Helping yourself get better search engine results.
There are many many tools and SEO software packages out there but there
is nothing like good old fashioned hard work to improve your search engine
results.
Obviously good design is important. How a websites's content is presented,
anchor links within the content, and the "weight" of those links.
How much content the website has and how old the website is, are all factors
with search engines like Google and how they place you. However I always
advise companies that if they really care about being toward the top of
first page for their website and they are a new company and their website is
young then good old fashioned hard work getting back links to their website
is the most important thing they can do. Spend one hour a day just looking
for a potential back links to your website.
Where should I get back links?
Getting back links can be difficult but start with people you know
who have websites get some links to you. The important thing is to have
keywords in the link text on their website. For example if you run a car hire
business and are wanting to be found on search engines under the keyword
"car hire Sussex" then get someone to link to your website but the
link text is Car Hire Sussex. Some of the best places to
get links are companies within your area of business. If you are a flooring
company perhaps ask a flooring supply company if they would like to link
to you. Or if you are a car hire company perhaps ask a car dealer to link
to you. Building good relationships with people is the way to get links.
Perhaps you have skills that you can offer for free or advice, maybe even
write some editorial for someone in exchange for a link or two.
Do not pay a company £50 for 1000 back links to your website. There
is no self respecting SEO company that can offer this kind of deal, getting
links will cost you. It takes time to get good backlinks so if it will save
you a tremendous amount of time why not pay good money for the service.
After all it will bring you business.
Linking to other peoples websites. "Outbound
Links"
A real headache is link exchanging. Having links to other people
can leak your page rank and effect search engine positions. You need to
make sure that if you have a link to someone else that they will reciprocate
a link to you. Reciprocal links can gain or lose Page Rank. You need to
be careful when choosing where to exchange links. Make sure the website is
a trusted site. If a website that is using techniques to get traffic that
are frowned upon links to you this can have an adverse effect on your websitess
rank and position.
Page Rank
An important thing to remember is to make sure that the website that is linking
to you is of a higher "Page Rank" than you. There are many page
rank calculators out there on the Internet but this one I have found to
be the most reliable. Google Page Rank Calculator at pr.blogflux.com
Not essential but try and make sure the website is of a higher page rank than
yours. Obviously if you are a new site to the Internet then almost everyone
will be higher than you.
What is Page Rank?
To understand what page rank is here are some pointers.
Page rank is a numeric value representing how important a website is seen
as being on the web. Google will trace the amount of sites that link to
another and sees these links as if they were casting a vote. Google will
then rank the website appropriately. To read more about page rank visit this
site.
www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
Think sideways
It is very easy to spend all your time worrying that you don't have top
spot for a particular keyword but remember there are lots of secondary keywords
that people search for and some are more fought over than others. Lets say
that "Tennis Holidays UK" has an enormous amount of people fighting
for top place and some well established companies that take the first 10
spots. Stop and think how others may search and what they may search for.
Tennis Breaks for example, "Kids Tennis Holidays", or "Tennis
Coaching Holidays". It may be far more realistic for the time being
to aim a little lower. Get people to your site, get some traffic flowing
using alternate keywording. A good place to check on search volumes these
days is the Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool. Do a search on
Google for it.
This tool is used to see what search volume there is for a particular word
before setting up a Google Adword campaign and can be very useful to see
if people are searching for a particular phrase and gives suggestions on
other phrases that may be useful. One nifty trick to get search engine traffic
can be to use misspelled keywords within your sites Meta Description or
Title of the page. Be careful though you don't want to make yourself look
silly. Lets say someone searches for UK Tennia Holidays or Tennis Hilidays,
typing fast they have knocked a key on their keyboard by mistake and press
enter. When they look up you may very well be top of the search engines
and they click on your website rather than retype the correct term.
The long and the short of it is, make sure that your website involves secondary
keywording to get maximum traffic.
Content
No good having a website with no content. The Internet is about information,
provide information. Write articles for your site. Provide news to get people
returning perhaps a blog on your industry or area of expertise. Many companies
just are not prepared to put in the hours to improve their search engine
results. Make sure you are not one of them. Get involved and get busy and
you will reap the rewards.
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