How to Increase Link Popularity and Improve Search Engine Ranking

If you want to improve search engine ranking of your web site, you need to find a large number of high quality links from other web sites. These are called inbound links. Gaining links from high ranking sites that point to yours will increase your link popularity in the search engines.

Four effective ways to increase link popularity

1. Get your site listed in the search engine directories - first submit your site to the human edited directories of ODP (Open Directory Project - dmoz.org) and Yahoo (yahoo.com). Getting listed in these directories will give your site a boost in link popularity and improve search engine ranking in other search engines.

However, this may take some time.

You can get listed much faster by getting links from niche specific directories. Find these directories by doing a search on the major search engines with the primary keywords of your web site.

2. Provide high quality content - people will naturally link to your site if you have what they want (i.e. articles, software, etc). This will save you a lot of time searching for quality links yourself.

Optimizing your content with well placed keywords, will improve your search engine ranking dramatically. Search engines love focused content.

Don't you love it when you immediately find what you are searching for?

One way of achieving this is by writing and publishing articles. You can include a link at the end of your article. When your article gets published, you will automatically have gained a link to your site.

3. Requesting links from other sites - request links from sites that ideally have a high search engine ranking. Start by including a link from your site to theirs. Include a paragraph describing what your link is about. This helps achieve a greater number of clickthroughs to your site.

Request that they do the same when linking to your web site. If you provide this for them (with some of your primary keywords included of course), and provide quality information, you will have a greater chance of gaining a high quality link.

4. Write a testimonial - write a favorable review of someone's product or web site. Include the benefits you received through visiting their site. If that person wishes to use your testimony on their site, make sure they include a link back to your web site.

These are some of the best strategies you should implement to increase link popularity of your web site. It will improve search engine ranking and also boost your web site traffic.

On Page Optimaization

On page optimization is one of the very first step of SEO which every webmaster should look into. It probably won’t even take you an hour to learn and implement some of these on-page optimization techniques. But you may ask me, why it is so important? – Well literally speaking, if you can do proper on-page optimization for your website you can not only rank well in a search engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors.

1. Title Optimization

A site’s title tag is by far the most important website optimization element. A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. Title tag is the first thing that is shown & indexed by the search engines. So naturally it is given a very high importance – out of thousands results that a searcher sees, your site’s title has to be appealing enough for him to want to find out more information. On the other hand, your title has to be appealing enough to the search engine in order to rank you above thousands of other similar websites like yours.

Important things to include in your title:

• Your Name/ Business Name / Site Name: This is very important for breading propose. If you feel that your customers may search you by your brand name than it’s also useful to put it somewhere in your title.

• Keywords: If you want to rank for a certain keywords it is always good to place some of them in your title tag. A Title tag represents the whole flavor & content of your website. So if you are selling pizza online you can include keywords like – order pizza, home delivery pizza etc in your title tag. Don’t staff too many keywords in your title. Write a title which is readable to humans & also good for the search engine. (e.g. Domino’s Pizza, Order Pizza Online for Delivery – Dominos.com)

• Include your 1-800 or other toll-free numbers: Some may not agree with me on this, but I think including your phone number in the title tag does help your visitors to take a direct action! It also makes your site look more professional and legit when it’s being displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Searchers are likely to ‘click’ on the result that has a phone number attached to it because in their unconscious mind, they will have a good impression on the authenticity of the business and the level of support. If you prefer not to include your number in the title tag, you can alternatively include it in your Meta Description which will give you almost the same benefits.

2. Meta Tags Optimization

A site’s Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before, however I feel that Meta Description is something you can’t just ignore. A site’s Meta description should contain a brief description of your website focusing on the areas and services that your business is specialized in. This small piece of text can be considered as a selling snippet, if a searcher finds it appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more information. But if your Meta Description is too generic and isn’t written too well then there is a good chance that your site will simply be ignored.

Important things to include in your Meta Description:

• Include your Selling Point– Tell your customers what they want to hear through your site’s Meta Description, and you will definitely get some advantage over others in the SERP. For instance – if you sell ‘cheap web hosting’ then including a phrase like “hosting starting from only $0.99” may result in more clicks and visitors because your description will exactly match the flavor of search performed by the user.

• Keywords – Including some of your keywords will give you some advantage in Google’s relevancy algorithm.

• 1-800 or other Toll Free Numbers – if you haven’t included this already in your title, you can rather include it in your Meta description. If the users have skype installed on their system, any number on their browser will become clickable which will result in a direct skype-out call. So basically, if your number appears in the Meta description some of your customers might just prefer to call you directly instead of going through your site.

3. Important HTML Tags

It is necessary for you to highlight certain parts of your website that you want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], Italic [em] etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the page/post titles or the important sections of your website.

Header Elements:

• Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.

• Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.

Text Styles:

• Bold: You can bold (e.g. [strong]) certain words which are of high importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate. However overdoing this may get you penalized.

• Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will appear in italic.

• Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.

4. Keyword Optimization & Synonyms

Site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both search engines & the readers. Stuffing the site with too many keywords can make the site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance between the keywords & the content.

Important elements of Keyword Optimization:

• Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There are plenty of free tools out there that can help you to do keyword research. Some of my personal favorites are: SEObook Keyword Suggestion tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool & Overture Keyword Tool.

• Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to the keyword that you are targeting.

• Synonyms & Related Keywords: I personally like to use synonyms instead of having a high keyword density. This helps to make my content sound natural but still helps in SEO.

• Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’ etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good long tail keywords.

5. Link Optimization

It is important to optimize your internal & external outbound links for search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation.

Important elements of Link Optimization:

• Try using good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a ‘proper meaning’ and value.

• A good & clean Internal Link Structure with proper use of anchor text will definitely help. E.g. “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text compared to “click here”

• If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more by the search engines.

6. Image Optimization

If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.

Some Important Image Optimization Elements:

• Alt text: ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.

• File name: always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.

• Image Title: always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=”http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]

• Image Linking: Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.

Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization refers to the SEO techniques and strategies that help to improve website rankings in the search engine result pages (SERPs) by implementing not directly on the web page or html files. Means to say that we have nothing to do in the web page, that’s why it is said to be off-page optimization. Off-page optimization has an important role in internet marketing as well as search engine marketing (SEM).

1. Directory Submission Services

Directory submission is an important SEO activity for off-page optimization. We offer directory submissions of your website on free directory sites as well as paid directory site according to your business requirements & needs. Generally, we prefer to submit your site on free and reputed directory sites because submission on free directory gets much prominence than paid directory websites. But if you want to submit your site on paid directory site, we can do. Read key-features of our directory submission service.

2. Social Bookmarking Submission

Users can easily get your website on social bookmarking sites where your site has been bookmarked; they can share them with more users by adding their own collection. This will spread your web information instantly across the world. We have a long list of high Page Ranked social bookmarking sites by which you can get more traffic on your site in a short span of time. Thus, social bookmarking submission has an important role in off-page optimization.

3. Blog Submission & Promotion

A blog is a type of website which is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. There are different blogs providing commentary or news on a particular subject. A blog also provides functionalities like personal online diaries. A typical blog is a combination of text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages and other media related to its topic. The blogs have an ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format. Most blog directories available are primarily textual, although some focus on art which are known as art blog, photographs known as photo blog, videos known as video blogging, music known as MP3 Blogging and audio known as podcasting or audio blogging. There are some short posts for blogging derived as Micro Blogging.

4. Press Release Submission

In online or Internet marketing, press releases also play an important role because the press is a strong medium to promote your products and services to your target customers. There are numerous press release websites where you can submit press release for your company. We have a long list of press release websites where our off-page optimization experts can submit your site without any cost to promote your business.

5. Article Submission Service

There are many sites where you can publish articles online, related to your business area. Submitting the article related to your web site on the various article submission sites is one of the best indirect ways to get top ranked in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Bing etc.