Saturday, September 29, 2007

Boost Your Google Ranking

By Malcolm Lambe

The title is vitally important to how Google and the other search engines rank you. It's probably the single most important part of a webpage. But it's often neglected or badly-worded. I'm as guilty of this as the next guy. I come from a magazine-writing and radio copy-writing background. I love the doublé entendre and the wacky headline. I saw one yesterday in The Sydney Morning Herald, as it happens. Heading a story on a so-called Millionaire who became a Buddhist monk and was busted several times for growing and supplying hydroponic pot.

The Sub-Editor had a lot of fun with this story by heading it Felonious Monk (From Thelonious Monk the jazz musician). But while that's pretty slick for a newspaper, it's not much good as a heading for an online story. Why? Because they are bad keywords. Nobody's going to Google Felonious Monk are they? They might Google Monk Growing Pot or something like that but never the other. So the Title is a chance for you to throw up your keywords - your powerful keywords that you've already researched after using a free keyword tool (you'll find one on my Wallyworld site) - throw them up in your Title Tag as its called in HTML and attract Google and the other Search Engines interest (and build backlinks).

The page title should include only your main keywords. The least amount of words you can place in the title, the more weight Google will give to each of the keywords and the higher you will rank. Keep it mean and lean. Cut out the unnecessary words like "How", "You Can", "Get", "Become" - old style copywriting frills like that and go for the jugular - even ditch conjunctions like "and" and "to" if you can. Google doesn't care about the style - it just wants the nitty-gritty. I could have headed this story something wordy like How to Boost Your Google Rankings and Increase your Adsense Earnings at the Same Time with a Few Simple Tips Using this FREE Tool. But Google would probably just pick up on the Boost Your Google Rankings part anyway.

Add h1 Header Tags

Now we need to add a h1 header tag and put at least one of our strong keywords there.

Put the h1 header tag as far up the top of the page as possible. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the bottom right hand side of the page. The header tag is a title for the content you have on your page.

For example, the h1 header tag of this page might be:

"Adding Killer Keywords to Your Titles Can Really Boost Your Google Rankings!"

Add h2 header tags

An h2 header tag is kinda like a sub heading for your webpage where you can put more keywords. And it should be placed somewhere towards the top half of your webpage.

Get it? Use your main keyword in your h1 tags and your secondary keyword into the h2 tags.

Make Use of alt image tags

Next, click on the very top image of your webpage (This is usually your website's header graphic) and include an alt image tag using the text "Boost Your Google rankings" if you're adding this alt text to your website header graphic. Click on 2 more graphics throughout your webpage and enter your other 2 keywords, plus an extra word like "graphic" or "image"... For example, we would use "adding killer keyword titles graphic" and "keywords to Boost Your Google Rankings image". This ensures that Google won't view this as spam.

A Germany company SISTRIX recently conducted a study of 10,000 random keywords and analysed of the top 100 Google results for each. And here's what they found -

Keywords in the title tag are important as well as in the body of the text but title tag keywords carry far more weight.

Keywords in H2-H6 tags can influence your rankings while keywords in H1 tags do not appear to have much effect.

Keywords in bold or strong tags can positively impact your rankings.

Keywords in image file names and image alt attributes also improved a site’s rankings.

Keywords in the domain name often ranked higher.

Inbound links and PageRank value had a significant impact on rankings.

Two Final Tips: If you want to get your new blog or site listed quickly on Google just get another site with a PageRank of at least 5 to link to you. And don't forget to put your main keywords at the very top left and then at the very bottom right hand side of the webpage. And Boost Your Google Rankings.

Malcolm Lambe is an Australian Blogger based in Paris and trying to make a living online. His main site is Welcome to Wallyworld

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Malcolm_Lambe

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