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Keep
the important content near the top of your pages. The actual text on
your website is very important. Search engines (spiders)
read this to determine rankings. Some engines will place
a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text
in your page. Closer to the top is usually better.
But having keywords throughout your page develops a "theme"
and that too is important.
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Don't
stuff the top of your pages with data the engines can't read.
As
with the last example, something higher up in your page
can be more important that something further down.
Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts, etc. toward the
top of your page can result in lower ratings.
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Website
Content should be your #1 priority.
Your
quest for high placement must start with a good website.
It is important to have a lot of text describing what you
do. Use your keywords in the content, but don't repeat
them over and over. Many search engines rate sites based
on 'keyword density'. This is usually a formula that
looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in paragraph
text, words in links to other pages, and even words in the
'ALT' text on your images. They will even look at different
forms of your keywords. For example, if an important
keyword for you is 'FISH', the word 'FISHING' in the body
of your document will raise the confidence in the word 'FISH' on
some engines
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Keep
your site updated. Make
sure that your site is up to date. No one likes to go to
a page that never changes or that is very out of date. Make sure
that the data in your page portrays the message that you
want to send. Check the links on your site every now and
again. Make sure the links are still active. Dead
links are not only an inconvenience for the visitor, but can
also negatively influence your rankings.
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Don't
go image crazy.
We
have all seen pages that are almost all images. Usually
they are the most beautiful sites. After all, your artist
can make beautiful screens that display your content
in the most eye-pleasing way. However, the search engines
don't have eyes. They don't see the beautifully formatted
text in your image. All they see is 'yourimage.jpg', and 'yourimage.jpg'
doesn't go far in terms of content and relevancy.
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Links
to Other Pages.
We
can't emphasize enough the importance of links. Both from
your page to other pages, and from other pages to yours. We recommend
Linkshare as a great resource for name brand advertising links.
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First
consider links on your pages.
When many
search engines see them, they consider your site more 'real'.
It also give the search engine spiders a place to go.
Make your links meaningful. Make sure they relate to what you
do (and keywords that are important to you). You can't have
too many links on your pages.
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Links
from others websites.
Some search
engines place a very heavy rating of importance on how many
other sites in their index have links to your website. Think
of it for a second. If you knew that a company was only
linked to by one website, versus a company that was linked to
by a thousand websites, which one would you consider more
important? If you were a search engine, you would surely
try to link the more important ones first.
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This
is where patience comes in again.
It can take some time to get a ton of links to your
website. We techsupport quite a bit here, the fact that we submit to
so many sites will techsupport you get a great head start in this area!
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Consider
Banner Ads.
These
are a very popular method of promoting your Web site. They
are the little rectangular graphics that you see near the top
or bottom of some popular Web pages. If you click on
them, they transport you to another Web site. You can
make your own banners using one of the many "banner creating"
websites. Most offer free banner making.
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