Tips on Marketing Your Own Site

Tips on Search Engine Positioning (Part II)

We continue with our series on Search Engines and this month, we focus on Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization, also known as search engine placement and positioning, is the process of improving and enhancing a website's internal elements (such as titles, meta tags, textual content) and external factors (such as link and click popularity) to achieve high search engine rankings.

Search Engines apply proprietary ranking formula in an attempt to deliver the most relevant results to the user. Search engine optimization examines the current ranking formula (algorithms), and determines techniques that will help pages rank better.

Here are the elements of Search Engine Optimization:

1. Optimization of a website's Internal Elements

This includes proper structuring of heading tags, titles, meta tags, and page content.

Heading Tags. A popular technique that search engines use to score relevance of content on a webpage is by looking at the heading tag. Headings are in larger print, and are considered the most important content on your page since they contain the topic of the page, or offer a summary of the content on the page. Headings come in various sizes represented by the HTML tags <H1>, <H2>, <H3> and so on, where <H1> is larger than <H2>. Your most important keywords should be placed in the biggest heading tags, as they will be granted more importance than keywords in the body text.

Title. The title of the webpage is given the most importance by search engines, and can make or break your sites' placement in search engine results. The first words in the title are ranked as the most important words. Keep your title short so as not to dilute your keywords. Use the same keywords in your title as in your first heading and in your top paragraph. Search engines will give higher importance to these words.

Meta Tags. The use of meta tags has been the most popular method of improving sites' ranking in search engines. Many of the main search engines give high importance to meta tags in positioning websites. However, it is also the method that is most open to abuse by webmasters attempting to trick search engines into giving their site a higher ranking. Do not use more than 25 keywords in your meta tags. Also, do not use more than 50 words in your description. Furthermore, do not put commas between keywords in your meta tags.

Page Content. Keep the page content focused on a single theme, and use only a limited number of keywords so you don't dilute the effectiveness of the page. Do not bring in other topics as this will affect your ranking. Keywords are granted importance on a webpage, relative to the number of words that are on the page. If you want your keywords to have more prominence in a search engine, minimize unnecessary words in the content of your webpage.

Repeat your keywords in the title, the heading and at the top of the text on your page. Also, use the plural form of the keyword you want to emphasize as some search engines consider it to be more important than those that use the singular form.

2. Optimization of external elements

Link popularity, click popularity, stickiness and themes are classified as external elements.

Link Popularity. When a search engine spider comes to your site, it will also spider through all the pages of the sites that are linked to your site. The more sites that your site is linked with, the more the search engine spider will come to your site, and the higher your ranking will be in that search engine.

Developing quality links is more important than ever. There are many ways to improve your link popularity. Perhaps the most effective method is a link popularity campaign, but this can be time-consuming and complicated if you don't have a clear plan of action. Elements of a possible link popularity campaign include listing in free-for-all sites, enrollment in link exchange programs and forging link relationships with individual webmasters. Of these three, the most important element is the last.

Click Popularity and Stickiness. Click popularity is a measure of the number of clicks received by each site in a search engine's results page. Stickiness, on the other hand, is a measure of the amount of time a user spends at a site. It is calculated according to the time that elapses between each of the user's clicks on the search engine's results page. DirectHit is a click-tracking system that measures click popularity and stickiness and is used by major search engines like Lycos, HotBot, Infospace, About.com, MSN and 20 other search engines. You can increase your click popularity by having a good title and a good description of your website in your meta tags. Improvement of site stickiness can primarily be accomplished through enhancement of website content.

Themes. A theme is defined as a common topic throughout the site. In an effort to provide their users with more relevant information, search engines developed sophisticated technology that "extracts" site's themes. Making a site with a theme is easy. Search engines look for same keywords in the title, meta tags, text, and links when determining a theme. Some sites, however, have more than one or two themes. Search engines are capable of recognizing multiple themes as long as all the elements point to them. However, don't try to optimize for more than three themes.

We hope that we've been a helpful partner in improving your search engine positioning.

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