8 Easy Ways To Optimize Your Website As easy as it is....Try it now...

[odomike 0]

Traff?c from search engines is widely considered the best (and cheapest) way to generate traff?c to your site. The increasing popularity of search engines has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around ways to "optimize" websites.

 

The end result is that many people think that only "professionals" can help their website rank high within search engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site so they rank high for many keywords.

 

Below, I have listed 8 simple steps that you can take to optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve your chances of increasing your rankings:

 

1) Target one word for each page: A huge mistake that many beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is focusing on that one word without any distractions. If you want to target multiple keywords then it is necessary to create a separate page for each.

 

2) List your major keywords in the links back to your site: Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the title tag.

 

3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.

 

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side.

 

But, since the left-handed menu is commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.

 

4) Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code of most pages are "header tags" (also known as Meta tags), which help search engines understand the content of the page.

 

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine when your site is listed)

 

5) Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search engine results. As a result, a good description can make your website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to cl?ck on your site, it is important to write a snappy description while using your keyword.

 

6) Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag has become less popular, it doesn?t hurt to put your keywords h?re.

 

7) Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual text of your site, the first part should be the headline. Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in the headline as being more important then the rest of the web copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.

 

8) Write your keyword enriched web copy: Once you have set up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the page. In addition, the keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.

 

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500 words. Also, the keyword should be about 5-12% of the total words of the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, so you might want to play around till you find the best results.

 

If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords. The best part is that you do not have to spend any mon?y on expensive search engine optimizers!

 

Good luck!

 

About the author

 

Odomike is a web designer from Nigeria. He has been into web designing for the past 2 yrs and have made considerable advances in Search Engine Optimzation. He researches on SEO and its related topics and publishes his findings in Bulletin Boards and forums. Visit his webmaster Support Forums for more information.

 

Website: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Support Forums http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Edited December 17, 2004 by odomike (see edit history)

[RGPHNX 0]

Additional Info,Thanks for the good info OdoMike! If you are interested in a more in depth discussion of SEO you can check out //Search-Marketing.info. Authors name is Aaron Wall.- he has written a highly reviewed book available at Amazon etc. He has posted LOADS of free info on his website. The info is well organized, documented and presented. The info on the website is a little weak as to the step by step stuff (he's selling a book for that) but is a good overview that will get you pointed in the right direction. Thanks again to OdoMIke for the practical tips! Keep them coming.Hope this helps!PS- I'm not affiliated in any way with the website listed above. ;)Cheers!

[Bash 0]

wow thanks, awesome tips odomike!im definetely gonna try that

[odomike 0]

I appreciate your gratitudes Bash and RGPHNX. I am still researching on more topics on SEO and I will be posting them soon enough.

[Xedos 0]

This is some of the best advice ive ever heard. Ill be remembering this for my sites. Its so.. easy too. Im surprized no ones thinking about the searche engine stuff. Ill be making a good not about that. I usually have my menus at the top center. Would that appear on a search engine? If it does ill have to change my style. >_<. Anyway. Great guide or notes or document whatever it is.

[gbjack 0]

Thanks for the great info... very helpful and informative

[bjrn 0]

All very good advice. I just wanted to comment on this bit:

 

3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.

 

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side.

 

But, since the left-handed menu is commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.

You can have it both ways actually, unless you are using tables for your layout (which you shouldn't be doing in any case). You can put the main content of your page (including those special first 100 words) at the top of your page, and the menu at the very bottom. Then you use CSS to position your menu on the left side.

 

An example: http://csszengarden.com/146/page0/ which uses this HTML document.

 

What I'm saying is that having your menu on the left or right hand side is really not the issue. It's having the menu higher up in your document than the main content.

 

 

Putting lots of script and css data in the head of the page itself is a Bad Thing, since it pushes down your "100 words".

[gageternity 0]

Nice guide. Definitely useful for me.

[finaldesign 0]

I managed to get on the 2 place on google when you search with term "finaldesign" , (without quotes) and on first place if you search with "finaldesign studio" ...and that all in 2-3 weeks. Now how is that possible, and I really do not have much traffic on website... exept I signed for Adsense program with google. So, what really worked for me, I dont know, I've read some tutorials, on SEO, I even posted one here on Xisto, I've got some advices from googlue, put them all together, and that's it. Now, remains that old question: (like googlue said:) who will search with term "finaldesign"?

[melkonianarg 0]

Yes this is all true, and helps in the long run and for people just starting out btw, can you still get really high rankings in google with a subdomain, not that I dont have a top level : paidway.co.uk (getting tranfered onto Xisto hosting soon!)

[zeek 0]

thx for the last hint i will use it

[donnyouyang 0]

Thanks a lot! That really helped!

[tonic 0]

Great tips, I never realized how important this is, espicially the first 100 words tip.