Website Ranking on Search Engines: February 2008

Thursday, February 28, 2008

How to improve your Alexa rank

Alexa rank provides information about the traffic level of your website. To view Alexa rank you must first install the Alexa toolbar:

Alexa toolbar for FireFox

Alexa toolbar for Internet Explorer

Once this is done, you can see the Alexa rank of your site. The smaller the number, the more traffic you have. Of course this indicator is biased since it only takes into account visitors that have the Alexa toolbar installed. However, the Alexa rank is often used in blog networks and for website advertising. Below is a list of actions to perform in order to increase your Alexa rank:

Set your website as your homepage. Therefore, every time you start your browser, you have one additional visit.
Propose an Alexa widget on your website. The more users have it installed (and then visit your website), the better rank you will have.
Participate to forums related to your website's topics. This will increase the number of visitor to your website if you post relevant information.
Use different social networks to increase your traffic. Digg and Stumble are examples of place were you can submit your website to get more traffic. This will only work is you participate (i.e. if you get known by other users).

More details can be found on doshdosh website.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Directories for website listing

One of the most important aspect of website optimization for better ranking is inbound links (links that direct to your site). Adding your page to different websites and blogs by manual contact increase the number of inbound links. Another way is to subscribe to web directories.

Below is a list of directories you should consider for better ranking on search engines:

Major directories

Other directories

Friday, February 22, 2008

Search Engine List

People usually have this wrong equation in mind:

Search engines = Google

This is definitely wrong. A more correct equation would be:

Search engines = Google + all others
Although Google is the most important search engine nowadays, other important websites should not be forgotten for an overall better ranking. You should manually go to these search engines to add your site (some of these website may use the same internal search engine technology). Here is a list of major search engines and some other important ones:

Major search engines for ranking

Other important search engines for ranking

Monday, February 18, 2008

Advices for choosing your domain name

The choice of your domain name is a very important step to reach a better ranking on search engines. Here are some advices for choosing an efficient domain name:

Choose a name related to your website. Although it seems obvious, the URL you choose should contain keywords related to your website. For example, if your website is about selling second-hand car, try to put keywords such as car and second-hand in the URL you choose.

When your URL contains more than one word, DO NOT concatenate words: www.secondhandcars.com. If you do so, search engines will not be able to separate these words and use them to better rank your website. Use the "-" symbol to separate them: www.second-hand-cars.com. So, words are clearly separated for better ranking on search engines.
When you have carefully chosen your URL, you can book a domain name. Usually, the .com is the most common. If you have competitors, you should also consider booking other extensions such as .net and .ch (for example if your website is based in Switzerland). For example: www.second-hand-cars.com, www.second-hand-cars.net and www.second-hand-cars.ch

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Meta tag selection

The meta tags definition is an important aspect when optimizing a website for better ranking on search engines. When correctly chosen, they allow a better indexing of your website on different search engines as well as a better display on search engine results. However, you should know that most important search engines don't give much importance to meta tags nowadays.

Meta tags have to be included in the head of your HTML code, between the and tags. Try to put your meta tags at the top most part of your code (don't forget to add < before and > after the code).

Title

The title tag is certainly the most important for search engine ranking. It should contain your most important keywords (i.e. the keywords that define your website the best way). The line looks like this:

meta content="The title of your website" name="title"

Keywords

The next step is to put your keywords in your HTML code. You can simply put them just below the title tag. If needed, you can find more information about choosing correct keywords for better search engine ranking on this website. Here is the HTML line for keywords:

meta content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3" name="keywords"

Don't put too much keywords (not more than 50). Also choose specific keywords: car washing accessories is better than cars

You should as well consider spelling mistakes. Imagine that, when using search engines, people could enter train tiket instead of train ticket. So, you should consider both terms as keywords.

Description

You can give a description of your website to search engines. Some search engines may use this description on their result pages. It is always more convenient for users to find a small description on the result page of search engines than the first two lines on the website, for example. The description line is as follows:

meta content="Description of your website" name="description"

If possible, include some (although not too many) keywords in the description of your website. This may improve your website ranking on search engines.

Author

Finally, you can consider putting your name on your website in order search engines be sure of the owner of a website. The line is given below:

meta content="Your name" name="author"

This is only one tiny part of search engine optimization for better ranking. Future posts will give more information about ranking on search engines.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Choosing keywords for better ranking on search engines

As you certainly know, the better the keywords, the better the ranking on search engines. But what does better keywords mean? Here are a few tips and tricks for choosing the most appropriate keywords to put in your meta tags:

Think of basic spelling mistakes that users can do when typing your keywords in a search engine. For example, when looking for multimedia stuffs, writing mutlimedia is a common mistake. In this case, you should consider adding this word to you keyword list as well.
Use related terms you can find on search engines. For example, when searching on the word search engines on Clusty, it will show a list of so called clusters. You can use this list as a basis for other keyword options.
Use a website statistic tool such as Google Analytics for discovering the keywords people use to reach you website. When you account is created, go through Traffic sources and then Keywords. There, you fill find a list of keywords used by people that have found your website. You can add them to your keyword list.

Thursday, February 07, 2008