10 Tactics to Rank Higher In Search Results

SEO Tip #1

Put Out a Highly Optimized Press Release: Make it a really good press release that is rich with information that your target audience will click on should they see it in Google or Yahoo News. If it is a well-crafted press release - one that is rich with keywords germane to your website - many should stumble across it. If the press release actually does have informational value (very few do), more sites and journalists will pick it up - and will probably post the links you placed in it. SEO-PR is a good site for you to send a press release through.

SEO Tip #2

Tweak Your Title Tags: Don't make the mistake so many sites make, which is to leave the default "Home Page" titles in the title tags of your website pages. These tags are a supremely important way to provide search engines with information about your site's content and purpose. This Meta Tag Analyzer will analyze all the tags on your Web pages, from the title tags on down, and it will also tell you which keywords and phrases your Web pages are really optimized for based on how a search engine will read your page.

SEO Tip #3

Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew: Let's face it, there are keywords in many categories that are hotly contested, like "refinance", "Internet marketing" and so on. If you have 10,000 competitors jockeying for position in search results, your chances are pretty slim for coming up prominently in search results for that keyword. Boo hoo. What to do? The Cool SEO Tool shows you how your site stacks up against the top ten sites in Google for your chosen keyword or phrase. For example, using this tool to analyze how etailer LLBean.com is doing for the keyword "camping", at the time of writing we learn that not only does LLBean.com does not rank in the top 10 at Google, but that competitor REI.com (which ranks in at #2) has three times as many pages indexed at Google and also has 48,000 incoming links as opposed to LLBean.com's 369 incoming links. Looks like the SEO team at LLBean.com has some work to do.

SEO Tip #4

Optimize for the Right Keywords: All too often, a company has its site optimized for the keywords and phrases it thinks their target audience uses to search, or keywords where it cannot possibly compete against the Internet's biggest players. But they don’t really know - because they didn't bother to check out what keywords and phrases people actually use when searching for their type of product or service. Wordtracker will give you a very good idea how many people searched for the keywords you think are hot over the past month. If you find that only 4 people actually used your favorite keyword search term, don't panic. This tool will also suggest related words and phrases that will give you a higher yield and it will help you go beyond the obvious and uncover underutilized keywords and phrases as well.

SEO Tip #5

Plug the Keyword Holes: Spell everything out and use acronyms, too - for example, write "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)". Your target audience is just as likely (or maybe even more so) to search for the full term as they are for the acronym, so be aware of the multiple ways that the same information can be presented. VirtualPromote's Keyword Density Analyzer tool crawls your Web page to see what the most prevalent search phrases or keywords are on that page, and then you can see what you're missing.

SEO Tip #6

Think Like a Spider: Before you do your next major website overhaul, take a few moments to see how your current site looks to a search engine spider when it comes to crawl and index your content. How fast the page loads is a major consideration that will determine how much of your page gets crawled. How much javascript, Flash and graphics get in the way quickly becomes evident when you see what a spider sees. These insights are the information you need when telling your webmaster how to reconstruct your site and individual pages in order to optimize your accessibility to search engine spiders. summitTOOL's Spider Simulator will show you your website exactly as a search engine spider sees it - and make recommendations as to what needs to be improved.

SEO Tip #7

Submit Site Maps: Both Google and Yahoo allow you to submit extensive site maps of your website, which helps them to more completely index your website. It's definitely a good idea to learn how to submit your site to Google Sitemaps and to set up a regular site map submission schedule so that Google is always up-to-date with the newest information about your site.

SEO Tip #8

Inbound Link Tags: It's a lot easier to control the link tags on your own site, of course. But "off-page" search engine optimization (SEO) is helped a great deal by the copy that accompanies the inbound links found on other sites that are pointing to your site. "Click Here" or "Go To" is too generic. If your site is about search optimization, for example, it would be better to have the link tag read something like "Visit WDFM.com for Larry Chase's Top 10 Reasons Why Other Websites Should Point at Your Website". The Neat-O Backlink Tool will not only show you who's pointing at you, but it also will tell you what the anchor tags (links) actually say. It pays to contact the sites this tool lists in order to juice up the copy in the anchor text of those inbound links.

SEO Tip #9

Get Help: If you're responsible for a big site, it is in your best interests to get someone who really knows what they're doing with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. If you're not an expert at optimizing a major site, you could have your site penalized or banned from the search engines entirely by unwittingly employing unsanctioned tactics (think SEO spam). The worst part is, you won't know what you did wrong. Get trusted input for any major project. The search engine optimization field is a moving target. You want someone who's up-to-the minute on the latest thinking and strategies. There are too many posers out there who are hawking hack services. Beware. Find out Who's Who In SEO Experts here.

SEO Tip #10

Relevance & Frequency: Search engines place great value on how often you publish to your website. Typically, the more frequent your publishing schedule, the more frequently search engine spiders check in with you. Add to this the imperative of publishing well-thought-out, quality content that is rich with desirable keyword phrases, Establishing blogs and RSS feeds are good gambits for meeting this objective.