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Maximizing Your Search Engine Rankings

by Claire Marshall

As today's business communications move predominantly online, many business owners are not utilizing search engine optimization. Companies often invest a lot of time and money trying to get visitors to their sites. What they may not know is that search engines currently account for 85% of all new visitors to a website (GVU Users Survey). Of this 85%, 33% of all search engine users think that the top positioned website is the number one brand in that industry (Voter.com). So, before spending more time and money on acquiring customers, reconsider the advantages of ranking high in the top search engines to create leads. According to Keyword Ranking TM, acquiring a customer through search engine marketing is 35 times less expensive than direct mail.

Search Engine Optimization 101

Among major search engines, site ranking is based on link popularity, the site's navigation and link structure, page loading speed, and content optimization. Content optimization includes keywords in the page title, description, and additional HTML code optimization.

Link Building

Link popularity is determined by the number of inbound links from quality websites pointing to the individual pages of your site. The relevancy of your site to the other quality websites and the relevancy of the text in the hypertext link contribute to link popularity. According to Google, a website needs 50 quality links from related, non-competitive sites with good quality content, and a Google PageRank of 4 to obtain a significant boost in link popularity.

Building links can be done in a few ways:

1) Web Directories: The best place to start is with web directories like Yahoo! And Open Directory (used by Google). You might also get listed on Search Engine Colossus, Best Free Directories, or Business Directory.

2) First-Rate Content: If the content in your site adds value to readers of other sites, and is regularly updated this is a good way to make other sites want to link with you.

3) Look for websites and ask them to link to you.

4) Write press releases and articles.

Keyword Density

Another important aspect of search engine optimization is increasing keyword density.

A keyword is a word that a web user will type in to look for specific information about a product or service, or words people use when searching the net. Keyword density is the ratio of the keyword against the total number of words on a specific web page.

When trying to increase the keyword density of your website:

1) Write more sentences with important key words or phrases. Make sure the content is still beneficial for your visitors.

2) Make sure to use the right keywords for your business to receive targeted traffic. Take a look at the Google AdWord Keyword Tool to see which words are searched for most frequently.

3) Remember to legitimately use the word in your content. Trying to group words together, separated by commas, or put too few words on a page will result in penalization.

4) Even if your site has lots of great pictures or animation, the site may still be unworthy of a high listing if the keyword content is not there.

5) Incorporate the keywords that are best for your business in your meta and title tags. Meta and title tags are scanned first by the search engines because they stand out from your main content.

With 450 million Internet users worldwide performing up to 11 billion searches per month, no business can afford to ignore the importance of search engine optimization. The Internet has become the ultimate advertising tool and search engine optimization is an important element of marketing that cannot be overlooked.

Extracted from iContact.

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