Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Three Golden Rules to get top Ranking in Google

The world of search engine optimization may in some ways seem hit or miss but while there are many ways in which to carry out search engine optimization there are certain general rules that will apply to any website. These golden rules are applicable across the board and should form the core of any search engine optimization campaign. By remembering these three factors you should be able to see your rankings increase. While this is no way a complete guide to SEO, it gives a good starting point to optimizing your website.

The first rule or commandment in search engine optimization industry is content, content, content. The general application that 'content is king' is a truism if you want to see increased rankings. The important fact to remember that any content on your website should ultimately be relevant and also high quality; a general rule of thumb is to create around four hundred words per page to ensure the search engines deem your pages worth reading. Spiders love lengthy strips of content and articles that increase the relevancy of your site. This is increasingly the case in the optimization industry; the way in which search engine algorithms seem to be going is towards semantic methods of search, hence content is of prime importance.

The content on your website should also be up to date, by constantly adding to your website you give search engines cause to constantly come in and check your content, this can increase your rankings efficiently. It shows the search engine spiders that your website is an ongoing work, a quality site that is striving to be a valuable resource. Try and include keywords in your content but do not make this the ultimate goal, stuffing a page with keywords will in effect harm rankings and look spammy in the eyes of the search engines. Keyword density is hard to judge as the goalposts are almost constantly changed by the search engine developers, an efficient optimization team should be able to keep abreast of developments and respond effectively.

Secondly, link popularity should be a major concern when planning an optimization strategy. A lot of search engines see links as a determining factor when listing and ranking websites. This can be considered especially true with Google which uses the number of links a particular site has to give it a page rank. This page rank is also dependent upon the quality of these links, if your links are relevant and of a high quality, rankings will undoubtedly follow. The assumption on the part of the search engine algorithms is that if a high quality site is linking to yours, your site will also be of a similar quality. As a conjunct to this, it is important that your website be easily navigable, by including a site map and ensuring everything is accessible with around three clicks you will be more appealing to search engine spiders.

Finally there is the Meta information that your site contains. These predominantly come in three parts, that of title, description and keywords. The title bears the most importance and should include phrases and words that may attract people to your website. Subsequently the description, as the first visible information that human users will see should also be distinctive and well written to attract custom. The keywords Meta tag has less importance but should still be included.

While these three rules are in no way an all encompassing approach to search engine optimization they are a good point to begin from. By getting these fundamentals right it is possible to create a site that has the potential to become a page topper. While nothing can guarantee a top position, these three general rules should form an essential part of your optimization campaign.

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