How To Improve Search Engine Rankings

When it comes to search engine rankings, I know we all wish we had a little Genie sitting on our shoulder giving us advice and guidance, mostly because it can all get so frustrating at times.

This is one issue that will not go away, and a good thing too because it is so essential to the success of your Website if you want to continue in this business.

Are you aware that Google, MSN, and Yahoo search engines account for over 85 percent of all searches on the Internet?

That's a staggering number of searches from the Big Three, which only emphasizes the necessity for good SEO (search engine optimization) practices.

Next to building your Website, SEO is the most important thing you should get to work on, immediately, if not faster.

It all comes down to page rankings, doesn't it. The higher your Website pages appear in any search result, the greater the number of visitors are likely to be directed your way.

That's really what it's all about.

I realize that for a relative newbie it can be a very daunting task at first, not knowing where to start, who to listen to, and worse yet, how to go about setting it all up.

And there's such a tremendous glut of information flying every which way out there, that sometimes that is the very thing causing us to throw our hands up in dismay and frustration, and just walking away from it all.

But you've got to be strong if you want to survive in this game.

So I'm going to talk about a couple small tweaks and adjustments that when corrected, will likely see some immediate page ranking improvements.

Let's start with your title toolbar. I'm talking about that colored bar at the top of your browser page, not your website, where you do all your searches from on the web.

Open your website on the browser, now check out the words that appear at the top of your screen when it comes up.

That little box should title your home page, and also show the most important "keywords" and/or "keyword phrase". It does not need to have your website name there as well.

If you are unfamiliar with where that title originates from, just look at the top of the page when you are editing your website, and you will see the <title></title> tags.

Insert your keywords between the two tags; <title>House Painting Specialists At Affordable Rates</title>, and that is what will show up on most if not all title bar search results.

Now do the same thing with all the pages on your website, checking to see that the most important keywords and phrases relevant to each particular page are shown on the title bar, also do the same with the meta tags.

If each page in your website has different content and/or different products, then it stands to reason you will not want to have the same title tags show up on every single page of your website. Right?

When someone is searching for red paint, you don't want them to completely miss your website, which would happen if all the tags on every page were the same as your home page, and only mentioned white paint.

When a visitor lands on a page other than your home page as a result of you having correctly set up your tags for each page, then that visitor has arrived on what is theoretically called a "landing page" for the purposes of this article.

Now here is where you must be very careful and be absolutely certain all your links are in good working order.

Think about it momentarily. When a visitor lands on a page other than your home page, chances are they will want to also check out the rest of your site, especially if they were pleased with the search result that brought them there in the first place, and the reasons all links should be working.

These visitors are your bread and butter, and have "customer" written all over them. So you don't want to lose them.

Just a brief aside; a true landing page is set up with one purpose in mind, to elicit a search engine user to make an immediate purchase from that page, and in some cases may not have links leading away from that page. But, again, that is another article altogether.

Let's look at what works, and what doesn't work with search engines.

First and foremost, search engines are looking for text content, not riveting graphics or graphic-embedded text.

This is truly one of those times when a picture is definitely not worth a thousand words. In fact, just the opposite is true.

Search engine spiders crawl websites to gather content and information, and cannot read graphics. The search engine spiders completely ignore any graphics on a website. That is why you will often hear that, "Content is King".

The sole aim of any search engine spider is to gobble up as much text content as possible. To be most specific about it, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) text.

Graphic-embedded text is also completely ignored. This is text that became part of the graphic when it was being produced on one of the paint programs. And because it is part of the graphic (graphic-embedded text), you may be jeopardizing your page ranking as a result.

Embedded text on graphics may look attractive, and be very eye-appealing, but the spiders take absolutely no notice of it.

If you are uncertain about what is graphic-imbedded text and what is HTML text, here is a little test you can conduct.

Have you ever had to highlight words using a word processor, for one reason or another? If a word or phrase you click on and you run your mouse over becomes highlighted, then that is HTML text.

If on the other hand you cannot highlight a word or phrase with your mouse, chances are it is text embedded into the graphic and not what you want.

So if your most important "keywords" are in the form of graphic-embedded text, words potential customers will be using in their searches, then you are losing out big time and better make some serious adjustments to your site immediately.

It's important to mention that I am not saying you should not use graphics on your websites, just don't use text imbedded into your graphics.

I sincerely hope these few pointers will help improve your search engine rankings.

Of course we haven't even scratched the surface of good SEO techniques here, but taken in small incremental steps this is far easier to digest and put into practice.

About the Author:
Shayne Genoway is an infoMarketer, ePublisher, Webpreneur, and Webmaster interested in teaching others the rewards and benefits of owning a successful Home Based Internet Business. Comments? Questions? Let's talk - email me now through my website, click here: http://www.CyberAdz.biz

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