I get asked all the time, how can I improve my website ranking? Well, at the very least you should follow these tips. There is no short cut, you have to read and learn. There is also no guarantee where you will rank on Google, no matter what you do to improve your ranking, but there are some basic things you can do to your site, to at least help positioning.

Here is an informative article on the basics of search engine optimization techniques.  This is a basic SEO and not a conclusive guide, but should give you some ideas to get you started.

1. Keywords / Keyword Phrases

Creating content for the web differs from normal writing. To write online copy, you need to learn about keywords, keyword phrases and keyword density at the very least. You need to adapt your writing style to target search engines, while also making you work enjoyable for readers.

A few years ago when building websites it was enough to simply add what was known as a “keyword meta tag” to the code which generated the website content. This meta tag was simply a list of keywords, like the following: <meta name=”keywords” content=”shoe, shoes, shoee, shos, footwear” />. This list of keywords helped Google identify what the page was about. Yes, you may even include mis-spelled words too.

It’s probably pretty obvious that this keyword tag was open to abuse, with people adding loads of keywords and even adding keywords that were not even relevant to the site content, just to get listed higher. It was not long before Google changed the relevance of this tag so that it had little if any bearing on position. Today, it is worth including the tag for other search engines but it does not affect Google position.

So how do you use keywords, keyword phrases and what’s keyword density. Keyword is actually somewhat of a misnomer, in fact you are best targeting a keyword phrase. People no longer use single keyword search phrases – the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

Anyway, Keywords or Keyword phrases are those words or phrases which a customer, or potential user of your website, would be likely to type into Google to find you. Choosing the right keywords to base your site optimization around is an important first step. General or generic keywords are usually not the best approach, and sometimes it’s better to be a little more specific and focus on niche keywords, relating to your product or service. Some keyword phrases can be ultra competitive, such as “make money”!

Taking for example a website selling fashionable shoes to young men and women. The problem is, there are a LOT of shoe retailers out there with websites, so how can we get our fashionable shoe website to appear in Google’s top 10 rankings? Well, we can try to optimize for the keyword “shoes” but I can guarantee that alone would be a tough task, as it’s far too general. We need to be more specific, which means:

1. Targeting a more suitable market that is looking for your type of shoes
2. Competing with fewer websites targeting the same keywords
3. Optimizing for keywords that people actually use when performing searches

Now there are a few ways to check how competitive your keyword phrases are, but keeping it simple, the easiest was to see how many sites you are competing with is to do a search on Google, and note down how many results are returned. The more sites that are competing for your keywords, the harder it will be to get on the front page. So sticking with our shoe retailer example:

Results 1 – 10 of about 56,100,000 for trendy women’s shoes. (0.25 seconds)

Results 1 – 10 of about 1,560,000 for fashionable women’s shoes. (0.29 seconds)

Results 1 – 10 of about 62,700 for fashionable women’s shoes Leeds. (0.28 seconds)

Get the drift?

Alternatively, to get a rough indication of how many people are actually searching for the keywords you want to optimize your site for, use the a keyword poularity tool. It’s not exact, and doesn’t measure Google searches, but it does give a very good estimate. You can also use Googles own Keywords finder. It will also provide you with a list of similar keywords, based on the keywords you enter. This can be a great way to find other keywords to optimize your site for.

Now you understand keywords you need to learn how to use them, so read on.

2. Website Content and Keyword Density

There is one thing that the pages at the top of google have in common and that’s good writing. Lots of content, which is well written and relevant to the website. It should not really be a surprise, as Google often stress the importance of good website content. However, most SEO “experts” or “specialists” never mention it, preferring to concentrate on the technicalities of SEO, like optimising title tags, page titles, alt tags, etc etc. You know, all that stuff that sounds really impressive in the report they offer you to improve your website, while at the same time confusing the heck out of you!

So what is well written content? What does google look for? Here are some suggestions:

• Frequently updated content, make sure you write new posts, articles, blogs at least once a week. Google likes to see pages and sites that are updated. How they see it, a dynamic site is more interesting to their users than a static site that has not been changed for months. Further, more content means more pages for Google to index, Google likes larger sites and each page can be written to target specified keyword phrases. Quite simply the more content you have out there, the more chance you have of being found.
• Spelling and grammar should have few or preferably no errors. Whether or not Google rewards or penalises poor spelling and grammar, it should be taken into account. Firstly, there is nothing more irritating to someone reading a web page than lots of mistakes. Secondly, no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google’s algorithm are, and it is entirely possible that spelling, at least, is part of their scoring system.
• Use Paragraphs, sentences and lists effectively in the page to emphasise the content and break up the text. Now this is more for readability, but again, who knows how Google judges content, and if they see a huge block of text without paragraphs for example, they may penalise the ranking because it would appear none user friendly.
• Keyword relevance within the text on the page. Numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as variations of the keyword. Make sure keywords or keyword phrases are used regularly, but not over used in the text on your page. As a human when writing for other humans we try to use variations of words to make the text more readable. When writing for search engine’s you should not substitute your keywords too much, even if it makes the text read better. There is a fine line between writing well for your users while also getting the most from your keyword density.
• Keyword Density is the last thing and most important thing to consider when writing your web page content. Think about your keywords and keyword phrases. Use the keyword(s) as frequently as possible without keyword spamming the page. Under ideal conditions, your article will have a keyword density rate of 5-7%. What this means is that 5-7 out of every 100 words in your article is your primary keyword/keyword phrase. The 5-7% is the keyword density. Now don’t take this as thinking you can spam your web pages with loads of the keywords. Firstly, this will ruin readability and annoy your potential customers, but secondly, Google will penalise this too. Yes they are aware of all the tricks of the trade! Further, make sure your opening paragraph includes your keywords preferably in the first sentence, as this tells the search engine that this is what the focus of your copy is about.

3. The URL and Title Bar

Two of the most determining factors in Google’s ranking are your domain name and title tag.

Sometimes there may be reasons not to include keywords in the domain name, or the domain name may already have been registered, so it’s too late to change. Well, the alternative, and also a useful tactic for everyone, is to add your keywords into the names of your pages.

Your title tag is equally as important as your domain name. The title bar is the blue bar right at the top of the browser shown below:

Using keywords in your title tag can improve your Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve to a balance of professionalism with keyword density in the title tag however, is sometimes a little more difficult.

Now if your website is built on a CMS, (if you can update your website using an administration tool to add your own page content) then this CMS should be built so that you can affect your page titles. Most Content Management Systems do this automatically for you, by creating page title from the name of your page. In your CMS you will be asked to create a page title and this will show in the blue bar.So choose a title wisely.

Usually the CMS will also automatically add your domain name to the blue bar too. Further, if you categorise articles, then your CMS will more than likely add the category to the page title.

Google spiders like titles, it gives them a great idea about what the page is about. For example, in the image above, you can see the page title of one of may website pages; page title, article category and lastly the name of my website. It’s got lots of keywords in the title bar.

If your website developer, or whoever is responsabile for your website has not optimised this title bar then have a word, it’s very important!

Another little tip is, the closer to the front of your title tag the keywords are placed, the better. For a start some search engines can only read a few characters in this title bar and you don’t want to risk them cropping the tile and losing some of your keywords.

Keep the title fairly short and succinct.  Now many CMS’s actually put the domain name at the beginning of the title tag, this is all well and good if it includes good keywords, but if it doesn’t you may want to move your domain name to the end of the title tag.

4. H1 / Headings / Titles In Your Content

If you use a CMS and What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editor, headings in your system may be marked as “heading 1, heading 2, heading 3″ or “H1, H2, H3″. In HTML, the tag for headings is <H1> <H2> <H3>.  Headings along with the page title are extremely important in SEO. Once again it tells the search engine what your page is about. Text is in a heading on the page is deemed more important than the content by search engines. Search engins also rank the headings in order of importance too.

Here’s a quick example:

<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>
<h2>than this</h2>
<h3>and this is the least important title on the page.</h3>
<p>this paragraph is less important than the headings, but as it is the first paragraph, any content is more important than the next paragraph.</p>
<p>This paragraph text should have good keywords, but is not as classed as important as the first paragraph.</p>

5. Linking Strategies

This is the toughest part of the Google SEO process, back-links. Back links are websites that link directly to your website. Google loves back links. Each link from another site to yours is classed as a vote for your website. The simple reason is, if another site is linking to you then your content must be good, right?

The general principal is the more back links you have, the higher your pages will be ranked. Now how google classes back links is unknown, again we can only guess. It’s likely that back links from directory sites such as Freeindex and Yell don’t carry as much weight as those from non-directories. Again, if a website linking to you has similar content to yours, if it is about the same or a similar topic, it may carry more points. If a website that links to you is ranked high on google, it may give your site more of a ranking boost than a site that is ranked low.

It’s all common sense really, but either way, getting people to link to your site is a must, whilst remembering that the links must be quality links. Just getting anyone to link to you may actually do you more harm than good…….remember google is always looking for those who cheat and don’t take it likely.

Setting up back links takes time. I would recommend emailing 5-10 websites each and every day to request back-links or partnership links (keeping in mind that the sites contacted should be relevant but not competitive). Within a couple of weeks, you should have a good 100 or so sites happily linking back to yours! It may take time for this influence to be shown in your ranking, but I have found it is one of the best ways to raised your Google ranking!

Google can be one tough search engine to crack. Hopefully, however, in this article we’ve provided you with enough basic tips to get started optimizing your website. SEO takes time, anything you change can take as long as 6 months before google notices it. Be careful what you change and have a plan. If you are not doing any of the above tips, then get started, it will help.

In summary:

• Plan your keywords and keyword phrases, choose about 5 for each page on your website.
• Make sure the keywords and phrases are in the URL, page title, headings, first paragraph and evenly distributed throughout the text on the page.
• Regularly update your website with new content, write interesting articles for your customers and potential customers to find.
• Request links to your website from related but uncompetitive sites.

You may also like to read:

• What is Google Page Rank?
• Internal SEO
• Ever Regret Your Domain Name Choice?
• Do I need a keyword rich domain to do well in Google?
• What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Beginners Guide To SEO is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website