The Killer Secrets on Ranking High

By Brian Su
Posted Thursday, October 21, 2004

Have you ever wondered how the major search engines position your site? When you search "B2B" or "Business-to-Business" on AltaVista, you always see our website SmarTechLab.com within Top Ten ranking. How did we do that? I'd like to share some of my experiences with you. After years of website promotion, I have featured out following rules that are proven to be effective.

·Use true Meta tags only.
Keywords - your website and company name
·Identify and display your real Keywords in a priority order. The keywords must relate to your business and service scope. Never misspell them. The secret is to review the Top 10 sites that appear under keywords that fit your website. Study their titles, Meta tags, keyword density, alt image tags etc. before defining your own keywords.
·Keep the Meta tags to maximum 1000 characters; otherwise most search engines will simply ignore the excess characters.
·Avoid using words like "Free, the Best, the only and so on" to describe your site.
·Always use your Keywords in the title of each web page.
·Use Alt tags in the first image on your website, and fill it with several important keywords in priority order.
·Avoid using frames when designing a website.
·Use WebsiteGarage.com to do a site analysis, then correct site deficiencies.
·Resubmit your website every two months.

Besides correct things to do, I also identified a list of things you do not want to do.
·Never hide invisible text on your website
·Never use misleading keywords in your Meta tags that have nothing to do with the site.
·Never try scamming search engines by writing bogus site descriptions.
·Never use the same keywords for more than 3 times.

I usually spend hours to identify and analyze website keywords and develop meta tags for each site I design. If you really want your website rank high, you must study and understand the rule of each search engines. For instance, Yahoo.com has very specific rules that you must follow in order to get listed. If your site is still under construction, then do not submit it to Yahoo because they never accept websites are not ready for viewing; If you have submitted the site to Yahoo, then wait patiently. It takes at least six weeks for Yahoo surfers to review your site. If your site is well designed and have quality contents, your site would eventually be listed in the appropriate categories you have chosen. It might even take up to six months to get your site reviewed by a real person at Yahoo. Therefore, do not keep submitting your site to Yahoo. If you have no patience, Yahoo offers Business Express service which charges $199, they guarantee to review and respond within 7 days, however, there's no guarantee to list your website. Since Yahoo now receive thousands of site submission on a daily basis, it's said they only list sites that are professionally designed with good and useful contents. Websites using free website hosting services or simply with a bunch of website links are rarely getting listed now. If you are serious about your business, get a domain name and have your website designed by professionals. Yahoo is the most popular search engine and directory; you don't want screw up with them. If you don't know how you website is doing, SmarTechLab.com offers free website status analysis at (http://www.SmarTechLab.com).

Before submitting your webiste to major search engines such as HotBot, AltaVista, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, Snap and AOL Netfinder, you should double-check the spelling of your Meta tags and site descriptions. Once you submit it wrong, it takes a lot time and efforts to have errors removed from search engines. I manually submit our clients' sites to major search engines. So do it right! AltaVista and Infoseek recently have toughened its rules on spamming. Remember, do not keep sending your site to them, keep your site keywords and descriptions strictly relate to your website content. As I mentioned that never use terms like "the best, the only, the number one." After an initial submission, review your site ranking in about two or three months and modify your site keywords again, and resubmit your site.

In conclusion, you must take caution when you submit your site to search engines, never abuse and never spamm. Any violations may result permanent removal of your site from these major search engines.

About the Author
Brian Su, President and Senior Consultant. SmarTech Laboratory, Inc. specializes in business website design and marketing. For more free resources and tools, please visit his B2B Resources Center at (http://www.SmarTechLab.com).