10 Steps to get top Search Engine Ranking

While there are many methods for building a business oriented website. The most cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be position in the search engine . The large advantage search engine positioning has over other methods of producing revenue online is that once high rankings are attained and provided that the tactics used were ethical. That continued efforts are made to keep them, they can essentially provide targeted traffic indefinitely. Your site will reach up and your site may sometimes fall in the rankings then a complete optimization of your site will increase the ranking in the major search engines.

If we follow essential rules of the search engine optimization that there will insure that over time your website holds solid and profitable and traffic oriented positions on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Here are the 10 steps to higher search engine positioning:

Step 1 - Choosing Good Keywords
You first must choose your good keywords for your site. This is perhaps the most important step of the process as incorrectly targeting keyword phrases can result in traffic. You can find the search count of the month and according to monthly search count, you can target the most search able keyword for your site. There are three tools that I use virtually every day to help pick the most appropriate keywords:

1. Google keyword selector tool
   
2. WordTracker
3. Good Keywords

Step 2 - Content
Creating some of the new content before starting the optimization process can be doubly helpful in that it can reveal potential additions to your website.

Step 3 - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding endeavor. To adequately structure your website you must "think like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound.

Step 4 - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and your site structure established you must now move on to the most obvious step, the optimization of your content.

As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debata ble. Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% (quite a gap isn't it).

Some do it first, I do it last, regardless of when you do it you must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you have the opportunity to use the tag to specify the heading of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an indicator to the search engine of where your actual content starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading.


Step 5 - Internal Linking
To insure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page for the words used to link to it. When a search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any weight to the page it hits. So you can use alternate text for the images. Google spider reads the alt text of the images. If you use text that does not contain the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image.

There are two main ways to insure that your site gets well spidered and that the relevancy is added. The first is to place text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to it from your homepage.

Step 6 - Web Usability
So now you have your site, it's optimized and you have your navigation in place. The next step is to put it past someone who has never seen your site.Most importantly, find out how the content reads to them. You've spent hours working through the content at this point and are probably not the least biased on its readers. Find out how it reads to someone who has no invested interest in the site and correct any issues they may bring up.

Step 7 - Search Engine Submissions
I submit my site to directories (both general and topic-specific) and to a few topical search engines but for the most part I've found submitting to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other major engines has proven to be a bit of a waste of time. The major search engines are spidering search engines, which means they will follow links to wherever they go. Simply having sites that are spidered by the major search engines linking to you will get your site found.

Step 8 - Link Exchange
All of the major search engines give credit to sites that have quality links pointing to them. How many is enough depends on your industry and targeted phrases. Running a search on Google the reads "link:www.yourdomain.com" will reveal approximately how many back links a domain has.
The first place to seek links is with general and topic-specific directories. After that you may want to move into reciprocal link building.

Reciprocal link building is the exchange of links between two websites. Some webmasters will simply link to any website that links back to them. I highly recommend being more particular than that.

Find websites that you believe your site visitors would genuinely be interested in and you've probably found a good link partner. You want to find links from sites that are related to yours.
There are obviously many more methods to building links than directories and reciprocal link building.

Step 9 - Site Monitoring
Whether you use WebPosition Gold or just run searches manually by hand you will have to monitor the major search engines for your targeted phrases. Also, you will need to review your stats to see where your traffic is coming from and what search terms are being used to find you.

Step 10 - Reward Yourself
So you've done it. It's taken many many hours of work but you're rankings are doing well. What you've created is a solid position that will stand the tests of time provided that you continually revisit the above noted steps and insure that your website is always one step ahead of your competition .
If you have any questions about keyword selection or your website in general please feel free to comment or compliments us for additional information.