How to Achieve a High Search Engine Positioning
A high search engine positioning is not easy to achieve, but it can be done if you go about it the right way. Your search engine optimization techniques are critical in achieving this, and you need either experience or knowledge of how to do this properly for best results.
There are actually two major strategies that you must use: on-site optimization and off-site optimization. Both of these will be discussed here, and there are disagreements, even between experts, as to which of these two is the more important. Let’s look at each of them.
Most people know a bit about on-site optimization, and are likely aware of the proper use of meta tags. However, just in case, not all search engines use all meta tags. Google, for example, does not use the keyword meta tag, but will pay some attention to the title and description tags. Your title should include the main keyword for your web page and your description meta tag should state basically what your web page is about. Your use of meta tags can influence your listing position.
You will notice that I refer to ‘web page’ rather than to ‘website’. This is because most search engines list individual web pages rather than complete domains, or websites. You should therefore optimize each page in your site separately, and this is where a lot of people go wrong. Each page should have a different title, heading and description, and the headings should be in H tags.
If you use html H tags, for example H1, H2, etc, the search engine will regard the words in the tags as being of particular importance to your web page. In addition to the tags, search engines such as Google will look on bold, underlined and italic text as also being of importance. Your headings should therefore include the major keyword for each page. The major keyword is the search term for which you want your page to be listed.
The use of keywords on your page is very important, and it should not be over-used. Keyword stuffing will result in your page being given a low search engine positioning, if it is listed at all. However, due to the Google latent semantic indexing (LSI) algorithm, keywords are not as important as they once were. You can use keywords sparingly, but must also include terms that are related semantically to the keyword of the page.
Google and other search engines will determine the topic of your page, and its relevance to the search term being used by somebody seeking information, not only by the keyword but also the related content. For example, the keyword ‘locks’ could refer to canal locks, security locks or locks of hair. The search engine spider cannot tell the difference, but the rest of the vocabulary will tell it. The algorithm will apply statistical analysis to the character strings on your page to decide what type of locks you are writing about, and hence the relevance to the search term. So write clearly and make sure that the subject of your page is easy to determine.
There are many other ways in which to make your web pages attractive to the spiders, but just as important, if not more so, is your off-site optimization strategy. By that I mean your linking strategy. Google especially pays a lot of attention to how many other websites link to your web pages. Not only the number of links is important, but their quality. A link from a web page on the same subject as yours is worth more than one from an unrelated page.
Reciprocal links are not necessarily bad if you reciprocate with a website dealing with a related topic. However, if your site’s topic is canal locks, and you have a reciprocal link with a website handling security locks, you would be better off not having it. Google has cottoned on to these links and either ignores them or even downlists sites having them. Link with websites dealing with the same topic as yours.
The best link is one to your web page that you do not have to reciprocate. The way that search engines look upon links is that if other sites dealing with the same subject as you are offering a link to your site to their visitors, then your web page must be very relevant to the search term. In effect the sites linking to you are giving your web page a vote.
The more votes you get the better, and they are reflected in Google’s PageRank index. You can see the PageRank for each of your pages in the green line in the Google toolbar if you have it loaded. You are given a rank of zero to 10, though the average is 3 – 5. Nobody but Google knows how many links you need for each step.
What is certain, however, is that to achieve a high search engine positioning, you must apply as much SEO to your web pages as you can, and get links from as many other websites as possible. It is the page with the link that gets the PageRank vote, not the website, so keep that in mind when you provide the page URL for your link.
A high search engine positioning will provide you with plenty free traffic, so apply the above suggestions and you will improve your traffic by a lot more than would believe possible.
