2. In Part 1 of this article detailing the five best practices for
domination the search engines, we discussed website
design and the use of keywords. In this part we will look
at three more, one of which is related to search engine
optimization and the use of HTML tags, and the other two
are ways of improving your link popularity.
4. Some claim that search engines, especially Google, no
longer regard meta tags as being important. In fact
nobody really knows what Google thinks is important, and
there is evidence that some meta tags are still used by
spiders in the assessment of the relevance of your website
to specific search terms or keywords used by search
engine users. The meta tags that you should use on every
page of your site are the description and the keyword
meta tags.
5. Your description meta tag should provide a good
description of your website, and contain your main
keywords. This will likely not be seen by anybody, only the
search engines, but it might be used to assess the
relevance of your site in indexing with respect to specific
search terms being used.
6. The other meta tag that search engines still use is the
keyword meta tag. This should contain a list of keywords
used on the page. If you don't use it, don't add it to the
meta tag. Also, don't use the same word too many times,
since it will be regarded as keyword stuffing. After meta
tags, you should look at your titles and how they are
presented to search engines spiders.
7. Ideally, the title should be the keyword for each page. Do
not use the same title for every page. It is the title of your
web page that should be here, not your website. This
provides search engines with an indication of the topic of
your page. The title itself should be within H1 tags. This
tells the search engine that these words are the most
important on the page. They should also be the first text
that the spiders come across on your page, since Google
also gives special emphasis to the first text it finds.
8. Any secondary titles you might have on each page should
be contained within H2 tags. These titles should also
contain keywords that you are using on your page and that
are contained in your keyword meta tag.
10. The more links you have leading back to your web pages
from other websites, the more influential the search
engines will calculate your web pages to be for the topics
concerned. Many people use a reciprocal linking strategy,
whereby two websites agree to show each other's links.
This can be self defeating, since search engines such as
Google can regard a link away from your site as weakening
yours, and so cancels out the benefit of the back link.
11. The crucial aspect of who benefits from this arrangement
comes for the relative page ranking. The page rank of a
web page can be found on the green bar on the Google
toolbar, This is an indication of the link popularity of the
page you are viewing. If you are linked with a web page
with a higher page rank than yours, then you might get the
benefit of the deal. However, in general terms, the more
links you have back to your site the better.
12. If you carry out a Google search for keywords that relate
to yours, you should be able to find some websites with
high page ranking that are not direct competitors. Write
asking for a link to your site from theirs, explaining the
benefits to their customers/visitors of you doing so. One
of four things will happen. They will not reply, they will
refuse , they will agree or they will agree on condition that
you provide a similar link back to them.
13. The usual reply is the first or the last, but it costs you
nothing to try, and you can get a lot of good links back to
your website by doing this. If the page rank is high even a
reciprocal link will be of benefit to your site's page rank
and search engine listing.
14. Some website directories offer software on a free or a
subscription basis that automatically handles reciprocal
link requests. The paid versions generally set up a link
directory on your website then provide you with offers of
reciprocal links that you can either agree to or refuse. If
you agree they can automatically add the link to your
directory. With free versions you have to add the link
yourself. These are very useful if you are selective.
16. Links are much more valuable if they are one way, without
you reciprocating. This is where the benefits of article
marketing become huge. When you write articles and
submit them to article directories, you get a one way link
back from each directory your article is published on. Not
only that, but if readers deem your article worthy of being
copied to their website as content, then your web page
also gets a link back from there. The link you get is to the
page for which you provided the URL in your 'bio' or
'author's resource page'.
17. Although article marketing is a good way of achieving back
links, they are not targeted to specific websites that could
benefit you. What are really of benefit are either sites
that relate to yours, from which your links could provide
you with traffic focused on your niche, or high page rank
sites that will provide you with high value links and that is
where you have to resort to personal requests.
18. If you apply all of the advice provided in these
recommended best practices for dominating the search
engines you should give your listing a big boost, and if
done properly you have a very good chance of achieving a
Page One position.
