11 Rapid Ways to Get a Top Ranking

by MindValley eCommerce Labs

11 Rapid Ways to Get a Top Ranking in Any Search Engine

Search engines don’t read information like humans do. They follow specific rules. Here’s what you need to do to speak their language.

1) Optimize Your URLs

If you have not yet picked a domain name for your website, don’t try to go for “mykeyword.com.” Instead, try to pick a name that you want to build your company and/or a brand around.

If you are into online marketing, do you really want to have a site that is called “Online-Marketing-Tips.com” or “Online-Marketing-Guru.com?” How memorable is that? Visitors will never remember who you are.

2) Optimize Your Page Title, h1 and h2 Headers

Create a short relevant title (60 characters max). Have the keywords appear first. Adding stuff such as “home page” in the title tag will only decrease your Google ranking.

The headline at the top of your page should use the H1 HTML header. The sub-headline should follow the H2 header. Include your SEO keywords in the headline and sub-headline.

3) Optimize your description and keyword

Add the SEO keywords to the meta tag description. The description should be 200 characters max.

Example: meta name=”description” content=”Enter description here and include keyword phrase”

Add the SEO keywords to the meta tag keywords. Include 5 keyword phrases max.

Example: meta name=”keywords” content=”Enter up to 5 keyword phrases, use a comma to separate keyword phrases”

Note: Yes we realize that some SEO experts say that these meta tags are no longer relevant. But since adding them is so easy to do, we feel it’s better to be safe than sorry.

4) Optimize your keyword density

Creating a keyword rich content page is a MUST. Be creative, write good content and make frequent use of the keywords you are optimizing for. However, make sure that your keyword density never exceeds 5% for pages with long copy and 10% for pages with little copy. If they do, you might get penalized by the search engines and your ranking will go down.

To find out what the keyword density is on your page use this free Keyword Density Tool:
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

5) Spice up your SEO keywords and move them up

Be sure to have your keywords appear at least once in bold, italics, and underlined in the copy. Again, do this once, but don’t over do it!

Text towards the top of the page, such as in the first paragraph, counts for more than text further down the page. So, make sure that your keyword phrase is included towards the top of your page.

6) Optimize your text links

The anchor text in your text links is one of the MOST important aspects of SEO and will majorly affect your search engine ranking. It should always include the keywords that you are optimizing for. Here is an example for the keyword phrase “beginner guitar lessons.”

This is bad:

Click here - points to http://www.iplaymusic.com/lessons.html
The first mistake is that the URL is not optimized and the second mistake is that the anchor text says “Click here.”

Here is a better way:

Beginner Guitar Lessons - points to http://www.iplaymusic.com/lessons.html
Good! The anchor text is now optimized. All links pointing to this page should have the keyword in the anchor text.

Here is the best way:

Beginner Guitar Lessons- points to http://www.iplaymusic.com/beginner-guitar-lessons.html
Perfect! You now have both your URL and the anchor text optimized.

7) Use keyword stemming

Make sure to include all the variations of the keyword that you are optimizing for. Here is an example of keyword stemming. The keyword “optimization” has variations such as “optimal,” “optimize,” and “optimum.” If you include all of the keyword stems (similar words) you can help you get a top search engine position.

Here is a free tool to identify all of the similar words and stems for a given keyword:

http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/index.php?word=optimization

8) Optimize image descriptions

Every image can include a description called the “alt text.” Make sure that the alt text describes the image and includes the relevant keywords where appropriate.

9) Optimize your site structure

Every “important” page on your site should link to every other “important” page on your site.

Example of good linking structure:

10) Only go two levels deep

Make sure that your site structure is such that pages are only two levels deep (two clicks away from the home page). This is very important because even if your landing page is deemed to be relevant, the deeper pages are buried in your site the less relevant they are deemed by search engines and the harder it is to achieve a top ranking.

Here is an example of an good site structure that is two levels deep.

www.homepage.com

1 page deep: www.homepage.com/products

2 pages deep: www.homepage.com/products/product1

2 pages deep: www.homepage.com/products/product2

1 page deep: www.homepage.com/services

2 pages deep: www.homepage.com/services/service1

It all has to do with PageRank and the reputation of a site. You want to get backward links that point to your main page to build your PageRank. However, even if your main page has a high PageRank of say 6 then the pages inside your site don’t all have a PageRank of 6. PageRank is passed along.

11) Add good outbound links

From your key content pages, include links to the best and most relevant content sites. Linking to related authority sites shows that you are trying to help users find the best content and will help you with SEO.