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Apr 07
Apr 07
by Neil Patel Foo with 22 Comments
After you have been in the whole SEO game for many years you end up learning what works and what doesn’t work. Whether you have money to spend on marketing or you have no money there are many things you can do to increase your rankings. Here are a few things you can do to increase your rankings:
- Title Tag – it seems dumb that title tags can help increase your rankings, but it is true. By keeping titles short and descriptive they can help increase your rankings. One thing to keep in mind when writing title tags for each page is that they need to be unique and represent the content on the page.
- Meta Descriptions – just like title tags, meta description tags can help drastically increase a website’s traffic. I usually like keeping my meta descriptions short, descriptive and relevant to the content on that page. The last thing you want to do is use the same meta description tag throughout your whole site because sometimes it causes search engines to see your website content as duplicate even if it is not. If you are running a WordPress blog you can use plugins such as the Head Meta Description plugin to automatically do this for you.
- Headings – I usually like to use headings on all of my pages. Think of headings like a book chapter title, each section/page on your website should have a heading so people know what it is all about. The other great thing about headings is that they give you another opportunity to place keywords within your content.
- Social Media – There are a lot of powerful social media sites out there that can drive thousands of visitors and links. If you study the Digg homepage or the Del.icio.us popular page, you will start noticing trends and if you can replicate them by writing content relevant for those audiences, then you too can gain thousands of links, which will help you with search engine rankings. Here are some things that I have learned from studying these sites:
- Before you leverage these sites it is best to become a user and participate in them so that you can learn about the site as well as their rules.
- By doing some quick searches on topics that are related to your website you will find out what will make the front page and what won’t.
Catchy titles and descriptions heavily determine if a story succeeds or not.
- Sitemaps – I personally have not seen a drastic increase in search traffic by adding a sitemap, but with large sites they do help. The chances of getting all of your pages indexed can be increased if you use a sitemap. One thing that you may want to consider is using Google sitemaps.
- Directories – We all know that a great way to increase your rankings is by obtaining relevant links. One thing I like doing is to find all the free or paid directories that that I can submit my site to. They don’t necessarily do a world of difference when it comes to increasing rankings, but every little bit helps. Just make sure that the directories you submit to don’t use the nofollow attribute or else the link will not count. Three great directories that you may want to start off with are DMOZ, Yahoo and BOTW.
There are many other things you can do to increase your rankings, these are just some of the ones that have been effective for me. Are there any other methods that you have used and had great success with?
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thanks so much for that info! I was wondering about that! you really think the headlines help that much!
hi neil,
i also use meta title and description different on every post i “launch”.
and beside the fact that it’s used for indexing… it’s quite obviouse that google use them to display SERP’s.
i’m not sure about the meta keywords though. i still spend some time on copyrighting for keywords but i’m not sure if they’re still usefull.
i’m thinking about saving some time by giving up on creating them. (while still creating the meta title and description).
what do you think about that?
webee.ro is a design blog.
Hi Neil
Unfortunately one of the often misunderstood issues around sitemaps is that they assist in the indexing of a site. They do not. They assist in the discovery of resources. The same indexing functions are applied to pages discovered via natural crawl as via the sitemap, so if you don’t have enough juice to make it into the index via a natural crawl you wont make it in by linking to that resource in your sitemap. AFAIK orphaned resources still wont be indexed even if you link to them in your sitemap.
Google may change this in the future with their psuedo-pagerank algo.
And be aware, that for a number of people a sitemap might actually lead to less pages being indexed. I would encourage people to check out Google’s Webmaster Help Group to learn more about this issue.
Rgds
Richard
f(ranking) = a.f(onpage factors) + b.f(offpage factors).
if a.f(onpage factors) > Y it is OOPs then in order to increase f(ranking) only option left is b.f(offpage factors).
For high ranking keyphases
f(offpage factors) – f(onpage factors) = f(offpage factors)
Moral of the maths story
For high ranking keyphrase, links rules
I was pretty skeptical about your 6th tip (directories). I think the weight given to lists of links absent content is diminishing fast. That said, I WAS skeptical until I saw your suggestions. The first 2 (and maybe the third) are really nice sites to be listed in. DMOZ and yahoo are duplicated by tons of scrapers, giving you many dozens (in Yahoo’s case) or hundreds (with DMOZ) of good, decent and marginal links. Downside for yahoo is $300 / year. Good ROI for some businesses but for smaller, shoestring budget folks you may want to hold off for a year or two.
Thanks for this info
Domain inform, I am not sure how much headlines help, but every little bit adds up.
Webee, I ignore meta keywords because I feel they don’t help.
Richards, thanks for the heads up.
Thanks neil for you information, I think that is very usefull.
evden eve nakliyat
We’ve had success with revising URL structures. This way there is a clear sync between the KWP in the URL, title, description, H1, and content.
I’m glad you linked to my post on sitemaps. I agree they are very important in the grand scheme, but for new sites they are helpful.
By getting listed in directories, they mean legit accredited directories that are seen as “authority sites” such as Yahoo’s directory (not to be confused with yahoo search), DMOZ Open Directory Project, and Best of the Web …
A couple other “directories ” that are of the same stature are Wikipedia (even with the nofollow tags, being associated with Wikipedia gives you credibility), about.com, and http://www.totallyexplained.com
Out of the directories you mention, two of them are pay directory sites; Yahoo and BOTW. I have applied to DMOZ which is free however cannot afford at this time to pay Yahoo or BOTW.
In the future I may be financially able to do so. Perhaps a mention in your post of what is a payed placement and what is a non-paying placement would aid those of us without the financial resources to source free listings.
Anyhow, thanks for the great Textlinkads.
Take care,
Jessica
There’s also the: “leaving comment trails on people’s blogs” suggestion …
Use Technorati tags on each post.
i am glad to post my comment here so i think There are many other things you can do to increase your rankings, these are just some of the ones that have been effective for me. Are there any other methods that you have used and had great success with?~
http://www.gordoniihoodia.net
thx a lots of ur info
Please clean up the automated spam comments (like the very first comment) in this entry. Automated spam SHOULD NOT be allowed to stay on sites, and it should not help search engine rankings… So please strip them away.
Have these tips not been posted on this blog before? I am starting to think all blog entries in this blogs says the same…
As much as I like to read up to date seo information, sometimes it can be too techie, too boring…However the content here is easy to read, which makes it a pleasure to peruse. Thanks
Thanks for the info. I’ve always wondered whether a sitemap through Google helps or hinders my ranking.
Does anyone have any tips regarding sitemaps? Our site, LumensFlashlights.com, seems to have gone down in ranking ever since we posted a sitemap at the Google Webmaster Tools site. Thanks,
Justin
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