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How to rank higher
A lot of people ask how they can get their site to rank higher in search engines. There are hundreds of websites devoted to the business of “Search-Engine Optimization” (SEO), and the process can take as much as six months before results are seen. What most people don’t know, however, is that there is only a little bit of science to SEO. A large part of the task can be approached just like any advertising campaign, and all that’s required is a bit of common sense and some pavement-hitting promotional work to get your site-ranking high.
The first step is easy. Anybody can sit down and submit sites to directories; all that takes is time. Major search-engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN have easy-to-use site-submission forms (links to these are at the bottom of this article). If you only submit to one, the best one to submit to is DMOZ.org. DMOZ is the site that many search-engines treat as a primary resource pool, because it is “human-edited” and therefore presents only quality, vetted search-results. There are also many industry-specific directories out there, and many will let you submit your site to them for free.
Once you’re in some directories – and even if you don’t submit to a directory, you will get picked up eventually if you’re actively promoting your site – the science behind keeping your ranking high comes down to two simple things: day-to-day promotion, and quality site design.
Day-to-day promotion means building up some good “word-of-web” advertising. Search engines rank pages based upon how popular they are: when related sites link to your page on the internet, your page ranking will go up accordingly. Start by getting a local reporter to do a blurb about your new website (hopefully the story will be put in the online edition!). Try to get bloggers talking about your service or product, or simply issue some press releases on newsgroups and email lists. Then, find sites that are related to yours and offer them link exchanges – inform them about your services, and ask them to link to you in exchange for you linking to them. Often they will be happy to help.
Then comes active site maintenance. Regular updates go a long way in determining search-engine rank: search-engines will visit your site more often and take you more seriously the more often you update. Content-wise, nothing beats well-written, informative copy. Search-engines have complicated algorithms to determine what content is relevant and what is not, and they will index your pages accordingly. Your content also helps determine what “keywords” will bring your site up in searches.
And the last thing – or, actually, the very first thing – is clean page design and a well-structured site. Your content should be logically organized and consistently linked-to within your own site. Make sure your designer conforms to web standards as specified by the W3C. There should be invisible “meta tags” placed in the head of each page that specify keywords that relate to the site’s content. There should also be a meta tag describing the site’s function and purpose. These will tell search engines how to best place your site within their hierarchy.
Promotion has always been about keeping your materials up-to-date and disseminating them widely, and the Internet has only changed this process a little. With some simple steps and a bit of work, any website can enjoy a high page-ranking and great search-result relevance.
Submit!
Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
MSN: http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/add.html