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Search Engine Optimization - cont'd
Step 4. Link Analysis. Quite a few major search engines (Google, most importantly) weigh your 'link popularity' when ranking your site. A more accurate term, though, is 'link analysis', because these engines don't just count up the number of links to your site. They look for links near and containing relevant text. So a page full of links, one of which happens to be yours, won't help very much. But a link from a related site, near a short paragraph that contains relevant keywords, will probably give you a boost. Having keywords in the link itself is even better. A quick example:
http://www.portentinteractive.com doesn't help much.
For search engine optimization, visit http://www.portentinteractive.com is much better.
For search engine optimization, visit Portent Interactive where 'search engine optimization' is the link to Portent, is the absolute best case.
There are a few ways to build your link popularity:
- Contact sites that relate to yours and request a link exchange. This works really well, but obviously takes a long time.
- Syndicate your content. If you can provide an easy way for interested webmasters to link directly to relevant stories on your site, you provide an instant link popularity boost, and get your message out to boot.
- Start an affiliate program. If you sell a product, consider setting up an affiliate sales program.
Google awards a lot less weight to a link to your site if that link is on a page with lots of other links. That's why so-called 'link farming' doesn't work. Ideally, you want a link to your site from a page that includes relevant content and not that many other outgoing links.
Step 5. Submit your site. Many search engines, Google included, allow you to submit your site for free. Generally you can submit your home page and let the search engine crawl the rest of your site. Some directories and engines offer paid 'express' services, and some, like Teoma, require that you pay for URL submission. Which engines you choose depends on your budget and campaign.
Step 6. Review, Revise, and Keep Going. Think you're done? Wrong -- search engine optimization is an ongoing project. At least once per month, review your rankings, site traffic reports and link popularity and tweak your site as necessary. The tools you need to measure results are:
- Site traffic reports. Any web hosting company should provide you with a web site traffic report, and almost all of the reporting tools in use today provide a 'referrals from search engines' section. Take a look at this section for a good measure of campaign results.
- Link counts. Use the link: command on Google (see above) to determine your link popularity.
- Your keyword list. Search on the relevant search engines to see if your ranking has improved.
- Your brain. You have to interpret what you see, and decide whether changes are warranted. There's no hard and fast rule for this, and no magic formula. Sorry about that...
So now you'll get instant results, right? Well, not quite...
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