Necessary Elements for Getting High Keyword Rankings
Search engines use a process to categorize and grade keywords in order to bring you the Web pages you’re looking for. The more relevant your keywords are to the user’s query, the higher ranking your page has in a search engine’s results. Keeping the keywords clear, precise, and simple helps the search engines do their job a whole lot faster.If you’re selling something like customized classic cars, you should probably make sure your text includes keywords like classic cars, customized cars, customized classic Mustangs, and so forth, as well as clarifying words like antique, vintage, and restored.
The advantage of an SEO-compliant site
Having an SEO-compliant Web site entails tailoring your Web site to have the highest SERP ranking for a keyword search. This includes optimizing your metadata and Title tag so they are chock full (but not too full) of relevant keywords for your industry. Also, make sure that your Web page contains searchable text as opposed to lots of pretty Flash animations and images (search engines have limited ability to understand non-text content), that all of your images contain an Alt attribute (an alternative description of an image) with text that describes the content of the image, and that you have keywords embedded in your hyperlinks. You also need to be sure that all of your internal content as well as your links are siloed. You want to be sure to optimize every single one of these elements. Use this checklist to get yourself organized:
✦ Title tag
✦ Meta description tag
✦ Meta keywords tag
✦ Heading tag(s)
✦ Textual content
✦ Alt attributes on all images
✦ Strong/bold tags
✦ Fully-qualified links
✦ Site map
✦ Text navigation
✦ JavaScript/CSS externalized
✦ Robots text (.txt) file
✦ Web analytics
✦ Keyword research (technically a process — See Book II)
✦ Link development
✦ Image names
✦ Privacy statement
✦ Contact information
✦ Dedicated IP address
Defining a clear subject theme
Another way of getting a high keyword ranking is having a clear subject theme. If you’re selling kits to customize classic cars, keeping your Web site streamlined and keeping all topics on the Web site relating exactly to classic car customization not only makes it easier for users to navigate your site and research or purchase what they need, but it also increases your chances of having a high page rank when those search engine spiders come by. The more similarly themed keywords you have on your pages, the better. It’s the nature of a search engine to break up a site into subjects that add up to an overall theme for easy categorization, and the more obvious your site theme is, the higher your results will be. It’s kind of like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and deciding you want to get a salad. You, the search engine, immediately go to the salad corner of the buffet because it’s been clearly labeled, and from there, you can do your breakdowns. You want romaine lettuce, croutons, parmesan cheese, and Caesar dressing, so you go to where they keep the lettuce, the trimmings, and the dressings in the salad bar section. It’s easy to find what you want if everything is grouped accordingly. But if the restaurant stuck the dressing over with the mashed potatoes, you’ll have trouble finding it because salad dressing and mashed potatoes don’t normally go together. Similarly, when you keep your Web site content organized with everything in its proper place, the search engine views your content with clarity, understanding what you’re about — which in turn increases your page ranking. Siloing is a way of structuring your site and links in order to present a clear subject theme to the search engines.
Focusing on consistency
Methodical consistent implementation is the principle that, when you update your Web site, you should do it the same way every time. Your site should have a consistent look and feel over time without massive reorganizations at every update. In order for a search engine to maintain efficiency, you need to keep related content all placed in the same area. You also need to keep all of your updating processes consistent. That way, if something goes wrong during your next update, you can pinpoint what went wrong where without too much hassle since you update things the same way every time. It is confusing to customers to have things constantly changing around. Search engines and visitors to your Web site face the same challenge as a restaurant patron. Getting back to salad bar analogy, the restaurant owner shouldn’t scatter the salad dressings according to the whims of his salad bar designer, and randomly change things every time he gets in a new dressing or someone discontinues one of the old dressings.
Building for the long term
You need to consider your persistence for the long term. How long will your Web site be sticking around? Ideally, like with any business, you want to build it to last without letting it fall behind and look dated.Relevancy to the current market is a big part of this, and if you are behind the times, you are probably behind your competitors. The technology that you use to build your Web site is inevitably going to change as the Internet advances, but your approach to relevancy should remain the same, incorporating new technologies as they arise. This is also a process you should develop over time. In the early days of the Web, frames were used to build sites, but that looks very outdated now. A few years ago, splash pages (introductory pages, mostly built in Flash, that provided no content or value to the user) were very popular. Today, they are discouraged. The Internet is an ever-changing entity, and if you’re not persistent about keeping up with the times, you might fall by the wayside.
The advantage of an SEO-compliant site
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| High Keyword Rankings |
Having an SEO-compliant Web site entails tailoring your Web site to have the highest SERP ranking for a keyword search. This includes optimizing your metadata and Title tag so they are chock full (but not too full) of relevant keywords for your industry. Also, make sure that your Web page contains searchable text as opposed to lots of pretty Flash animations and images (search engines have limited ability to understand non-text content), that all of your images contain an Alt attribute (an alternative description of an image) with text that describes the content of the image, and that you have keywords embedded in your hyperlinks. You also need to be sure that all of your internal content as well as your links are siloed. You want to be sure to optimize every single one of these elements. Use this checklist to get yourself organized:
✦ Title tag
✦ Meta description tag
✦ Meta keywords tag
✦ Heading tag(s)
✦ Textual content
✦ Alt attributes on all images
✦ Strong/bold tags
✦ Fully-qualified links
✦ Site map
✦ Text navigation
✦ JavaScript/CSS externalized
✦ Robots text (.txt) file
✦ Web analytics
✦ Keyword research (technically a process — See Book II)
✦ Link development
✦ Image names
✦ Privacy statement
✦ Contact information
✦ Dedicated IP address
Defining a clear subject theme
Another way of getting a high keyword ranking is having a clear subject theme. If you’re selling kits to customize classic cars, keeping your Web site streamlined and keeping all topics on the Web site relating exactly to classic car customization not only makes it easier for users to navigate your site and research or purchase what they need, but it also increases your chances of having a high page rank when those search engine spiders come by. The more similarly themed keywords you have on your pages, the better. It’s the nature of a search engine to break up a site into subjects that add up to an overall theme for easy categorization, and the more obvious your site theme is, the higher your results will be. It’s kind of like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and deciding you want to get a salad. You, the search engine, immediately go to the salad corner of the buffet because it’s been clearly labeled, and from there, you can do your breakdowns. You want romaine lettuce, croutons, parmesan cheese, and Caesar dressing, so you go to where they keep the lettuce, the trimmings, and the dressings in the salad bar section. It’s easy to find what you want if everything is grouped accordingly. But if the restaurant stuck the dressing over with the mashed potatoes, you’ll have trouble finding it because salad dressing and mashed potatoes don’t normally go together. Similarly, when you keep your Web site content organized with everything in its proper place, the search engine views your content with clarity, understanding what you’re about — which in turn increases your page ranking. Siloing is a way of structuring your site and links in order to present a clear subject theme to the search engines.
Focusing on consistency
Methodical consistent implementation is the principle that, when you update your Web site, you should do it the same way every time. Your site should have a consistent look and feel over time without massive reorganizations at every update. In order for a search engine to maintain efficiency, you need to keep related content all placed in the same area. You also need to keep all of your updating processes consistent. That way, if something goes wrong during your next update, you can pinpoint what went wrong where without too much hassle since you update things the same way every time. It is confusing to customers to have things constantly changing around. Search engines and visitors to your Web site face the same challenge as a restaurant patron. Getting back to salad bar analogy, the restaurant owner shouldn’t scatter the salad dressings according to the whims of his salad bar designer, and randomly change things every time he gets in a new dressing or someone discontinues one of the old dressings.
Building for the long term
You need to consider your persistence for the long term. How long will your Web site be sticking around? Ideally, like with any business, you want to build it to last without letting it fall behind and look dated.Relevancy to the current market is a big part of this, and if you are behind the times, you are probably behind your competitors. The technology that you use to build your Web site is inevitably going to change as the Internet advances, but your approach to relevancy should remain the same, incorporating new technologies as they arise. This is also a process you should develop over time. In the early days of the Web, frames were used to build sites, but that looks very outdated now. A few years ago, splash pages (introductory pages, mostly built in Flash, that provided no content or value to the user) were very popular. Today, they are discouraged. The Internet is an ever-changing entity, and if you’re not persistent about keeping up with the times, you might fall by the wayside.
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