Top 5 Tips for Increasing Your Search Engine Rankings
Summary : According to Pierre Zarokian, �In the past couple of years, many of the major search engines have shifted their ranking algorithm to give higher preference to those sites that are more popular by having many links to them or having links from important sites.
CPU Review (www.cpureview.com) recently sat down with search engine optimization (SEO) expert Pierre Zarokian. Pierre is president of Submit Express (www.submitexpress.com) - which was founded in 1998 to provide search engine optimization for medium-sized and larger businesses that need to achieve top rankings within the search results at the major search engines. Submit Express specializes in the optimization of websites in competitive markets.
According to Pierre Zarokian, "In the past couple of years, many of the major search engines have shifted their ranking algorithm to give higher preference to those sites that are more popular by having many links to them or having links from important sites. This is called Link Popularity. Since, Link Popularity is a major ranking factor these days, most my tips below are geared towards this issue, rather than other criteria such as site content."
Tip #1 - Make Sure that You Get Listed With Yahoo!
If you're not listed with Yahoo! you should go ahead and pay for the Yahoo! Directory submission. This will set you back around $300 annually. Getting a Yahoo! listing will help your Google page rank. Having a link from a site such as Yahoo! , which itself is a popular site is very beneficial. Remember that Quality is better than Quantity.
Tip #2 - Submit to All the Other Directories, Especially the Dmoz Directory
The Dmoz Directory (www.dmoz.com) also known as the Open Directory Project contains search results that are reviewed and categorized by human editors in a way similar to Yahoo! The results are popular among a variety of search engines and power various other listings. Therefore, getting listed at Dmoz.com can have a great trickle down effect. Recently, DMOZ has been having problems with accepting new listings via their submission form. However, I urge all webmasters to keep checking and submit when the form is working. Two other directories worth getting listed in: business.com and jayde.com.
Tip #3 - Create a Large Volume of Inbound Links (But Only the Right Kind!)
Make it a point to initiate link exchanges with other relevant sites - but don't bother exchanging links unless the partner site has a Google page rank. It is best if the exchanging site has a Google page rank of at least 2 or 3. Pages that have a page rank under 2 have little impact on your search rankings. You can observe any site's page rank by downloading the Google toolbar at: http://toolbar.google.com. Again, remember that Quality is better than Quantity. You should also try to find sites with topics related to your website to trade links with.
