How to Make Your Site the First in a Web Search
While it is impossible to guarantee that your website will appear as the first result of a web search, you can take steps toward improving your chances of making this happen. Before trying to improve your search results by using search engine optimization, or SEO, consider who your target market is. This will affect the content of your web pages and how you design them. Also, keep in mind that different search engines value different types of content, according to the SEO for Google website. Google values trust and information, while Yahoo remains a social engine. MSN focuses on products, and Ask attempts to give information surrounding your search term.
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Instructions
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Create your website with information-rich content that accurately describes the site. Use original, unique content intended for humans, not search engines. Search engines are getting more complex; using tricks such as hiding content (called "cloaking") for only search engines to see can damage your ranking on search engines, says the Google Webmaster Central website. Also, use javascript and flash sparingly. Search engines index---or search---text and cannot read images or flash content. Create a descriptive "alt" tag when using images to provide text for search engines to index.
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Add interesting content to your site that will compel others to link to your content, says the Search Engine Journal site. Search engines highly value links from other reputable websites, which can drastically improve your ranking on search engines. Compelling content is interesting, useful, humorous or even controversial. Focus on attracting quality links. One way to do this is to donate to reputable charitable organizations that will post a link to your website when recognizing your donation.
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Title every page of your website. Use a unique title that thoroughly describes the content of that page. The title is an effective way to add keywords to your page-- usually a four- to six-keyword title is ideal. Search engines usually truncate words after 58 characters, so try to keep your title under that limit, says SEO for Google. You can also add titles to your links. This aids visually impaired surfers as well as search engines as they determine your page's relevancy. Add a title to a link in the following way: <a href="chapter2.html" title="Go to chapter two">chapter two</a>.
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Create a blog to provide fresh text for your website. Search engine robots (the tools search engines use to index websites) value fresh text posted to web pages. Blog at least three times a week to continue to feed the robots and improve page rankings. Comment on other people's blogs and cater to people who might link to your website on their site or blog. Do not pitch your site or product to them, but become engaged with the blogging community to increase your chances of generating buzz and gaining link-creating friendships, according to the PayPal website.
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Tips & Warnings
Focus on reputation, and your search engine results will follow.
Using tricks or unethical means to improve page rankings can result in a ban from search engines such as Google.
References
- Photo Credit notebook_robot:ring image by Sergey Tokarev from Fotolia.com
