Increasing Your Search Engine Rankings
with On-Page Optimization

The more thorough a job that a Web Spider does of crawling your site, the more information it will pick up about your site, and the more pages from your Website that will be indexed by the search engines.  These things will increase the chances that your pages will appear in search results. 

So you want to do things to your pages that make it easier for a spider to crawl.  You  want to "feed him the right stuff".  You want to Optimize your pages so they will give you the best search engine positioning possible. 

This optimization is called On-Page Optimization. 

Getting other websites to have links that point to your Website is covered under the topic "Link Building" and this is called Off-Page Optimization.

SEO Elite is one of the best SEO tools available that will help you with Off-Page Optimization.  I personally use it and highly recommend it. It gives you helpful information in just seconds that would normally take you hours to find out manually.  It comes with a 60 day money-back guarantee.

As you can see, the pages of this website are not filled with tons of advertisements.
I only recommend quality products, no junk, no scams.  Most of the products that I recommend, I have bought myself.  If they are products that cost something, then they are well worth the money, otherwise I would not recommend them.

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Eight Steps to Increasing Your Web Page Rankings

1.  Establish Good Internal Linking for the Spiders

To insure that your Website is thoroughly crawled and indexed you want to make sure that the spiders have an easy and descriptive path to follow when they crawl your site.  When setting up hyperlinks to other pages, text links are the best choice for spiders because spiders read text, but they don't read graphic images.

1. Place Text Links at the bottom of your homepage to all your main internal pages (this is not necessary for every page).
   
2. Create a Sitemap Page that has text links to all your internal pages and have a link on your home page pointing to the Sitemap page.
   
3. Give "Relevancy" to your pages by pointing to destination pages with Anchor Text Links that contain keywords.
   
   Anchor Text Links are plain text links that use the keywords and key phrases of the page they link to.  This will let the spider give relevancy to the page that the text link points to.
   
   For example, say you have a website about cell phones and one of the pages has ring tones people can download for free and one of your keywords on that page is "ring tones".  You can point to that page from the main page in several different ways:
   
   1. You could use an image of a ringing phone to hold the hyperlink that points to the page.  The spider wouldn't be able to read the image and would simply follow the link when crawling your site.  Thus, the image would not give any weight to the destination page.
   2. You could use a text link that says "Accessories", this would be a description that would help your visitors, but since it doesn't contain keywords, it would not give any weight to the destination page.
   3. The best way would be to have a text link with keywords.  A link that says "Download Free Ring Tones".  With keywords in the link the spider will give more weight to the destination page.  It will also help your visitors better navigate your site.

2.  Use HTML Tags For Better Search Results

Each search engine indexes pages a little bit differently, but most give weight to pages that properly use Structured HTML.  There are four HTML tags that are important to use:

1. TITLE TAG
   All search engine spiders look at the <TITLE> tag, so be sure to include the most important keywords of your page in the "title" tag for the page.  Each of your pages will likely have a different title, because each page will likely have different keywords.
   
   Keep your title short and to the point.  The longer your Title, the more it dilutes the importance of the keywords that you have placed in the Title.
   
   I'll talk more about the Title Tag in the Title Tag topic which is later in this tutorial.
   
2. META TAGS
   Many search engine spiders look at the <META> tags on your site. The two most important ones that you should use in your pages are the “Description” and “Keywords” meta tags.
   
   I'll talk more about these tags in the "Meta Tags" and "The Keywords and Description Tags" topics which are later in this tutorial.
   
3. HEADING TAGS
   Heading tags, <h1> through <h6> should be used throughout your content.  These tags tell spiders that your document is using Structured HTML.  The <h1> tag uses the largest font size and <h6> is the smallest.
   
   Of particular importance are the usage of the <h1> and <h2> tags.  Use the <h1> tag to indicate the beginning of your content.  Use the <h2> tag as a sub-heading or a paragraph heading.  Theses two tags are given extra weight by the spiders when they contain your keywords and you also have your keywords in your content.

Why are we so concerned about heading tags and page structure for SEO?  We'll, here's a quote from Google's Search Engine Technology Overview:

"Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query."

So we can see that Google's search engine looks at Page Structure and Page Content as well as HTML tags in determining how relevant your site is in a query search.

3.  Add ALT Text to Describe Graphic Images

Since spiders can't read images but images can be used to help improve your search engine rankings by using your keywords with the image.

If you have images on your pages

• Use the "ALT" (alternative) attribute of the <IMG> (image) tag and include one or two of your keywords in the ALT description. This will help your page optimization.
• If the image is a hyperlink (i.e. a user can click it to go to another page), then including keywords in the ALT tag will also help increase the ranking of the page that the link points to.

Most HTML editing programs will have a menu option that will allow you to fill in text for the "ALT" representation of an image when you select the image.  If you are going to write the description by hand directly into the HTML, then here's an example of how the image tag would look with the ALT attribute:

<img src="graphics/Ringing_Phone.jpg"  alt="Click on the ringing phone for free ring tones">

Besides helping with your page optimization, using ALT tags has other advantages:

• Some Web browsers display the alternative text while a graphic is being downloaded.
• Some browsers display the alt text when you hover the mouse over an image so it works like a pop-up caption.
• People with visual impairments who use programs that read text out loud will be able to read the alt text that describes the image.
• With more people browsing the Web using palmtop computers and mobile phones,  they will likely be running their browser in text only mode because wireless connections can be very slow.  If they do, then the alt text will tell them what they are missing.

4.  Keep Your Content Fresh to Help Your Site Bloom

There is one thing that is extremely effective in getting search engine spiders to visit your more often, and that is to keep your content updated and "Fresh".

The best way to do this is to add content or pages to your Website on a regular basis.  It would be good if you could add one new article to your Website once a month.  Even better would be more often.  Then, each time a spider returns to your site it will see more new content, which will cause it to adjust the frequency of its visits.  This will also be a plus for your visitors, who will be encouraged to make return visits because of the fresh content.

5.  Concentrate on Content First, then Keywords

You can make a "not so difficult job" of SEO much harder if you try to write your content and make it search engine friendly at the same time.  You want to have quality content, not only to capture the interest of your visitors, but to make them "want" to return to your site.  So write your content with this in mind first: Write for human beings and not for computers.  Create quality content for your visitors and don't worry about optimization and keywords on the first writing.

Once your content is completed, then work on your On-Page SEO by adding your keywords to your content.  You will just be making minor changes for SEO.

Using the keywords you have decided to use for a particular page, sprinkle those keywords throughout the content of that page,  especially near the top of the page and at the bottom of your content.  Also, use keywords in the paragraph headings, especially if they are heading tags.  Having keywords in your content will help your On-Page Optimization.

Be careful not to use too many keywords on a page.  If you use one or two keywords in about every second paragraph then the spiders shouldn't interpret this as "overusing" keywords to get a better ranking.  Keyword stuffing can cause you to be penalized by the search engines.  Also, there's nothing worse than having content so overloaded with keywords that when your visitors see it, they are turned off.

6.  Use Lexical Words

In addition to using the keywords you have selected, it will help your SE rankings to use lexical words in your content.  Just recently, search engines have started looking for Lexical or Related words in the content of web pages to help them determine if that content has "value" or if it is "poorly written and has no value".

For instance, if you are using the word "pasta" as one of your keywords and your content reads like the following:

We have Pasta.  If you like pasta, you've come to the right place.  We have the best pasta.  Pasta you will truly love.

This phrase might normally be OK, but it smacks of keyword stuffing.  If you were to use related, or lexical words in the content, such as:

• Spaghetti
• Noodles
• Ziti
• Lasagna
• Macaroni

and didn't use the word pasta quite so often, then the search engines would determine that you are offering valuable content because your content contains subject matter that is related to your main keywords.  Therefore, the presences of these lexical words will help you get better SE rankings.

7.  Being Unethical Does Not Pay

You've heard the saying: "Honesty is the Best Policy" and this holds true for SEO.  Google is on the watch for unethical and deceptive practices and if they discover you are using them, it will negatively affect your search results.  The practice can even get your site banned from search engine results.

Google has a list called Quality Guidelines that tells you what they consider Deceptive and Unethical.

• Overusing and Hiding Keywords
  Using hidden text such as small fonts or text the same color as the background on your pages.
• Mirror sites
  Creating identical sites that link to yours.
• Repetitive Content
  You want to have different content on each page.  If your content is essentially the same on multiple pages or subdomains, search engines can interpret this as being deceptive.
• Page Cloaking
  Hiding a page behind your front page.  This is also called building a "doorway" page for the spiders that is rich in keywords and building another page for your visitors that is not related to the keywords.  An exception to this is a "Flash Site".  Spiders don't understand Flash so in this case you can build an HTML site that opens behind the Flash Site.
• Link Schemes
  Using link schemes to increase your site's ranking.  This includes links to web spammers or unethical sites on the Web.  These links could likely affect your site's ranking in a negative way.
• Unauthorized Computer Programs
  There are programs available that will submit pages, check your rankings, send automatic queries to search engines, and do other search engine related functions.  Google does not recommend the use of these kinds of products.  They use computing resources and violate Google's Terms of Service.   WebPosition Gold™  is one such product.

You can read more about what Google recommends at Google's Webmaster Guidelines:
(www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html).

8.  Monitor Your Optimization Efforts

Good results from SEO will not be an instantaneous thing. Once you've completed the optimization work to your web page, then  monitoring your progress.  Perform searches with the major search engines using your keywords to check on the progress of your rankings.  Results will vary over time and rankings may change daily so you need to watch for a trend.

If you see that over time, your rankings are climbing, then you can congratulate yourself for a job well done.  If your rankings don't change or begin to fall, then you'll want to do some more tweaking. 

The competition for high search engine placement is extremely intense.  You are competing against millions of other Web sites and Web developers who are also performing SEO to try and beat out everyone else on the Web, including you.  You will probably not get the results you want the first time around and will need to make another round of optimization changes.  But each time, you should see improvements with your rankings.

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