3 Easy Steps to Improve the Search Engine Ranking of Your Website

Copyright 2006 Peter Dobler

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a buzzword that is aroundfor a long time. There are as many misconceptions about SEO asthere are webmasters. Some webmasters are afraid of SEO,thinking it is too complex and not worth the effort. Othersbelieve that SEO will get your website banned from the searchengines and there are the few that actively practice SEO.

Fact #1: SEO can be complex if you want to compete with the bigguys. SEO is all about outperforming your competitors. Thatmeans the less competitors the better your success rate will be.

Fact #2: SEO can ban your website from the search engines if youbreak the rules. I will not tell you the dark tricks of SEO thatwill ultimately get you on the blacklist of the search engines.This way you will not be able to break any rules and keeps youout of trouble.

Fact #3: SEO can be simple and effective. I will show you a feweasy steps to increase the ranking of your website. You will beamazed about its simplicity.

Ok, here we go.

1. Choose your niche keyword phrase

SEO is all about being a little bit better than your competitionon a single keyword phrase. You need to focus your website on asingle keyword phrase. 2 or 3 words in a keyword phrase workbest. Make sure that people are actually searching these phrasesas well. Wordtracker and Overture are just two methods out ofmany to check for usability. If you optimize your website forthe wrong keyword phrases you're wasting your time.

2. Set your html tags right

Your keyword phrase has to be in the -title tag. You can ignorethe keyword and description meta tags for now. They are not asimportant anymore as they were a few years ago. Make sure tohave an h1 tag with the keyword phrase. Avoid having an h2 tagwith the keyword phrase. Take control over the look and feel viacascading style sheets (CSS). This way it is much easier tocontrol your website's appearance and keeps the html codeclutter free.

Sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout the webpage. Place yourkeyword phrase

2-3 times closer to the top, once within thefirst 25 characters and once in the last 25 characters of yourtext. Change the style variation of the keyword phrase. Makesure you have at least one underlined, one bold and one italicvariation of the keyword phrase.

3. Check for errors

Spell checking is a must. Search engines don't honor spellerrors on your webpage very well. Check for broken links aswell. Nothing hurts your ranking more than broken hyperlinks.



Well, here you have it. The 5 minute drill to improve yourwebsite's search engine rankings. Ok, I admit it, it's not thiseasy. On-Page SEO is only half the battle, maybe only one thirdof the battle. To really dominate the search engines you need topractice a well planned and executed linking strategy. This isalso called Off-Page SEO. Off-Page SEO is your most importanttask as a webmaster.

The details of a successful Off-Page SEO strategy are too muchfor the content of this article. But here's a little example onhow effective Off-Page SEO is: Logon to Google and type in thekeyword 'click here'. To your surprise you will see that Adobeholds the #1 position for this keyword. Now analyze the Adobepage for a minute. There is no 'click here' anywhere on the pageor within the html code. How in the world can they be #1 for'click here'? Millions of other web pages have a link to Adobewith the title 'click here' to download the Acrobat Reader.That's why.

Nothing makes me happier than if you can improve the searchengine ranking of your website by just a few positions byfollowing my simple advice. 90% of all webmasters don't botherand that's the window of opportunity for you. Of course a shortarticle cannot explain the total picture of SEO. However it ismeant to give you some ideas on how to approach SEO. Have funwhile practicing SEO with your website.

About the author:

Peter Dobler is an active real estate investor and successfulinternet business owner. Use the free tools at:http://www.online-business-idea.com to improve your website'ssearch engine ranking.

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