Monday, July 27, 2009

Strategies for Optimizing Your Website and Achieving Number One Rankings

. Monday, July 27, 2009
By Michael Fleischner

Be careful when you hear that search engine optimization is totally free. The truth is that organic results themselves don't cost a whole lot but the effort required to achieve those results are expensive. Whether you are paying someone to optimize your website or build inbound links, achieving top rankings for your website require time and money.

Before undergoing any changes to a website, you must determine what keywords people are using to search for your programs. You want keyword terms that are frequently used but have little or no competition from other websites. This improves the chances of increasing search rankings significantly. Marketing professionals can research possible keywords by talking to current students and using free online tools such as Google's Adwords External Tool which provides estimates of search volume and advertising competitiveness.

Once you've done the initial keyword research, its time to start investigating your competition for that given keyword. Do a search for the keyword or keyword phrase you've chosen and evaluate the websites that appear in the first three positions. You'll want to evaluate on page factors as well as off page factors like the number of inbound links to their website and directory listing. This research gives you a good understanding of your competition.

Another great way to learn about your competition is with the help of Alexa. Alexa is a website about other websites. Essentially, you can find out a lot about those websites you're trying to outrank by collecting data related to web site age and the number of site's linking in. I only compete with websites that have a low number of competing pages and in bound links. As a result of doing my research and finding the keywords that match this criteria, I almost always achieve number one rankings.

At the point when you've decided which keyword phrase gives you the best chance for success, it's time to start focusing on making your site easy to read and easily navigated by search engine spiders. Consider designing you site with particular attention to navigation, meta tags, headings, keyword density and other on page factors. Once you site is well designed, its time to focus on building links from high authority websites. This signals search engines that your site has important content that delivers value to browsers and therefore improves rankings.

The most heavily weighted factor for Google is the PR of those sites linking to your website. The best links are those from highly ranked pages, particularly in relation to your chosen. A hundred links from strong web pages are worth more than 1,000 weak ones. So concentrate you link building efforts on sites that are in your niche and have a high Google PR. Links should also use your keyword phrases as the link text instead of your URL.

Succeeding with search engine rankings is easy if you take the time to optimize your website and focus on building in bound links. The result is a site more valued by search engines, improving rankings for keywords and keyword phrases. Stay the course and build links over time. This ensures that you outrank your competition over the long term.

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Seo Optimization Now

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