Another search engine rankings article?! Yeah, yeah, I know there have been millions of them out there. So, I decided to just create some sort of checklists that might help you to gain better rankings.
Before I started, you must be asking yourself, why should you use this guide instead of one of the others out there? Because I have experience, the experience to know when a theory is bogus, or irrelevant. The conservative skepticism to not endorse something that is unsubstantiated. This guide is nothing but rock solid fundamentals, tried & true methods, that I have personally found success with. So, here it goes:
1. Have you do Your Keyword Research?
All high search engine ranking process starts with keyword research. Use Google Keyword Tool to find out what the search volume are for those keywords you are trying to rank for in Google. Use Traffic Travis to check the search volume in Google, Yahoo, and MSN(now Bing…). There are probably other better keyword tools, but Traffic Travis is decent enough and is available for free at http://www.traffictravis.com/.
2. Could you have a better domain name? And probably, a better host?
It would be absolutely fantastic if you could include your targeted keyword(s) in your domain name. But please don’t make it look spammy.
Also, choose a reliable web host that have at least 97% uptime and is fast. Also, make sure they are not hosting bad sites. (Shameless self promotion: Use BlueHost)
3. How’s Your Title tag?
Optimized the title tag of your site for the keyword(s) you are targeting. But don’t overdo it by using the same keywords more than twice.
4. How’s Your Internal Navigation?
If your internal navigation is too complex (your internal pages are always more than two clicks away from your homepage), you need to fix it. If you believe that your homepage is important to you, always have links from internal pages back to your home page. Use the Breadcrumbs Nav plugin if you are using WordPress and your internal navigation is complex.
5. How’s Your Meta tag?
Always have your keywords in your Meta description tag followed by the actions you want your visitors to take.
6. How’s Your Contents?
Always have your keywords spread in the body of your article. Reduce it if it feels a bit too dense. You are writing for your visitors and readers, not search engine.
Have at least 300 words in each of your pages or articles.
Use H1 and H2 tag as title and sub-title of your articles and use your keywords in them.
Use ALT description for all of your images.
7. How’s Your Incoming links?
Try to get links from high PR sites either by submitting high quality articles/contents to article sites, or article directories. Use SEO Quake or other similar services to check the sites Page Rank. You could also write guest posts for famous blogs if you chose to.
Always links back to your site with keywords in the anchor text of your links.
Get as much backlinks as you could, from anywhere. But please, avoid reciprocal linking as Google (that Godfather) doesn’t like it.
8. What if I have done all that but still nothing happens?
Seriously, that’s impossible. Your page might not be moving from page 20 to page 1 quite yet. But there would definitely be slight improvement in your ranking. But let’s just say, you really have try all of this, and nothing happens >wink< >wink<, this might means your competitors have done the exact same quality and quantity of optimizations as you did. So, you could just sit back and give up. >Kidding<
If you have really done all the steps above properly, there’s nothing much you could do by now. The only thing that I would recommend is just factors in the long run. How? By writing more unique content on a regular basis, at least twice a week. And implementing all the SEO checklists above on every new articles you did. UNIQUE content is still king. Write something valuable that your visitors loved, and you will see how powerful this actually is.
Related Posts:
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It is nice to know that I am doing all the right things to help my search rankings! I think the hardest thing for me is to do the incoming links. I am a bit lazy with that one! Thanks for the advice.
Yeah, just like me here ^-^. That’s why I always use article marketing tools or services to help me.
Good stuff Andi. You’re right, if someone does all those things, there is absolutely no way they shouldn’t improve! Does using H1 and H2 give those words extra weight?
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews´s last blog ..10 Guidelines To Making A User Friendly Website