Can anybody tell me how i can ensure that my website appears early on within a search engine and how can i make Key words within my site help a search find my site. ** Thread moved **
I don't know much, but have you set up all the meta tags? If you need help just google meta tag generator and there's plenty things that make them! Secondly https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html is useful for analysing how people search for your site. You can also always pay for sponsored links, depending on how important getting that high place is! Good luck, I'm sure others have more tips too! Ben
There are certain things that will help, such as use of keywords in h1, h2, h3 tags, use your keywords early in the page, use the title tag, back links, good content, good content.... I am not an expert but I did do alot of research and am pleased to be rating quite highly for most of our keywords. I am limited a little by the cart I am using so I know it could be even better. People say it takes time but I was thrilled that after only a few months we are on page 1 for most of our key terms and page 2 for the rest, especially as it is quite competitive. I tend to study my web stats obsessively and make tweaks regularly on the website as well as add new content at least onece a week. hth and good luck, Sharon xx
Well Paul, as already stated there are loads of different things you can do some really important and others less so. Here is my two penniths worth. In the early days it was always about the META keywords you had and the content of the page but as search engines have got more and more sophisticated these have become less and less important, to the extent that it is commonly believed that Google pays little or no attention to META keywords now. Search engine optimisation is becoming more and more involved as the years go by with the big blue chip companies employing teams people full time to deal with this. However there is a lot you can do yourself and personally I reckon these are the main items you must consider to ensure good ranking: 1) Research your keywords. There are plenty of tools online both paid and unpaid that you can use to check out your keywords, time spent here is vital and will ensure success later with the later steps. Also check out the competition, you can do this easily by typing the keyword or phrase into Google and seeing how many pages it returns. There is very little point in trying to optimise your pages when there are millions out there which already have them. The chances of getting into the top ten is pretty remote. An example of this would be "management consultancy uk". Using these tools you can find examples of similar phrases that are actually being searched day in and day out but which have little competition and are still relevant to you. An example may be "manage successful projects". 2) Once you have your keywords you need to write good copy for your website and have plenty of it. There is no point having a page full of images, search engines like Google view your page as text and they like there to be lots of it. Ensure all of your keywords are well placed in the page both as headings (h1, h2, h3 etc) and in the words themselves. What you are looking for here is what they call keyword density. Search engines use this to identify the "theme" of a page so the more prominent your keywords are the more likely they are to assume your page is about it. Its a fine art to write a page that is both good for a search engine spider and still readable for your customers. My top tips are to come up with a list of no more than 5 keywords and phrases you want your page to include. Prioritise these with a top 2 and then write your copy. You can easily get the main 2 in a sentence and with a bit of thought can also include a couple of others in a paragraph while still being readable. As already mentioned headings are the best places to put your keywords and the higher the heading i.e. <h1> rather than <h3> the better. Consider <h1> for your main keywords and then put some of the others in the lower headings. 3) Include your keywords in the page title. Unlike META keyword, search engines like Google or Yahoo still use this to identify a theme for a page and having your keywords here is vital. Don't swamp the title with different phrases and it is generally best to only have one or two. Again keyword density is important so have them as close to the beginning as possible and keep them short and sweet. 4) Include your keywords in hyperlinks. If you are linking to another page in your site then don't use phrase like "click here" which is a waste of time for search engine ranking and very poor for accessibility (another subject entirely!). Instead use the keyword or phrase that is relevant to the page you are sending them to and also include it in the title attribute of the <a> tag. Again Google and Yahoo will use this to help them identify the theme of the target page. 5) Ensure your page is valid HTML/XHTML. Something overlooked by many people but if your page is not valid HTML then you run the risk of search engines giving up on it or not being able to index all of the content. There are many free tools you can use online and download to check that your page is valid and it is well worth taking the time to run these checks before uploading your finished pages. 6) Finally get loads of inbound links from RELEVANT sites! Once you have chosen your keywords, written your copy, created your site structure and validated your HTML, one of the next things you need to do is create some good inbound links. The more sites that link to yours the more important Google and co will think your site is and the higher it will rank it. However be warned, gone are the days of having links from just anywhere, especially the large link directories. As I have mentioned many times already, the search engines not only index your page content but also try to deduce the theme of the page. If you can get sites of a similar theme linking to you this will have a significant impact on rankings as it will deem your site to be more of an authority on the subject. Other links while recognised will probably have very little impact on your rankings. As I said there is loads to SEO and I could go on and on but with these 6 points you should definitely be heading in the right direction. I hope you find them helpful Paul, good luck!
Yep I am from Norfolk for my sins. Originally I'm from the Watton area, although I now live in Ely - I needed to be somewhere even flatter!
