Achieving higher organic rankings is the goal of all website owners. The first and most important aspect of increasing search engine rankings is patience. While I have had instant success with a few sites, generally this is a long and tedious process. If you follow the steps below you should over time see a nice increase in your organic rankings.
The text below assumes that you have a site that can be indexed by the search engines and that you are not involved in any black hat practices.
Content, Content, Content
You have heard the term “content is king”. When it comes to search engine optimization, this holds true. But it is not just about the amount of content, it is more about the quality of that content. By quality, we are talking about relevant keyword density. In other words your content should contain keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your site, and are the keywords that potential customers will use to find your site. Be careful not to over do this however, as content that is overly keyword dense can actually work against you. A general rule of thumb is to keep individual keyword densities at no more than 3% and not to use a phrase more than 6 times.
Meta-tags
Another critical element of SEO are the meta-tags. The tags for my site are below. It is crucial that these include relevant keyword terms and echo the content of the site.
<title>Website Design Rhode Island (RI) | Internet Marketing RI | Google Adwords Professionals</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”DEC Systems LLC is a Rhode Island web design company and search engine marketing specialist in RI. Google Adwords Qualified Professional. Make Your Website a Success”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”web design, website design, rhode island, ri, seo, search engine optimization, internet marketing”>
The meta-tags include the title tag, the description tag and the keywords tag. For the purpose of search engine optimization, the first two are the most important. Google has recently gone on the record as no longer using the keywords tag.
The “Title tag” is the most important of these tags, as it is the one you see in search results as well as on the top of your browser window when you enter the site. It is generally preferred to have the business name in the title tag, but it will not hurt your rankings to not include it.
Submissions and Back Links
These are more or less the same thing. While back links refer to any link to your site from another site, your best back links are generally going to come from search engine and directory submissions. It is no longer true that any backlink is a good link. In fact having back links from non-relevant sites may even have a negative impact on you organic rankings.
The best strategy is to add your site to the major search engines and directories, relevant sites, as well as updating your profiles in the major online yellow pages.
Major Search Engines and Directories
This is the most important part of your strategy and your submissions should not only include your free submissions to Google, Yahoo & MSN, but creating your local listings as well, assuming you have a location. In addition, the open directory http://dmoz.org, is a very nice listing if you are lucky enough to have your site accepted. Follow the directions carefully and only submit once. It took me almost a year to get into this directory, once included my Google rankings shot up. In the event this is a new site, I would advise adding your site to both the Yahoo Directory and Business.com. These both cost $299/yr. You may cancel at any time.
Relevant Sites
By relevant sites, I mean those that are advertising your products and services. For attorneys, a site like http://hg.org would be a good example. This is a highly ranked site, that allows you to create a profile, including a link to your site, for a relatively inexpensive price.
Online Yellow Pages
The online yellow pages is also a great source for high quality back links. I generally have nothing but distrust and disdain for the phone book and the online yellow pages, and don’t even have a Verizon land line, but you will find me listed in the all of the online yellow page directories. If you do have a land line as most companies do, all you need to do is go in and claim your listing. If you don’t you may need to create an account.
While both will try to sell you outrageous marketing packages, you can usually claim your listing, update your categories and add a link to your website free or at a reasonable price.
About the author:
David Crockenberg is the owner of DEC Systems, a Rhode Island web design company specializing in search engine optimization and marketing. You can follow DEC Systems on Facebook and subscribe to David’s web design blog to get updates on what’s hot (and what’s not) in search engine optimization, and marketing.
