Ranking in Search Engines
Raking in the Ranking
How to score a higher SERP
With so many websites on the internet, you'll need all some knowledge gain a high search engine ranking for your site. That is what SEO is all about. It is the process of on-page optimization, backlinks, and much more. Some of these topics are covered here. Read on, reader.
Keyword density
How to use keywords wisely
Although they are not the answer-all to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, the effective use of keywords in your pages will greatly enhance your SERPs (Search Engine Results Position).
There are a few techniques in keyword usage in your content that should be used. You probably know of the meta keyword tag, as well as the title tag - and their keyword use - but as far as content-wise, there are a few helpful hints you'd also benefit from.
Here are a few catagories I will share tips on:
- First 25 words
- Hx (heading tags)
- Anchor Text
- Bold and Underlined
- Last Paragraph
- Keyword Weight
- Keyword Density
First 25 words
Use your keyword(s) within the first 25 words of content. SE's will see the keyword(s) placed high up in the content as a "more important" than the rest of the content.
If your (X)HTML markup, beginning from the body tag, is a paragraph tag with content text, then place the keyword(s) first, or nearly first. Idealy, they would be included within a Hx tag, which leads to the next tip.
Hx (heading tags)
Use your keyword(s) within heading tags. Again, SE's will see them as "more important", as they are heading - semantically main topics - for the content that follows them. Your first div (you are using divs and CSS to layout your pages, right :icon_cool - not tables!), containing content, should include a H1 tag. The H1 tag will be the main topic for the page. Shouldn't your keyword(s) be the mail topic of your page?
You can include nested heading tags, from H1 to H2, H3, etc., to semantically layout your content. Use your keyword(s) in them!
Anchor Text
In your site's navigation, you will usually have links to internal pages, and also a "home" link. Use your keywords for the links, instead of "back" or "home".
So, instead of:
- home
you'd have:
- Your Keywords
here. Anchors (links) show SE's that their text is a discription of sorts for the pages they link to. That raises their importance from standard text.
Bold and Underlined
Once again, we look to semantics for this tip. Marking up a word bold and/or underlined makes it stand out. Why would you want to have a word, or words, stand out? Because you want to emphasize them! So, by doing so, you raise their importance against standard content text
Last Paragraph
Use your keyword(s) within the last 25 words of content. SE's will see the keyword(s) placed at the end of your content as a "final, important" conclusion to the content. Take my example (for example). I place my keywords within my footer. I not only place the keywords there as text, but I also include it as anchor text for a link back to the same page.
Here are great Search Engine Optimization tips and other resources:
- what is SEO Articles - and how to achieve it!
- what is anchor text - and how important it really is!
- backlinks - and the techniques to implement them!
- are you using keyword-targeting to target your keywords?
- is your site ranking in the top ten? what you can do about it!