How to Get Higher Keyword Ranking

Strategic Placement of Keywords affects Keyword Ranking

There are many factors that influence your keyword rank:

Relevancy of keywords in the title to page content
Keyword Density or frequency of keywords on the page
Page Rank of other sites linking to you
Internal links in your own site and their age
Age of your domain or page
Age of the links pointing at your website
And a lot more

Do you want a guaranteed #1 keyword ranking in Google?

There are thousands of companies that claim to have "THE keyword ranking strategy" and will guarantee you the #1 keyword ranking without even touching your website, however, they are usually all ripoffs because they often use dishonest means to attain the higher ranking and it can harm your keyword rank and may even get your site banned for months.

Putting your main keywords in the title of the page is probably the most important step that affects ranking, listing your main keywords first and business name last. Placing them in header tags, links to related inside pages, image alt tags, repeated several times in the text of the page and in the text of links coming into your website also helps. This should provide higher keyword ranking in search engines for your most important keywords as long as you don't over do it or your site doesn't have Technology Blockers. It is also important to put your main keywords near the front of your description meta tag for the benefit of searchers although it probably won't help your keyword rank.

One strategy to get higher keyword ranking is to buy a domain name with your important ranking keywords and also put them in your file names for inside pages.

Adding the name of your city to the title of your home page will help regional businesses however if your business is international or world wide then using your city name in the title of every page will take up valuable space where your keywords should be placed and deter keyword ranking for your most important words. You don't need to use your business name in the title either except for the home page, about page and other pages specific to your business. Any keywords that will not fit in your title tag will likely not rank well so choose them wisely.

Fresh Content improves Keyword Ranking

If you frequently update or add new pages search engines will keep coming back for fresh content. If your keywords are slipping in rank it often helps to add more content to those pages and submit those pages to directories also. Be sure to interlink your pages also within the body text.

Indexing Problems Can Affect Keyword Ranking

Check out how Google or other engines have indexed your website using this command in the search engine: site:PutYourDomainNameHere.com If Google has indexed the links in your menu, or other text that appears at the top of your page, instead of the description then it's likely that you either don't have text in the meta description tag or it's too short. Just add more text. Without relevant text in the description tag people aren't likely to click on your page when it appears in search results.

Keyword rank for Lori's Web Design May 2007

Top Keyword Ranking Search

Wordtracker and Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool enable you to check keyword ranking for your top keywords and phrases.

Keyword Density affects Keyword Ranking

Keyword density can affect keyword ranking. Too much keyword density can cause your site to be tagged as spam and too little keyword density can cause the search engines to consider the page not very important for those keywords. A good tool to determine keyword density is: Keyword Density Analyzer

Be aware that some search engines don't use all the meta tags, i.e., Google uses the title and description tag but not the keyword tag so you need a keyword density analyzer that provides different options to obtain the best keyword ranking.

If you have a lot of text on your page it may reduce your keyword ranking. If so, remove parts that are not important or post that information in images. You can also use small windows containing non-essential information that the user can click on for more info so the keyword density remains high (see the web design portfolio page for examples).

Research Competitor's Keyword Ranking Strategy

It also helps to research the competition's source code to see what they are using for their keywords. However, if they are sticking multiple repeated keywords in their image alt tags, comment tags, and other places besides on the text of their page and or coloring multiple uses of keywords in the same color as the background of the page, then it's best to ignore them because many search engines are banning sites for those spamming tricks.

Follow Google's Guidelines

The most important step to higher keyword ranking is to be in compliance with Goggle's guidelines,. Getting other sites to link to your most important pages is also a top priority.

Also see Directories that Pass PR
Directories to Avoid and
Backlinks to Avoid.

If you would like your web site analyzed for keyword ranking problems
please check out the Website Evaluation page.

Keyword Ranking Tools

Mike's Marketing Tools offers the top 500 searched internet keywords.

What People Search For - Most Popular Keywords
Contains a list of search engines that provide the top Keyword Searches

Consider the Golden Oldies
MACs aren't Dead and Buried Yet!
Technology that Blocks Some Search Engines
Porkey Pages
Dynamic Pages vs Static Pages:
Keyword Strategies
Maximize the Title Tag
Validate - Validate
Links to Your Site are Top Priority
Submitting sites to Search Engines and Directories