Improving your search engine rankings is not as easy as it used to be, as Google and other search engines employ more and more sophisticated algorithms to sort out the most genuinely useful sites from the artificially optimised ones. You may be tempted to fork out £15 of your hard-earned cash to pay for one of these services which offer to submit your site to thousands of different search engines and directories, usually with poor results. Don’t be seduced! With a little careful work, it is still possible to boost your rankings by making careful changes and additions to your site.

Follow the Rules

Google is increasingly wise to search engine spamming techniques. A meaningless page of popular keywords unrelated to the actual content of your site will quickly get you banned as a spammer. If your site is full of that sort of junk, get rid of it; it’s doing you more harm than good.

Content

Google is looking for relevant content; results are ranked in order of relevancy. Decide which keywords are most likely to get targeted traffic to your site, and then make sure you integrate these keywords naturally at least once into every page of your site. Don’t go overboard, though, or you’ll get caught for spamming.

Links

Your site will be ranked as more important by Google if it is linked to by lots of other relevant sites. The anchor text of the links is also important: if your site is about Domain Name Registration, you want the anchor text of the links to your site to be "domain name registration" (not "John Smith’s Domains").

Directories

Although search engines are more popular than directories, it is worth submitting your site to Dmoz, Yahoo!, JoeAnt, Business.com and so on.

Good luck with search engine optimisation – ultimately, the hard work will pay off.

Author: Natalie Catchpole