Tips for Better Search Engine Ranking

1. Provide informational content.   Repeat this phrase each morning when you awaken and every time you look in a mirror: "Content is king." The truth is that search engines are not really looking for your site. In fact, they could care less about most sites. They are only interested in the content and information a site contains. It is therefore important to build information-rich Web pages. A search engine spider will dissect a Web page and rank it based upon the keywords and information it contains. It is therefore important to feed search engine spiders the type of information they seek. Each targeted page should contain a minimum of 250 words.
2. Develop a keyword theme for each page.   Each page targeted for optimization should focus on one to three keyword phrases. Selecting keyword phrases is a critical task. Choose these keywords wisely. It is very important that the phrases you choose are those actually used by prospective customers to search for the products, services or information that you offer.
3. Develop effective HTML title tags.   Developing effective titles is an important aspect of the optimization process. The HTML title tag needs to contain the keyword theme for your Web page. Search engines recognize the words in this tag as a description of the content on the page. The title tag is also the block of text that displays in almost all search engine results as the title for your page. It must therefore be compelling enough to cause a user to click on your link above all others in the search results.
4. Use heading tags appropriately.   Heading tags (<h1> through <h6>) are intended to describe the contents of a paragraph. The words they contain are awarded a higher relevance by search engines and thus they should contain the keyword theme for each page.
5. Don't just focus on the home page.   At one time, the home page was the most important page within a Web site. And although some search engines do use the home page as the representative link to your site, most of the major players have abandoned this technique in favor of linking directly to the individual page that contains the search phrase a user is searching for. Today, every page is a potential entry point into your site.
6. Develop an inbound linking strategy.   Links from other sites to your site have become an important aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines record every link they find to your site from other sites. Using search engine logic, the more links they find to a site, the more important that site must be. Some search engines will not completely index a site unless links are found from other sites. Whether you agree with this logic or not, it behooves every site owner to build inbound links to their site.
7. Use keywords in both internal and external links.   Whenever possible, keyword phrases should be used in all hyperlinks. These keywords should describe the theme of the page being linked to. This theory applies to both internal links (links among pages within a site) and inbound links (links from other sites to your site). For example, Minco Manufacturing sells fuser rollers. An appropriate link for Minco's fuser roller product page is:
   
           Fuser rollers by Minco Manufacturing
   
   
8. Eliminate coding errors from your Web pages.   HTML coding errors can be abundant in Web pages. Browsers are very forgiving and will correct most errors, but these errors may cause the page to render more slowly as the browser attempts to correct the code. Search engine spiders have a different mission and will not waste time trying to decipher junk code. Web page validation covers this issue in detail.
9. Avoid site designs that are unfriendly to search engines.   Certain site and page architectures are known to be difficult for search engines to work with. Spiders have a difficult time searching sites using HTML frames, because a frame page is actually made up of several individual HTML pages. Many of these pages have no links to other pages. This confuses the spiders and they abandon the site. Use a standard site architecture and make sure that your most important pages are in the root directory. Also, search engines do not currently follow JavaScript links, so if you use a JavaScript menu, make sure that you provide an alternate path for search engines to follow.
10. Avoid the use of spam techniques.   Spam, in search engine jargon, is any technique intended to deceive a search engine in order to achieve artificially high rankings for a Web page or site. Spam techniques are commonly used by a number of SEO firms, and they do achieve a certain level of short-term success. The real problem with this approach is that sooner or later a search engine will detect what is being done, or someone will report it to the search engine, and in return the search will penalize the site. Penalties are awarded with out any notice and difficult to identify. Penalties can also be very difficult to resolve. Framastatic Fillrods and SEO Ethics describes some of the common marketing tactics that should cause you to ask more questions about the services offered and the methods utilized. Another article called Recognizing Search Engine Penalties helps you to identify if a spam penalty has been applied to your site.