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Five Ways to Increase Your Rank in the Search Engines

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How high your site ranks in the search engines depends on how well your site is optimized with keywords, your PageRank and your content. But those aren't the only ways to increase your rank. You can do five more fundamental things to also boost your standing on results pages.

First, you need a sitemap. This makes it easy for the spiders to find your website and crawl around because it gives the spiders the information they need to crawl around your entire website. Having this map makes sure that the search engine has a current record of your pages and the content on those pages. Google has a sitemap program you can get for free to create your own sitemap and help make your site spider-friendly. Be sure to submit the sitemap to the search engines and include a link on it to your home page.

Second, make all your navigation HTML. You can navigate through your site with images or java script, but that's not what the search engines want to see. When you create your navigation in HTML, you have internal links throughout your website. The spiders like this consistency and can easily identify all your pages.

Third, optimize your page title. Your page title in search engine optimization is as important as your headline in your sales copy. It should explain what the page is about using the exact keywords you are trying to rank high with.

This title is for the spiders, and each page should have its own title tag optimized with the particular keyword that page is about. The page title is the heading of the page that appears in the top left of the browser window. It should be relevant to the page, and unique page titles for each page increases the chances your pages will be indexed correctly.

If all your pages have the same title, the spiders will think all your pages are the same and not bother to index your pages. That hurts your ranking. For instance, if your site is about training dogs, and you have one page teaching them to sit, one teaching them to stay and one teaching them to roll over, your page titles should reflect those differences:

--Dog Training Tips: Sit
--Dog Training Tips: Stay
--Dog Training Tips: Roll Over

You then have the major keywords as well as the specifics. When you do this, you make the spiders happy.

Fourth, optimize your meta tags. Meta Tags are not seen on your page but are the data included in the HTML header of web pages. They simply feed information to the search engines by cluing them in to the keywords your site is all about. To increase your rank, utilize the keywords and descriptions in this code.

Finally, one simple step that you don't want to overlook is actually submitting your website to the search engines. Their spiders may eventually find you even if you don't submit your sites, but this one step guarantees that your site will be crawled. Here are the three main search engines that you want to make sure you are listed in:

1. Google: All you have to do is enter your main URL. If you choose, you can add some keywords or a brief description of your site in the "comments" section.

2. Yahoo!: Here you have to register to get a Yahoo! ID, but the registration process is free as is the site submission process.

3. MSN: Once again, the only thing you need to do is enter your main URL.

By putting these five fundamental steps into action, you are sure to increase your visibility in the search engine rankings. When your site is more visible in these results, you get more traffic...for free!

About the Author

Glen Hopkins is a Best-Selling Author, Information Marketer, Speaker and Consultant. Glen specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines using specific systems that will allow you to work less and earn more. Get his List Building Report and Web Traffic CD (valued at $97) for FREE at: http://glenhopkins.name/>http://GlenHopkins.name

Five Ways to Increase Your Rank in the Search Engines

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