Search Engine Optimisation

gmloki

Part of the furniture
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
634
How is best to improve rankings on seach engines ? I got a small site and I want to improve our ranking if people seach by keyword. So some questions

* How effective are Meta Tags
* Are the Guaranteed Rankings(Paid for) Any Good
* Does the Google Ad-Words Programme increase site rankings
* Does your ranking increase the more clicks you get to your site ?
* Banner and Link Exchange. Does this help ?
* Is it best to submit and stick to the big guys(Google, Lycos, MSN) or does submission to the lesser known engines work as well ?

We have our new site going live soon. It's pretty clean and simple. Nothing over complicated. It will be pretty content rich so it should be pretty "Sticky" Has anyone got any other suggestions on improving rankings. Not trying to do it on the cheap but I want to get a greater understanding of it. If paying for results is best then I don't have a problem I just want to make sure it isn't wasted

Thanks
 

Jonty

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,411
Hi Ash

Unfortunately each search engine has it's own unique way of ranking web pages, so there are no hard and fast rules, however the following is generally accepted with regards Google.

Meta tags are effective and are analysed by most search engines. Common meta tags like 'keywords' and 'description' are used by many search engines, and some now support 'revised' and 'created' dates, together with 'robots' commands which instruct search engines how to 'spider' a site.

Guaranteed rankings I'm not very au fait with. Personally, I wouldn't bother paying as you can often achieve a high rank of your own accord, so it's seems like a waste of money in most circumstances, not to mention that some schemes may be purposely blocked by ranking systems if they're deemed unfair. Google's policy is clear: no one can buy PageRank.

As for Google Adwords, as far as I know this is a separate initiative and has no 'bonus' impact on your rank. Don't quote me on that, though.

Rankings aren't associated with the number of clicks, for Google at least, merely the number of links from other sites to your site. However this is to over simplify things, as the referring site (site x, say) is also analysed, and if considered important or prominent will cast more weight to your site's ranking. For example, a link from the BBC's website will improve your ranking more than a link from a random, little-known blogger. Even this is too simplified a picture, but that's essentially how PageRank works. Other search engines have other methods, but quality of sites is usually assessed at some point in the rankings.

Banner and link exchange, as hinted above, will help to some extent but merely having a banner or link on site x, y and z won't guarantee you a good rank. These links will be counted and weighed appropriately, but it's not a guaranteed solution. To find out who's linking to your site when last checked, search for 'link:www.yoursite.com' in Google.

Finally, you can generally submit to however many search engines you like. As most search facilities find sites by following links posted on other pages, chances are your site will get picked up eventually anyway. Submitting your site is merely away of speeding up the process, although even then it may take some time for your site to appear in search results. Once submitted, you needn't resubmit your site to the same search engine again.

As I say, don't take any of this as the gospel truth, much depends on each search engine's own techniques. Personally I wouldn't pay for search engine ranking, just wait for your site to gain prominence and your ranking will change accordingly.

Kind Regards
 

Maljonic

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,297
The best way to get good rankings is to keep making your site bigger, adding pages that are written by you or your site's visitors, pages that don't appear anywhere else. You need original material that isn't copied from anywhere basically. You do need to swap links with other sites, your site gets indexed a lot quicker this way than simply submitting it to search engines, but you should do that too.

Meta tags aren't as important as they used to be, mainly because people have been abusing them by stuffing them with keywords that don't actually appear on their sites, so search engines tend to take them with a pinch or salt, but do look at them nonetheless. Basically you want the words in your title, keywords and description meta tags to actually appear somewhere on the page at least once. In fact what I do for Maljonic's Dreams for instance is write a page first, then copy an interesting line of text from the page into the description meta tag, then use interesting keyword I pick off the page for the keywords meta tag. That way they score as 100% relevant.

The best way to think is to pretend the search engines don't exist, don't try to manipulate results by stuffing you text with keywords; just try and make unique pages, you'll always get better rankings this way.

Don't bother paying to get quicker results, it's a waste of money and it's not going to happen. I don't think there's any harm in submitting your site to as many search engines as you can find, but it might be a waste of your time - it will get found sooner or later if there's plenty of original content and a fair number of links pointing to it.

I know from experience that Google Adwords will not affect your rankings, but it is useful if you want to get more visitors while you are wating for your site to be properly indexed - if you're running a store for instance - though I never used it on one of my own sites, I have worked on a site where the owner is paying for Google Adwords and the Yahoo equivalant and gets a few bookings a day because of it. I think it would depend on the business, how common it is and how many other sityes are bidding for the same keywords.

Text links with a description of your site actually in the links are always better than banners, even banners with alt tags. Don't link to porn, gambling or drug store sites - try to stick to related subjects and clean sites.

It all takes time though, just keep building and don't obssess about popularity and it'll all come together. :)
 

Jonty

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,411
Great post, Maljonic :)

I forgot to mention that, in terms of code, <title> and <h...> headings are given prominence amongst the rest of the page's content. As Maljonic says, however, it's all about weighting.

Kind Regards
 

gmloki

Part of the furniture
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
634
Thanks guys it is very much appreciated the advice. I did try the Google Ad-Word route and to get decent results it was going to cost about £20.00 a week. :eek2:


And I couldn't put the key word, Gaming, as there is an association with gambling. My reference was to online gaming such as counter strike and BF2 not poker and casino etc
 

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