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10 Steps To Higher Search Engine Positioning
By Dave Davies

There is perhaps no more level playing field in business than 
the Internet. It is this fact that has created millionaires from 
paupers. The amount of money that can be made depends of course 
on your industry and your products and/or services but to be 
sure, if it can be sold at all, it can be sold online.

While there are many methods out there for building a profitable 
website, from banner ads to email campaigns, by far the most 
cost effective over time has proven repeatedly to be search 
engine positioning. The major advantage search engine 
positioning has over other methods of producing revenue online 
is that once high rankings are attained and provided that the 
tactics used were ethical and that continued efforts are made 
to keep them, they can essentially hold and provide targeted 
traffic indefinitely. Your site may rise and fall in the 
rankings as a result of algorithm changes, but a solid and 
complete optimization of your site will ensure it will not 
disappear.

I have been ranking websites highly on the Internet for quite 
a few years now and there are some essential rules that, if 
followed, will ensure that over time your website does well 
and holds solid and profitable positions on the major search 
engines.

Here are the 10 steps to higher search engine positioning:

Step One - Choosing Keywords
You first must choose your keywords. This is perhaps the most 
important step of the process. Incorrectly targeting phrases 
can result in traffic that is not interested in your product. 
There are three tools that I use virtually every day to help 
pick the most appropriate keywords:

- Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool 
 (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

- WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)

- My Brain 

The last in the list is the most important. Look through the 
potential keyword phrases and think, "Who would be searching 
using that phrase?" If the answer is, "a student looking for 
information" then chances are it won't result in a sale. If the 
answer is "Someone who is looking specifically for a product I 
offer," then obviously this is a prime candidate as a targeted 
keyword phrase.

Step Two - Site Content
Even before I optimize websites I like to get a good deal of new 
content down in order to ensure that I know exactly where I'm 
going and exactly what I need to do to get there. Creating some 
of the new content before starting the optimization process can 
be doubly helpful in that it can reveal potential additions to 
your website that you may not have considered (a forum or blog 
for example). If you already have a site, perhaps simply sit on 
your back deck, sip on a coffee and imagine what you would do if 
your whole site was lost and you had to start again (other than 
launch into a very colorful discussion with your hosting 
company).

Step Three - Site Structure
A solid site structure is very important. Creating a site 
that is easily spidered by the search engines yet attractive 
to visitors can be a daunting and yet entirely rewarding 
endeavor. To adequately structure your website you must "think 
like a spider" which is not as difficult as it may sound. A 
search engine spider reads your web page like you would read 
a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and then 
moves down.

Priority must be given then, to what you place near the top of 
your page.

Step Four - Optimization
Once you have your keyword targets, your content created and 
your site structure established, you must move on to the most 
obvious step, the optimization of your content. 

As noted above, a spider places importance on what it reads 
highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that 
includes your targeted phrase only makes sense. That said, 
stuffing in keywords in the hope that it will add weight to 
your page generally doesn't work. The term "keyword density" 
refers to the percentage of your content that is made up of your 
targeted keywords. There are optimum densities according to many 
reputable SEO's though exactly what they are is debatable. 
Estimates seem to range anywhere from 4 or 5% to 10 to 12% 
(quite a gap isn't it).

Personally, when it comes to keyword density, I subscribe to one 
rule: put your keywords in the content as much as you can while 
keeping it comfortably readable to a human visitor.

Some do it first, I do it last. Regardless of when you do it, you 
must choose your heading. At the beginning of your content you 
have the opportunity to use the 
 tag to specify the heading 
of your content. This tag is given extra weight and is also an 
indicator to the search engine of where your actual content 
starts. Make sure to use your keywords in the heading but don't 
shy away from also adding additional words (though not too many).

Step Five - Internal Linking
To ensure that your website gets fully indexed you have to make 
sure that the spiders have an easy path through your website. 
Text links make the best choice as the anchor text (the actual 
words used to link to a specific page) add relevancy to that page 
for the words used to link to it. For example, if I ran a website 
on acne and had a treatments page, I could link to it with an 
image, with text reading "Click for more information on how to 
treat this skin condition" or simply "Acne Treatments". When a 
search engine spider hits an image it has no idea what the image 
is and, while it will follow the link, it will not give any 
weight to the page it hits. If you use text that does not contain 
the keywords you are targeting you are essentially supplying the 
engine with the same lack of relevancy as with an image, but if 
you use the phrase "Acne Treatments" to link to your acne 
treatments page you are attaching relevancy to that page for 
those keywords.

There are two main ways to ensure that your site gets well 
spidered AND that the relevancy is added. The first is to place 
text links on the bottom of your homepage to your main internal 
pages (not EVERY page, that just looks odd). The second is to 
create a sitemap to all your internal pages and link to it from 
your homepage. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages 
but that's a whole article unto itself.

Step Six - Human Testing
So now you have your site, it's optimized and you have your 
navigation in place. The next step is to run it past someone who 
has never seen your site (and preferably who won't know how much 
work you've put in and tell you it's great even if it's not).

Ask them to find specific information and see how long it takes. 
Ask someone else to just surf your site and watch which links 
they click and ask them why they chose those ones. 

Most importantly, find out how the content reads to them. You've 
spent hours working through the content at this point and are 
probably somewhat biased. Find out how it reads to someone who 
has no vested interest in the site and correct any issues he/she 
may bring up.

Step Seven - Submissions
I have a different philosophy than most when it comes to search 
engine submissions. I submit to directories (both general and 
topic-specific) and to a few topical search engines, but for the 
most part, I've found submitting to Google, Yahoo, MSN and the 
other major engines has proven to be a bit of a waste of time. 
The major search engines are spidering search engines which 
means they will follow links to wherever they go. Simply having 
sites linking to you that are spidered by the major search 
engines will get your site found. 

When I have spent time submitting my sites, I have found they 
get picked up in about a week. When I have simply skipped this 
step and sought out reputable directories and other sites to get 
links from, I have found that at least the homepage of the site 
gets indexed in as little as two days. 

Neither will hurt your rankings but to make the best use 
of your time, seek out directories and other websites to get 
links from and leave the spiders to find you on their own.

Step Eight - Link Building
All of the major search engines give credit to sites that have 
quality links pointing to them. How many is enough depends on 
your industry and targeted phrases. Running a search on Google 
that reads "link:www.yourcompetition.com" will reveal 
approximately how many links a competitor has.

The first place to seek links is with general and topic-specific 
directories. After that you may want to move into reciprocal 
link building. Reciprocal link building is the exchange of links 
between two websites. Some webmasters will simply link to any 
website that links back to them. I highly recommend being more 
discriminating than that.

Find websites that you believe your site visitors would 
genuinely be interested in and you've probably found a good 
link partner. You want to find links from sites that are related 
to yours.

There are obviously many more methods to building links than 
directories and reciprocal link building. Again though, this is 
a whole article (or more) in itself.

Step Nine - Monitoring
Whether you use WebPosition Gold (http://www.webposition.com/) 
or just run manual searches you will have to monitor the major 
search engines for your targeted phrases. Also, you will 
need to review your stats to see where your traffic is coming 
from and what search terms are being used to find you.

If a month passes and you don't see any changes, then more work 
needs to be done. I'm certainly not stating that you should take 
a month off, a solid search engine positioning strategy involves 
constantly adding content, building links, and insuring that 
your visitors are getting the information they want to have and 
finding it as easily as possible.

Step Ten - Reward Yourself
So you've done it. It's taken many, many hours of work but you're 
rankings are doing well. What you've created is a solid position 
that will stand the test of time provided that you continually 
revisit the above-noted steps and ensure that your website is 
always one step ahead of your competition (who have noticed you 
climbing and succeeding as you would notice others climbing up 
around your ranking).

Now it's time to turn off your computer, take your partner out 
and have a great week(end). You have a lot of work to do to 
maintain and build on these rankings but the hardest part is 
over. Congratulations!

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Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning 
(http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/). He has been optimizing and 
ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of 
success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may 
have about your website and how to get it into the top positions 
on the major search engines.
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