by Reviewrz

Created on: March 08, 2007   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

There are two methods of achieving higher ranking websites on search engines. The first is to make changes to your website to make it more search engine friendly. The second is to do this outside of your website, such as form partnerships. Both will be explained in this article.

The way that search engine 'get to know' (or index) your website is through a bot, which is basically a really fast computer, that trawls the Internet. When it finds a new page, it takes note of your website address and title, and then scans the text of your website. Using an algorithm, it then assigns a number of keywords, with different weights, to your website. When a user enters that keyword as a search, the search engine looks up its database for that keyword, and depending on how heavily your website matched that keyword, your website may be displayed somewhere in that list.

So, how can you make your website bot friendly? Firstly, use Meta Tags. These are tags that describe the contents of your web page. If you don't use meta tags, the bots will work out the keywords for themselves. If you do, the bot won't rely on your keywords, but it will use them. Secondly, don't use frames. This confuses bots and makes it harder to read the contents of your website. If you have images that could be text, then make them text. A lot of people make a heading an image, because they don't want the user to resize it and throw their page layout out of whack. This is bad practice to start off with, although bots cannot read images, so your title (which is one of the main clues to the contents of your website), will not be evaluated. Also, the more times you use the keywords that you would expect users to search you by in the body of your web page, the better your results will be.

Don't despair if you're website has been around for a while... bots go back to websites already indexed and reevaluate them, so changes will be reflected in the search.

The other line of thinking to increase your websites ranking is to get links. This is specifically in relation to Google, which you should focus on because of the sheer volume of search requests that it processes. The key to Google is that it sees links to your website as a vote of confidence. The more links, the higher your website is positioned on their search. So, actively try to seek links. If possible, don't have your partner sites saying, for the best costume jewelry, click here (with the link on 'click here'). Rather have the link on 'costume jewelry' (or both), because the text that is used to link to your site will be used by Google to index your page. So if you're website is about 'click here', then maybe you want the link to say that, but if you sell costume jewelry, have that as the link. The more links you build, the better your search position.

Combining both of these search optimization techniques should see a tangible increase in your websites ranking.

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