then arrange the words in a way that makes sense, doesn't repeat and is less than 9 words.

- Your body text. Make sure that in your body text you use each keyword at least once that you want to rank for. I am not one of those it has to be in H1 tags or Bold. Honestly I think those carry so little weight that unless you are at number 2 and want to move to number 1 then you might do it. The fact is these arent the difference between being on page 10 and page 1.

- The filenames you use are important. Do not put things like sessions or log tail URLS in your file names. This causes the engines to index your pages seperately which hurts rankings.

- Your links. The sites that link to you are within your control for the most part. One way is link bait. If you can design something that people will link to then your rankings will improve. The downside is you need to create something nobody else has. I don't do that well. I use article submission, this gives me full control over how people link to me.

There you go, 4 things in your control. If you want to improve your rankings, work on these 4 things always. They are how you get to the top and what is in your control.

About the Author:

No comments: