For the aveage Webmaster, Search Engine Optimization is something akin to black magic. As a SEO in Houston it’s my belief that a lot of this is the result of all the misinformation flogged by scores of people calling their self SEO experts. For some, this is because they do not know any better while many others do it because their Clients would stop paying them if they knew how easy it was to rank a web site. Search Engine Optimization isn’t rocket science my good friend. It’s nothing more than systematically building and optimizing a website the same way over and over to achieve high rankings.
First up, a person should make sure that the main keywords are used in the web address if at all possible. When all things are equal, a Website with keywords in the URL will outrank one without the keywords in the URL.
Next up, the keyword or keyword phrase should be included in the Title of your Website. This helps search engines like Google,Yahoo and MSN come to a conclusion as to what it is that you Website is all about.
You should also use keywords in the Title of each page or article on your site, or at the very least, you should use some keywords in the title of the page or article. This too helps the search engines come to a conclusion as to what the subject of the page is, what it’s about and how relevant it is to the search term being searched for. As an added benefit, the website should be coded in such a manner as to include the Title of each page in a H1 tag. There should only be one H1 tag per page for the best results. Search engines give a lot of value to the H1 tag and so it’s important in good SEO practices. If your web designer does not know how this is done, find one that does.
Now that you have your domain, Website Title (Name) and Page Titles optimized with your keywords, it’s important that the keywords you want to rank for show up in the content of the page. I like to use them at least once in the first paragraph and at least once in the last paragraph. A few more times between the first and last paragraph can’t hurt but don’t over do it, in summary, just make sure you use them in the first part of the page and again at the end.
Last up, you’ll soon discover that the most important part of Search Engine Optimization actually takes place off the page. In fact, it takes place off the site altogether. In my opinion, the most important thing in getting higher ranks for a Website is backlinks leading back to your Website. And it’s not enough to just get backlinks, these links back to your site need to have your keywords as the Anchor text of the backlinks.
How important are backward links? I have ranked quite a few Websites that didn’t have the keywords in the URL, plus I can rank one that doesn’t have keywords in the Website Title, Page Title and in the Content (although it’s much, much harder to do), but without targeted backlinks leading back to your site, {it is impossible} to get ranked higher for any search phrases that are the least bit in demand.
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