Better Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Rank can have a tremendous impact on your ability to make money online. The process of improving your search rank is called search engine optimization or SEO. While subtle nuances to attaining better search rank can seem confusing, the general concept of improving your SEO is easy to understand.

Search Engine Position is obviously determined by search engines. Thus, the important question is to ask what are search engines looking for? Different search engines use varying formulas, but the premise remains the same: to offer the most relevant content to a user's search.

This single concept gives rise to what search engines really want: specifically tailored web pages to the exact user search. This gives valuable information on your starting point. Whether your website has only one or many pages, each page should contain information dedicated to one specific topic. This means general websites with no sense of direction within the pages will have a much more difficult time outranking sites with pages that are content specific.

With a better sense of what search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN are looking for, let's turn our attention on what we can do on your individual web page to label it as an authority on a given topic.

First, let's examine your actual domain address. Whether you are optimizing for a primary domain name like MoneyProBlog.com or a subdomain such as SEO.MoneyProBlog.com or MoneyProBlog.com/search-engines, it is optimal for you to include the key search words you would like to be found under somewhere in the domain. As for my primary domain, I desire to be found under the keywords "money blog" which is why I included both words in the creation of the domain. For a sub topic such as how to get better search engine rankings, I added those exact keywords hyphenated out to be ranked higher for that specific search.

Two sources of debate arise in which type of subdomain is best and whether or not hyphens actually improve SEO. While SEO experts disagree on which subdomain will garner you the best results, you can take solace in the fact that both options have worked for other websites. One answer to the question of subdomains is to use the prefix subdomain when creating pages to serve more of a seperate homepage purpose while creating a file under the folder for purposes of smaller pages within the site such as articles or site information.

Hyphens can be beneficial both within the primary domain and for subdomain folders. While a significant disadvantage arises in memorability to a primary domain, hyphens nonetheless aid search engines in seperating words to determine what your webpage is about. For example, a domain such as StoragesNow.com appears obvious to a human reader, but could become confusing to search engines. The domain could be read as "storages now" or "storage snow".

Beyond optimizing the domain (which is recommended but not necessary), we want to include a healthy balance of the desired search keywords and variations thereof within the text and tags of the page. First, insert the concise version of the exact keywords you want to be found under. The more exact your title tags are to the user's search, the more likely you are to have better search engine rankings for those words. Next, add two or three variations of your keywords in the meta keyword tags. Your meta description tags should include a natural wording on what your web page is about.

Within the body of your web page, use your desired search keywords (both exact and variations of) to pepper your content. In an ideal situation, your exact keywords are inserted into header tags and the first words of the first paragraph also lead off with your keywords. Use strong tags on 1/3 to 1/2 of the keywords to help bring them to the attention of the search engine robots.

Adding keywords is a necessary measure to optimize your website, but if you engage in keyword stuffing, you will not improve your search results. Keyword stuffing is a process of repeating your keywords over and over again simply to attain better search rank. Sites that employ keyword stuffing are often blacklisted. There is a balance between natural wording with an emphasis on keywords and inserting certain words over and over again. Common sense will help you in this distinction, but if you are uncertain use this website as a guiding point.

If you include images on your website, be sure to add alt tags within the image description. This will give your keywords another chance to appear as you show search robots that your images serve as content as well.

Links to your website carry the heaviest weight to better search engine optimization, especially for already optimized sites.

Link building, or the process of adding links comes into play when you are competing for more highly competitive keywords within search engines. The best type of links are one-way links using the anchor text of your desired keywords from a high page rank website related to your web page's topic. Page rank is Google's 0-10 ranking scale of websites (with 10 being the best). Links from high page rank sites are significant, especially to Google, because they signify that an important and established website views your website as an authority on the particular topic of your keywords.

The area of improving your search engine position through text links deserves time and attention from you. Links from off-topic websites can sometimes negatively affect your rank. Also, when acquiring links be sure to understand what type of link you are receiving. Is the link permanent? What site is the link from? Is the link under your anchor text? Is the link merely from a blogroll comment? If you are grabbing multiple links, are they from the same IP address? This is an important question because links from different IP addresses give you more credibility. Futhermore, what page within the website is your link coming from? The homepage may be a PR 5, but an incoming link loses significant value if it arrives from a PR1 page within the site.

Achieving better search results does involve effort on your end, but a #1 rank or high position for your website can translate into a big jump in your website's own marketability and profitability.

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