CNC Topsites

In this article we have already covered the importance of inbound links to your site but often just as important as inbound links is the way in which sites link you. What I mean by this is that there are a number of ways in which a website can send you visitors. They can link you via an picture they can link you via a text link that says ‘Click Here’ or they can link you via ‘Your Site Name’ and the link in itself can be very different, for most sites you can access the same page using a number of variations of the same address. For many sites www.yoursite.com will load the same page as if you were linked with the address http://www.yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com/index.html or just index.htm or index.php or even http://yoursite.com all of them will in general load the same page yet to many search engines these are essentially different sites, so it is important to endeavor to keep a relatively consistent inbound link structure to really try and put as much support behind one address – generally your homepage. This also applies to with which words an inbound link uses to link your site meaning you want your inbound links to contain your main keywords. In many cases most inbound links will be in the form of the fellow webmaster using your site title which hopefully will contain your main keyword/s in it. For example (sticking with Waldo’s World of Warcraft site) Waldo doesn’t want site link him using the keywords ‘Waldo’s Site’ or ‘Click Here’ for Waldo’s Site. He would much prefer the inbound link to be link to be something to the effect of ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft Hints and Tips’ or ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft Site’ as these have more relevant keywords that Waldo would be optimizing his site for, and once again it is best to try and get as many of the inbound links as possible to be to similar effect rather than an assortment of variations. Some might think that this is putting all your eggs in one basket but when it comes to search engines your greatest returns will come from being ranked in the top 5 of search engine results for a major keyword. Having one site that is ranked say 3rd is better than 3 sites that are ranked 14th, 18th and 27th for various keywords and pages within your site.

In addition to trying to have your inbound links all link to the same address or page (often the homepage) with a somewhat similar phrase it is important to realize that your support for your homepage will also be dispersed throughout your site as long as you sub-sections are linked from your main page, underlining the importance of a good navigation system and potentially sitemap. What is meant by this is say all your inbound links are pointing to one particular page of your site (your homepage) with a fairly consistent keyword or phrase used to link your site you will find that the benefits of doing this will disperse through your whole site. For example having your homepage have a Google PR of 5 will often mean that for the majority of your sub-sections, like the Waldo’s Picture Gallery, will see the benefits of being linked by this quite well supported page and you will probably find that sub-sections will receive a Google PR of 3 or 4 as a result of being linked by such a supported site. This same principle applies when visitors search for say ‘World of Warcraft’ and get to ‘Waldo’s World of Warcraft’ when they get there they will see that Waldo’s site may actually offer a great number of sections for which they didn’t search yet may still visit and find interesting, so by having one main and popular page the sub-sections will in turn see the benefits of that popularity. So with this noted it is important to that be focused ad specific about the types of keywords and pages you are targeting/marketing and in being consistent you should see an improvement in all the sections of your site, not just the ones that are the focal point of your search engine optimization.

Another important search engine factor is your site title. Your title wants to be inviting, relevant and containing your main keywords or phrases that people will type into a search engine. For example a site title for a World of Warcraft site that is focused around tips and hints for the game of World of Warcraft the site title shouldn’t be “Home Page”. Your rankings would be better served if was something along the lines of “Waldo’s World of Warcraft Tips and Hints Home Page” that way you also have some of the sites majorkeywords in the title of your page. It is also important to change the title of your sub-pages within a site so that each page title is relevant to the content on that page. For example if Waldo also has a pictures section he might change the title for his picture gallery pages to “Waldo’s World of Warcraft Tips and Hints Picture Gallery” that way if someone was to search for World of Warcraft Pictures his page would be relevant than if he was to just have the title “Waldo’s World of Warcraft Tips and Hints” or just “Picture Gallery” as his page title. Adapting each page’s title, description andkeywords tags to the content on the page is a good habit to get into as it can make the difference between an average ranked site and a well ranked site.

Site’s meta tags, description and keywords, used to be of much greater significance in search engines rankings in the past but these days they are of reduced importance, yet are probably not that insignificant to neglect. In actual fact they still serve as a means for rankings for many search engines, albeit the old and less popular search engines, and whilst they my not be as popular they no doubt can make a difference. Your meta description actually still does play a partially significant role in that many search engines still opt to display a site’s meta description when ranking a site in the search results, so a well worded description could be exactly what gets a visitor to your site. You can find the meta tags within the head tags of your sites page source. It has been of debate as to what is the best way to listkeywords in your meta keywords, but the method at which we follow here is one where you list the keywords out with no spaces between them (ie. Online,search,engine,optimization,meta,tags… etc). If you go up to the menu bar of this window (assuming you are running Internet Explorer or FireFox) and click “View” then click on the “Source” or “Page Source” option you will see the meta tags of this page within the head tags which should be located very near to the top.

Whilst you want to get your major keywords in the title and description tags it is also important to try and keep them clear and logical as the title and description you give each page is also what comes up in a search engine so you want to make sure that they aren’t too random or full of inappropriately positionedkeywords for the sake of fitting them in. After all there is no point being ranked in the top five of Google if no one is going to click your link because the site title and description look rubbish. It is also prudent to note that you can’t just go throwing every word you can think of in your title, description andkeywords . Most search engines will only read a certain number of characters before ignoring the remainder of what is written. A rule of thumb that I personally go by is aiming for not much more than 70 characters for my title, 250 characters in my description and 300 characters worth ofkeywords. With this noted search engines traditionally place a higher value on keywords which occur first, and seeing you want to make sure that those search engines factor those important keywords it’s best to try and fit your most important keywords in first which also makes sure they aren’t cut off by the search engines character limit.

Whilst Google PR will be a factor in search engine rankings there are many factors which are just as important if not more important in the overall position of your site in the search results. For most search engines these days other important factors include site content, site title and to a lesser but still important degree site age, description and the number of and keywords used by inbound links and alt tags of your images. All of these factors play a role in your position within search engine rankings. For Google, and many other search engines, the content of your site is particularly relevant, which is why the term ‘quality content is king’ has come about. It is important to note however that Google is always refining their system to improve and optimize their rankings to bring up the most appropriate sites possible. This means that content that is duplicated or isn’t unique or is largely from other sites and sources won’t be seen as ‘quality’