Five and a Half Ways to Amp Up Your Search Engine
Optimization
Dave Carlson, Green Chair Marketing Group


Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet
come from people who have gotten there from a search engine.
Statistically, people look first at the top of the first
page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and
then they go to the sponsored listings.

There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the
search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the
right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the
search engines. The art is to make the site look and read
normal in spite of filling it with key words.

Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and
more visitors:

1. Pick the right Key Words and Phrases

These are the words and phrases that people will put into
search engines to try to find your product, business or
organization. Having good key words and phrases is
foundational to have good optimization. This takes research
using such tools at Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword
Suggestion Tool. They give you a good idea of what people
are searching for and what you should focus on.

2. Use Good Header Tags

Header tags are hidden in the code within your Web page. The
most important one is the "title" tag, which isn’t
considered a META tag. It tells what’s within your page and
it’s important to have your keyphrases in it. It is also
good to have keyphrases in your "description" META tag,
though it doesn’t rank nearly as high as the "title" tag.

3. Use Keyphrases in Your Visible Page Title

Provide a unique title to each page on your site that is
chock full of key words and phrases. Search engines like
this because it means that there is a higher probability
that your site is a good match for what people are looking
for. This is should be placed within the H1 tag (top
heading) of your page and is visible to the visitor. It also
pays to have your keyphrases in subtitles on the page.

4. Provide Plenty of Content on Your Site

Shoot to have at least 450 characters on your page.
Concentrate on putting key words and phrases in the first
paragraph and last paragraphs.

5. Secure a Lot of Related Incoming Links

The more sites linked to your site, the higher you will be
ranked by the search engines. These links can be from
strategic partners, vendors, directories or other types of
sites with whom you exchange links.

If you are a web site developer, put in your contract that
you are going to put a developer’s link at the bottom of the
site, such as, "Web site design by Green Chair Marketing
Group," with an active link to your site. This will help
your site grow in its link popularity.

5.5 Keep Optimizing Your Site

The more content on your site, the better. I suggest adding
a couple pages a month, whether it’s case studies, more
product information, testimonials, articles, press releases,
etc. If you add just five new pages a month, you will have
60 new pages by the end of the year, and over 100 pages by
the end of the second year.

You are bound to catch some people you would have missed
because there is more content to choose from. And your site
will be more highly ranked by Google, because they highly
weigh sites that have more content.

While you’re at it, continue to get relevant links coming
into your site. Google loves incoming links. And you might
have people click through to your site from these other
places.

If you don’t have time to work on the optimization or would
feel more comfortable having someone else do it, consider
strongly hiring a professional to do your search engine
optimization. That way you can focus your energies on sales
or creating more and better product.

One caveat, I would stay away from companies that initiate
contact with you through emails or phone calls. They often
use techniques that can get your severely penalized by the
search engines. Ask people you know who have been successful
in their search engine positioning who they use.


--Dave Carlson owns Green Chair Marketing Group, an Internet marketing firm specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click, and web design/redesign. 720-427-5660 Visit his site at http//:www.GreenChair.net