Optimize Your Site Using Keywords for Search Engine Ranking
July 29th, 2008Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary tool that you should apply, if you want people to find your websites. By applying SEO, it can mean the difference in your website showing up on the first few pages of a search engine or the hundredth page. A website that does not show up in the first few pages of a search engine can find it hard to get visitors because most people only search the top three to five page results for their keywords.
Applying SEO
You may want to pay a professional to do SEO on your website or you can manage it yourself. If you have a large website that you believe is going to be profitable, you might want to spend the money necessary for professionals to create and optimize your website. You can certainly do the optimization on a small to medium website yourself. All you need are some knowledge about SEO and intermediate internet skills. It is not as difficult as it sounds but will really bring your website into the first few pages of the search engines.
SEO can be employed by getting links that point back to your site. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is one way to get those links. If the content on your website is interesting enough, people will link to it voluntarily so that they will have new and interesting information for their own visitors. There is also the option of paying other webmasters to place your links on their sites. This method will bring visitors to your site as well as providing the one way links.
Another ingredient in effective SEO is making sure that your meta tags reflect your website and page content. Each web page needs to have a descriptive title. The description meta tag should contain your primary keywords for the search engines to find. The description should also be something that will make readers want to visit your website.
Another way to apply SEO is to have great written content. Pictures and videos are nice, but if your website has little to no content and only flash, pictures and movies, you will not rank well in the search engines. The search engine spiders can only read text, so all of your art skills will be of no use, if a visitor cannot find your website. Write great content and articles with the keywords that greatly describe your website and what it is about.
The “Do Nots” of SEO
Although keywords are necessary for good page rank, don’t use them repeatedly. This is considered spamming and will hurt you rather than help you. Too many people are using keyword stuffing for their sites as the “powers that be” are wise to them.
Avoid the using text colors that are used to blend into the page background. Webmasters got wise to the fact that if they place keywords on their websites and match it to the background, a visitor can’t see it, but a spider can. After an update, these sites were penalized since they were again trying to cheat the system.
Using the same content on different web pages is a trick that some webmasters still try. This is another tactic that hurts more than it helps in the ranking system. You can’t publish one article or get it from another online source and use it on your own pages. Search engines consider this duplicate content, and with good reason. Why would a visitor want to visit numerous sites and still see the same, exact information.
Using keywords that make no sense to the topic of a website is another way webmasters have tried to cheat the system. They place a large list of keywords at the bottom of the web pages. They believe the spiders will find them and rank their site for more words. Not true. You might just get your site banned instead.