At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

Below are 4 components that affect your search engine ranking.

1. Title Bar – The title bar is the colored bar or tab in your browser that is just above the top of your page. The title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

To change your page’s title bar, you will need to access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. The title tag is located near the top of the page. Type in your desired title between the two title tags: <title>Your Text</title>.

2. Content – The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words.

3. Meta Tags – Next we come to what are called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find the meta tags on your page, you must again view the code. Follow the same steps as listed above for checking your title tag. The meta tags are located beneath the title tag. A meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. Following the = sign should be a list of keywords pertinent to that particular page.

If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put it in. This may not do a lot for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

4. Link Popularity – Link popularity is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to on your links page. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

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This article may be distributed freely on your website, as long as this entire article, including working links and this resource box are unchanged. For more tools, tips, and tricks of the trade, go to: www.elitewebstrategies.com – Empowering You to Empower Your Business. Copyright 2007 Larry Lang All Rights Reserved. Lang Enterprises Inc.