Tuesday, January 27, 2009

SEO What you control

By Brent Sweet

Regardless of what is said on the internet there are several different ways to get good search engine rankings. It is also a lot easier that some people would like you to think. It simply amazes me how many sites are ranked that have no clue what they are doing. The ones that are number one, but it is obvious that they aren't really optimizing for that word. The reason I wrote this is to give you some things that you can focus on to get your site ranked well.

The real point here is though there are several factors that can improve your rankings, you have to focus on what you can control. Focusing on things that you do not control is a waste of time. If you have ever heard of six sigma you would be aware of this philosophy.

So what can you control when it comes to SEO?

- The title of your page. This is probably the most influencing factor. Pick 5 phrases you want to rank for. Word them in a manner that you don't repeat words but makes sense. Try to use less than 9 words.

- Your body text. Make sure that in your body text you use each keyword at least once that you want to rank for. I am not one of those it has to be in H1 tags or Bold. Honestly I think those carry so little weight that unless you are at number 2 and want to move to number 1 then you might do it. The fact is these arent the difference between being on page 10 and page 1.

- The actual filenames on your site. Don't put a session id or other things on your URLS, this makes the search engines not be able to find pages that were there before.

- The links to your site. Yes you have control over how people link to you. One way is to create or buy link bait. This is something that people will want to link to. Can be like a top 10 list. Real creative things get more links. I am not creative so I submit articles. This way I have full control over how people link to me and I get a lot of free one way links.

Thats 4 things you have control over. Any time you want to improve your rankings start with these 4 things. This is how you control your search engine rankings

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