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How To Make A Website Rank Higher In The Search Engines

If you have a website promoting your products, services or something else then you will want to know how to get it to rank higher in the search engines. This is a technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it's a really huge subject with loads to learn. However this article will aim to give you a foundation of knowledge for you to build upon.

On-Page SEO

When we talk about SEO there are two types you will want to know about. With on-page SEO you have to make it very clear to the search engines what your site is all about. To do this there are basic things to do:-

If your company name is Jones and Co it really doesn't mean an awful lot to the search engines. If you are a roofer in Jacksonville then you would have the title of your website as "Roofing in Jacksonville - Jones and Co" so that's very obvious.

Then you will need to include words such as roofing, roofer, tiles, slates, shingles, Jacksonville, JAX and Florida in the content of the website. This will help the search engines further understand. If you have pictures on the site then you should put some keywords in the picture. So instead of calling the picture 887767.jpg you should call it jacksonville-roofing.jpg.

Off-Page SEO

This type of SEO is all about getting related websites to link to you. By getting links from other websites you are effectively telling the search engines that you are trustworthy and not simply a junk website. A link, therefore, is akin to a vote. The more votes you get, the better you will do.

However it's not quite as simple as this because not all votes/links are equal. Here are some of the factors in determining the quality of a link:-

• The age of the website that links to you is important. The older it is the better.
• How many links point to that website. If it has a lot of links then it's probably more trustworthy
• Google has a system called Page Rank (PR) where a number is assigned to each page of a website. The number can vary from 0 to 10. The more PR a page has the more authority it has
• The anchor text use. When a site links to you the text in the link is called the anchor. If they just link to you with "click here" or something like that then it won't help you very much. Instead it's better to have keywords in the anchor text.
• The niche that the website linking to you is in. If you have a site about roofing and a site about acne links to you it won't be all that great.

Of course, there are so many other factors involved but these are the basics. It's best that you don't get too worried about the quality of the links you get. Just make sure you get them. There are loads of places that you can get links from including:-

• Article Directories
• Web Directories
• Blog Comments
• Forum Signatures
• Social Bookmarking Sites

If you are new to SEO then you need to be aware that it can take time. A lot of people think that any work that they do to their website will catapult them to the number 1 spot. Unfortunately it could take months before you see any results and you just have to be patient. If you are wanting to know how college students make money online then knowing as much about SEO is very important.