Search Engine Optimization

Studies have shown that e-mail is the most popular Internet application, followed by search. With the profusion of websites that deal with the similar topic, the competition to get to the top of search engine ranking is very intense. After all, the higher your website is ranked the more traffic you are likely to get; and higher traffic ultimately translates to higher income.

The techniques used for achieving high search engine ranking are called search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO. Because SEO is still in its infancy, there is still a lot of trial and error in finding the perfect strategy. There are however, a few techniques that are popularly used by website owners to help enhance search visibility and achieve a higher search ranking for their websites.

Here a few factors to take into consideration when deciding on a strategy to improve your search engine ranking:

1. All major search engines including Google have their own different search algorithms for ranking web pages. It is almost impossible to get to know what these secret algorithms are and even if you did, it would be impossible to satisfy them all.

2. Do a fair bit of research before choosing your keywords. Using the keywords as your major competitors may be an exercise in futility as they obviously have more resources and have already established themselves. Employ tools such as Wordtracker which is excellent for helping with keyword research.

3. Focusing on increasing your traffic is more financially rewarding than working to simply increasing your search engine rankings. You may succeed in getting a higher ranking with some ambiguous keyword, but that definitely does not guarantee traffic.

4. Don’t get taken in by SEO firms that offer to submit your site to different search engines. Search engines have their own spiders that crawl the internet, following different links that take them from one site to the next. They do not require any site to be submitted.

5. Remember that what counts with links is that they should be from related sites. Getting links from sites that are not related to yours are detrimental to your site ranking and should not be sought after.

6. Avoid seeking links from Link farms. Cottoning on to the fact that several websites were using link farms to increase the number of links to their site, major search engines now penalise those websites that get large number of links using artificial means.

7. Create your content for your users. Developing gateway pages that are crammed with keywords is sure to have a detrimental effect on the quality of your content. And content that does not meet certain standards is not going to entice your readers to come back for more.

8. Text links fare better than images, primarily because search engines are incapable of determining the contents by scanning the images. Instead, your site will be assessed by the words that are present in the source code.

9. Search engine crawlers are also incapable of indexing Flash. This means static HTML text usually fare better than sites that are flash based and should be used whenever possible.

10. It often takes time to climb to the top. A lot of patience combined with following some of the basic rules of search engine rankings is sure to pay off in the end. Don’t be deterred by rumours of Google sandbox, where new sites are barred from achieving a high ranking for several months. These are just baseless rumours and nobody has proven whether or not it really exists.

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in search engines and if you lose your

guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines will still be the most widely used internet tool.

Most people that use search engines only click on the top ten search results in the first page. Making it to the first page or even to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability of being clicked on when you rank high, resulting into more traffic (thousands of visitors per day) for your site, implying more leads or sales. The best part of SEO is, you get all this immense traffic and high sales volume for free.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or may be at least make your site income generating.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to be search engine optimized. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme. You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine. You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more links you have pointing to your sites from other site or domain the higher your site ranking in search engines.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES

Insert keywords or key phrases in your title tag.

Avoid linking to link-farms or irrelevant sites. In other words if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. Use H1 and bold tags on your keywords once or twice especially at the top of the page.

Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. This is viewed as duplicate content by search engine robots.

Design your page titles to be simple and descriptive, making it easier for search engines to know what each page is about and visitors scanning through search results can easily determine whether your document contains what they are looking for.

Try to add fresh content to your site daily, if possible. Search engine robots like fresh content.

If your site contains plenty of links (pages), you must create a sitemap in XML format (according to Google guideline) and submit it here http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. As a matter of fact you must do this if you want all your pages indexed in Google, and on time. For those of us that might be wondering how to create a sitemap in XML format, you can have your site map created using software, visit the link below http://www.walmol.com/bestbuy/secretspidergenerator.php

Avoid dynamic URLs. These are links with question mark (?). Spiders can’t read these links; instead try using human readable URLs.

When using images, use ALT tags to describe your images. Search engines robots can’t read images but can read ALT tags.

Do not use a submission service; most of them are nothing but spam machines. If you must use submission software, I recommend you use Trellian Submit Wolf. Visit the link below to learn more.

http://www.walmol.com/bestbuy/submitwolf.php

However, if you’re not internet savvy you may optimize your web sites using software; your best bet would be SEO ELITE. This is one of the best search engine optimization software available on the net, for more information on SEO elite visit the link below. http://www.walmol.com/bestbuy/seoelite.php

Search engine optimization if done right is the most powerful

form of generating traffic available on the internet.

All the best,

Chris Ogunor – http://www.walmol.com

You may use this article in your web site or ezine as long as it remains “as is”. Please do not change the content of this article. We simply ask that you let us know where this

issue will be appearing, and include our byline.

To let us know where this article will appear, visit:

http://www.walmol.com/contact.htm