Taking into account the fact, the working algorithms of Google, Yahoo, MSN and other popular searching systems have different features and are frequently updated it can be very difficult to optimize a website for all search engines properly. Nevertheless, there are some general rules which are recommended to follow for beginning webmasters and content managers in order to have a positive impact on such algorithms and in such a way to improve search engine ranking for their websites.
There is no doubt that keywords and key phrases are important for all search engine algorithms without exceptions. For this reason, to improve search engine ranking any optimization strategy is usually started with the detailed keyword analysis. Only when you can clearly understand what your keywords and key phrases are you can start optimizing a website.
The best way to improve search engine ranking positions from the beginning is to select a good domain name for a website. Your website will have significant advantages if its domain contains keywords, even when they are separated by a hyphen. This factor is highly appreciated by many searching systems.
You can also improve search engine ranking by adding keywords and even key phrases to such Meta tags as title and description. These tags should contain no more than 60 and 200 symbols respectively. Be careful when creating KeyWord title! Each keyword included in this tag has to be presented in the webpage text as well. Also, each separated word doesn’t have to be repeated in this tag more than two times. Otherwise, this can be considered by search engines as spam.
The optimal keyword density for a webpage is considered to be %5-20. However, this value can be varied depending on website specificity. It is desirable to use H1 for highlighting key phrases in the text. As it is demonstrated in practice, keywords placed in the internal links are taken into consideration and can significantly improve search engine ranking positions for your website. It should be pointed out each internal link has to be available within two clicks.
Almost all search engines dislike broken internal links and frequent server downtimes. Remember, all internal links placed on your website pages should work properly. That’s why it is strongly recommended to use link validity checker and server uptime statistics tools since the moment your website is launched in web.
The special attention should be paid to the links incoming to your website. Don’t forget that only high quality external links can improve search engine ranking! According to Google patent regulations, incoming link text should fully correspond to webpage topic and clearly describe its content.
File size of each webpage doesn’t have to exceed 100kb. Keywords put in file names are highly valued and can also improve search engine ranking effectiveness. It should be emphasized all search engines prefer frequent website content updates. The more frequently web pages are updated – the more often they are visited by search engine robots.
There are also some negative factors which have to be taken into consideration by webmasters.
Domain redirection, low quality incoming links, affiliate links, high keyword density in text, flash content,
