Lesson 9 - Basic SEO - Search Engine Optimization.
If you are going to try to make your page as good as it can be without regard to the content itself, you need to make it good for Google.com because they control most of the Search Engine Traffic on the web.
You can get information about what Google likes so that you can know how to better setup your webpages.
Here's info from Google's Help Center:
|
How can I improve my site's ranking?
Sites' positions in our search
results are determined based on a number of factors designed to
provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These
factors are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html.
|
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.
You could read for days, probably weeks if you read all the stuff that is freely available about optimizing your web pages for the search engines.
Get Google Toolbar to Learn about Page Rank
First, get Google Toolbar on your web browser so that you can see how Google rates the websites that you visit. This will start giving you an idea about what it takes to get page rank.
If you are just starting up a website, you can not expect to get Page Rank and position in Search Engine Results Pages until you have grown you website with considerable, unique, interesting content for which others are looking.
Having said that you should learn a few basic rules to follow as you grow the site. As you write each page, remember to consider these rules and it will just become a natural part of writing a web page:
Page Title - change the "newpage 1" to a meaningful, short title which contains keywords that you believe would be searched for if someone were looking for information that this page contains. Remember Google ranks web pages, not websites. So any webpage in your site has a chance of ranking well in the search engines all on its own merits.
Some say that the Page Title is the most important thing on the page so far as ranking.
Meta Tags
There are 2 meta tags that usually follow the page title in the html code of a webpage. They are description and keywords meta tags.
What you enter into the description meta tag may be used by some search engines or directories to describe their link to your page so it is worth giving some thought to this description and making it short but accurate as to the page content.
The keywords meta tag should contain a few keywords that you believe someone would enter into a search if they were looking for information that your web page contains. Separate keywords or keyword phrases with a comma.
Web Page Content
Your keywords should appear within the first few words or sentences of the page content as an indication to the reader what the page is about. In your html code, put H1 tags around your most important keywords.
You should keep in mind that the reader is the most important thing to consider and you should write for them. After the reader, consider how you can make the greatest appeal to the search engines.
Links to Your Webpage from Other Highly Ranked Pages on Other Sites
If you can get links to your webpage from other highly ranked webpages of other sites, it will raise your page's ranking. The more highly ranked the page that links to yours, the more your rank will be raised. Links from more highly ranked sites will continue to raise your page's ranking.
But, the webmasters of the other sites must know about your webpages and the information that they contain and must be willing to place a link to your page from theirs. This will usually be very difficult to accomplish, but you should start in some small way to let others know about your website and that you would like them to place a link to your site or a particular page of your site from theirs.
Links from Directories
There are hundreds of Internet Directories that will list your website for free. Some will transfer Page Rank to your site. It will pay you to investigate this opportunity to raise your page rank.
Check Your Current Page Rank
Free Page Rank Checker
Page Rank Checker is a completely free tool to check the Page Rank value of your web site easily and possibly display your web site's page rank right on your web pages.