Comprehensive SEO Guide to Increase Your SE Ranking

Comprehensive SEO Guide to Increase Your Search Engine Ranking
By: Jason Miller

Things that this article will cover which search engines use to determine your positioning are:

• Domain Maturity
• Anchor Texts
• HTML Attributes
• Site Popularity - Linking Strategies
• Title Tags and Headings
• Lists (Ordered and Unordered)
• Content Formatting (Bolding and Italics)
• Site Layout and Design
• Keywords
• Keyword Density
• Content & Content Placement
• Page Doctypes
• Geo-Targeting
• Meta Data
• Code Bloat Reduction
• XML Site Maps
• Website Log Analyzation
• 404 Error Handling
• Robots.txt
• BlackHat Techniques to Avoid

Domain Maturity

Search engines place high value on the age of domains and the length of registration for a domain name. The age of your site signifies to the search engines that you have some amount of stability and authority.

While at the other hand the length of the domain registration increases your trust to the search engines. The longer the registration the more likely you are to have a trustworthy site.

Domain maturity is often hard for new webmasters to overcome. So the trick to this, at least if you are planning to run multiple domains, is to incubate your domain. Since juggling the development of many new “QUALITY” websites is difficult we prefer to build one of two simple pages for each domain we plan on developing later, submit them to the major search engines, build a couple links in directories, and let the sites sit.

By doing this it will allow your sites to be indexed and increase in maturity while you focus on developing your other sites.

Anchor Texts

Anchor Texts are important for both on and off-page optimization. For on-page optimization it is recommended that you build a good site navigational structure that makes it not only easy for humans to navigate your pages, but search engine spiders as well.

Broken Anchor Texts can lower your search engine rankings so ensure you have no broken links on your website.

Make sure the links on your page are related to the content or theme of the page and website.

Good SEO practice when adding links on your page is to ensure that you use the keywords you are targeting for that page in the Anchor Text as well as in the title attribute. Even more important is if you make the anchor text/title match the title/h1 tag of the page the link is pointing to.

I.E -

<a href=“www.xyz.com/blue-widgets-california” title=blue widgets california“>Blue Widgets California</a> 

This example link would tell the search engine spiders that the page it is about to follow is about blue widgets in California!

Anchor Texts are also very important in off-page optimization. When creating backlinks through directories or article submissions make sure the link back to your site contains the keywords you are targeting, the above example is a good starting point for off-page link optimization.

HTML Attributes

Search engines pay close attention to descriptive attributes in HTML tags as this will tell them what the content on your page is about. Some very important attributes include:

summary=
alt=
title=

The summary attribute should be used in the first table tag on the page. This will let the seach engine know what the content is about in that table. Use the keyword you are targetting in the attribute.

Summary Tag Example:

<table summary=“Blue Widgets California” width=“100%” height=“100%”>

The alt tab is extremely important to search engines since they cannot read a picture, it also helps people with vision impairments who may be viewing your site.

Alt Tag Example:

<img src=“blue-widgets-california.jpg” alt=“blue widgets”>

The last attribute that is very important which was discussed in the previous sub-heading was the title attribute. This tells spiders what the content on the page being linked to is about.

Title Tag Example:

<a href=“blue-widgets-california.php” title=“blue widgets california”>Blue Widgets California</a>

Site Popularity - Linking Strategies

Site Popularity is often used by search engines to determine your sites ranking. The more websites that link to you the more popular your site will be considered by search engines. However not all links are treated the same. Links coming from sites with related content are given higher weight than others

• Paid Links
• Reciprocal Links
• Directory Submission
• Article Submission
• Social Bookmarking
• Forum Signatures

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are not as effective for search engine rankings as they used to be but can be effective for driving traffic to your site, especially if the site you are linking to has a high volume of traffic.

On reciprocal link methodology that is effective is 3-way linking. A three way link structure would look as follows:

Site A ==> Site B ==> Site C ==> Site A

Directory Submission
Directory submission is still effective in generating backlinks to increase your sites popularity. Some of the top search engine directories to submit to are:

• www.dmoz.org
• www.searchsite.com
• dir.yahoo.com
• www.jayde.com

Paid Directories vs. Free Directores
While many people think Paid Directories are a scam, and most of them are for the price to page rank ratio, not all are a waste of time. Paid directory listings can be of benefit on a prominent directory as they general allow you more prominent positioning in the directory, and faster review time, all of which can generate residual traffic. Some factors to consider on paid directory submission are as follows:

• Age and PageRank of the Directory
• The PageRank of the page to be listed on
• Quantity of outgoing links are on the page to be listed on
• Are the links marked as rel=nofollow or obfuscated?
• Avoid Directories that Require Reciprocal Links

You want to choose reputable directories to submit your site to, this is generally done by verifying the age of the directory and the PageRank of the homepage. Poorly trafficked directories get shutdown daily, so by using the above method when choosing what directory to submit to you are less likely to waste your time submitting in vain.

The PageRank of the page you want your site to show up in the directory is of great importance. The higher the PageRank, the more weight will be passed to your site, and thus help increase your sites position.

Equally as important to the PageRank of the page is how many outgoing links are on the page. PageRank that is passed to the pages being linked to is diluted if there are too many outgoing links. Don’t pay for a directory submission on a site that has more than 20 links on the page you are submitting to.

Lastly, NEVER pay for a directory submission if the links are marked as nofollow. You will not receive any increased positioning in the search engines for a nofollow link, or gain any PageRank. You can check a page to see if the links are nofollow by right-clicking the page and viewing the source. Then search for a outgoing URL that is currently listed on the page. If you see “rel=nofollow” in the anchor tag, then don’t waste your time with the directory. Another thing to watch out for is sites that obfuscate the outgoing URL, rather than showing the true URL. You can check this by hovering over a hyperlink in the directory. If the URL displayed appears something like the example below, then it is obfuscated, and equally as worthless for search engine positioning.

Obfuscated URL Example:

http://www.exampledirectoryxyz.com/link.php?site=www.yoursite.com

When submitting to a free directory it is just as important to consider the factors discussed above, but since you are not paying for the submission the only factor that should really be considered here is whether the page uses obfuscation of the rel=nofollow attribute. The only downside to most free directories is they are generally very low PageRank. Regardless they still help some as long as your anchor text is optimized for the keyword you are targeting.

An additional note about directory listings is don’t waste your time with directories that require a reciprocal link. This will only reduce the rank of your website.

Finding Quality Directories to Generate Backlinks
The following are example search queries you can input into a search engine to find directories related to your niche. By using this method you can generate hundred or thousands of quality backlinks to your site.

• “Add link” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add a link” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add site” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add a site” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add your site” +”your keywords(s)”
• “Add URL” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add a URL” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add an URL” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add Website” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add a website” +”your keyword(s)”
• “Add your website” +”your keywords(s)”

Article Submission
Article submission is an excellent way to generate many quality backlinks to your website. How many backlinks you generate depends on how well written your article is and how original the subject is.

When submitting an article to an article directory ensure that your article has a resource box on the bottom that links back to your website, and used optimized anchor text that uses the keywords/keyphrases that you are targeting. Many webmasters with sites relating to the content of your article, will reproduce these articles on their own websites and keep the resource box intact thus giving you quality backlinks!

Top Article Directoryes (Ordered By PageRank):

• www.ezinearticles.com — PageRank 6
• www.articlecity.com — PageRank 6
• www.articledashboard.com — PageRank 6
• www.buzzle.com — PageRank 5
• www.articlesbase.com — PageRank 4
• www.searchwarp.com — PageRank 4
• www.amazines.com — PageRank 3
• www.goarticles.com — PageRank 3

In addition to having good PageRank these sites also have a fairly decent amount of traffic and gain you residual visitors. If you want your article to be picked up and gain lots of relevant backlinks start submitting your quality articles to these sites.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking can be a very lucrative source for traffic and quality backlinks. The below are sites that can help you generate more traffic and increased search engine ranking:

Social Networks
www.myspace.com, www.facebook.com, www.xanga.com
These websites contain a massive amount of users that share common interests with each other. You can successfully market your website to the right niche of people and generate a huge amount of backlinks by posting bulletins linking back to your website.

Video Sharing
www.youtube.com, www.streamme.tv
These sites contain user uploaded video content that are of interest to visitors. You can generate backlinks and extra traffic to your website by uploading interesting videos with a link to your site in the video.

Photo Sharing
www.flikr.com, www.photobucket.com
These sites allow people to share photos with other people with like interests. Groups exist for people to trade like photos. By including the URL in your photos you can generate more interest in your website and generate related backlinks.

Social News Sites
www.digg.com
These sites accept submissions of news articles and press releases. The more interesting and unique the submission the more users will “digg” your article. If your article lands on the front page for the section you submit to you will most likely gain a temporary traffic explosion, and can generate many quality backlinks.

Forum Signatures
Another great method for generating high quality one-way links to your website is using a forum signature with a link back to your website. Make sure the forum is related to your niche, and that your signature link contains the keywords that you are optimizing for.

Title Tags and Headings

The Title tag and Headings are very important to search engines. These tags account for a huge amount of weight on your page. The 3 most important tags that the search engines look for to determine what your pages content is about is the <TITLE> <H1> and <H2> tags.

The <TITLE> tag
Make sure that your keyword / keyphrase is displayed first in the title. Try to avoid more than 4 words as each word dilutes the value of the keyphrase.

The <H1> tag
The H1 tag is the second most important tag you should have on your page. Make sure that your H1 tag matches your pages title. This will place extra emphasis on the keyword/phrase that you are targeting! Think H1 looks big and ugly? You can change the appearance by using CSS so it does not look so hideous.

The <H2> tag
The H2 tag does not carry as much weight as the H1 tag but is equally as important to on-page optimization. It is recommended that you use a variant of your keyword/phrase in the H2 tag. For instance if your TITLE/H1 says “Blue Widgets California” try using a variation such as “California Widgets” in your H2 tag