Content is King

The most important part of any website from all aspects including for successful search engine ranking is content

If you concentrate on just one thing then make it content, there is a phrase used very often in the world of search engine optimization SEO and that is content is king and this saying is very true

So if your website is targeting key phrase border collies then make sure that your website contains the phrase border collies throughout the text on your site

U.S. Search Engine Rankings, September 2007

Of the five major or "core" search engines, Google held a substantial lead over its rivals in September 2007, according to comScore research.
Of the 9.4 billon searches performed at the five major engines, Google maintained a 57 percent share over competing search engines Yahoo (23.7 percent); Microsoft (10.3 percent); Ask (4.7 percent); and Time Warner including AOL (4.5 percent).

Video's can improve your Search Engine Rankings

Just as with the previous post regarding images can help your search engine rankings or more importantly they can improve the number of visitors to your site so can Video

Both Google and Yahoo have a video search solution a;though in my experience Google is much better and do list relevant videos to the search term used where as Yahoo doesn't always work correctly

All you need to do is to have a small video clip , it doesn't have to be hosted on your actual domain but make sure that the video is accurately named and has your website address embedded into the full video and in the credits at the end , most decent video editors will allow you to add this

That way anyone that downloads the video will see your web address and if the content is relevant they can type your website into there browser

This sort of work is more related to successful marketing but it can defiantly increase visitors to your site , its then just a matter of converting them

Images can help bring more Visitors than Search Engine Hits

OK I hear you thinking what an earth is he on about images bringing more visitors than people coming from keyword searches??? well its very simple but often overlooked

Both Google and Yahoo have a service where you can search for images rather than keyword web searches , many people overlook this as an important opportunity to get there images listed in the image search

You do not have to do anything special to get you images listed just follow my previous posts and make sure you name your images and use the ALT tags with relevant keywords and phrases, again we will use the border collie web site as an example

On a page we have a picture of a border collie ,

The image is called black_white_border_collie.jpg
the Alt tag uses the description black and white border collie

When someone searches the web for black and white border collie your web site might not come up on the first few pages BUT if you search the images for black and white border collie your web site will more than likely come up much earlier

Ok so your pictures are ranked high in google so what? well if you use the image search you will know that as well as looking at the images you have the option to go directly to the actual page that the image is hosted on "YOUR SITE"

You will find some advanced searchers and just curious people will follow on to check out your site if the image they find in google is of interest to them

Its very simple and often overlooked

Image Renaming a Simple rule

Make sure that when you rename the images you dont leave a space in between the words otherwise renaming a image on your pc like this "border collie called ben" will look like this when its displayed on the internet border%collie%called%ben.jpg

This is because the spaces cannot be understood by the browser and so it inserts the % sign obviuosly this is counter productive for helping to increase your search engine ranking and so there are two better ways to rename images to help with this

Either rename with a hypen inbetween each word or use and underscore between each word examples of both are listed below

border-collie-called-ben or border_collie_called_ben

I prefer to use the last option as it can display better isf the image is viewed thorugh a browser independantly of a web page but either will over come the problem discussed above

How Image ALT Tags can improve your SE Rankings

One areathat can have substantial results in improving your rankings within the search engines is the ALT tags on images included in the pages of your web site you will be amazed at the amount of people that forget to use the image ALT tags

Again as per my last post use your relevant keywords in the ALT tags , not only are the ALT tags used by the search engines they are used by surfers that have poor eye sight , by running the mouse pointer over an image on a web page you will see a description of the image thiss what the ALT Tag does

Using the border collie web site theme again if you have a pictures of a border collie called Ben on your site make sure that you use the word "border collie" in the ALT tag , don't go mad using exactly the same keywords over and over for all images on your site , try to mix them up a little but keep them relevant to you website content

The image ALT tags can be very effective in increasing your rankings in the search engines

Using Image File Names to improve your SE Rankings

One area that most people often overlook is images , always name your images with relevant keyword names

For instance if you have a website dedicated to the border collie dog breed then make sure that you name your pictures of any collies on your site with keywords in them

Imagine you have a picture of a lovely black and white border collie called Ben on the page , make sure sure rename the picture something like "border collie called Ben" or "black and white border collie" etc

Don't simply use the name given to the picture by your digital camera as they tend to name them with generic file names for each manufacturer such as Fuji cameras which use the file name DSCF.jpg

Any search engine trawling your web site will come across your images and if you have done your homework correctly by using relevant keyword content etc then it will see you image with the word border collie in the file name and it will find you page more relevant than if it found all you pictures called DSCF001.jpg etc as such file names have no meaning or relevance

Improve your Google Rankings

Keywords in the Title

Yes its is more keyword work that will help you improve your rankings in Google , as in my last post it really does pay to research you keywords very thoroughly

Always have 1 of your keyword in the titles , 2 keywords is even better but dont stuff your title full of keywords 3 is the absolute maximum and make sure that they are relevant to the content of you page , if you simply stuff your title full of keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page you will be seen as spamming the search engines and your rankings will fall

The golden rule is make sure your content is relevant

Content is King

Research your SEO

As hopefully the little that you have already read on my blog regarding getting your web sites high up on the rankings that the key to success is doing the research, making sure you fully understand the subject matter

This is where the vast majority of amateur web masters fall down it is not simply a matter of building a site with some text and a few photos; if you want your site to be successful you need to do a whole lot more

Knowing your subject and all the important keywords and phrases is very important more than just for the Meta tags which are no longer as important as many years ago

More Meta Keywords Tips

Meta Keywords

Make sure that you also have a list of good meta keywords for the content tag again use the same rules make sure the words you use are relevant to the actual page i.e. they are mentioned on the text and if possible use ones also used in the description and in the H1 and title tags

Dont under any circumstances spam these keywords but listing them more than once this can in fact damage you search engine listing, use the plurals for the words as well as the singular ones

Keep it simple and dont try to cheat