10 Quick Things You Can Do Today To Improve Your Search Ranking

You know all that extra time you have to work on Search Engine Optimization? [A little sarcasm there] Actually, I tried to put together a list of quick things you can do that will help you move a little higher in your Google or Yahoo results.

1. Get listed in more search engines. There are tons of them out there. There are also many free services that will help you get listed. Or just set aside some time to get it done yourself. Here is a free search engine submission site that will let you cycle through the top 100 search engines and get your site submitted.

2. Get listed in more directories. Again, there are a lot of them out there. Look for higher pagerank directories. Improvingrank.com has some listed by pagerank. Look on the left side of the homepage.

3. Clean up your html and check your links. You want the bots to have smooth sailing through your site. Use the tools on W3c.org and have a real person check them over too.

4. Get a few more links to your site. Make them relevant and at least the same pagerank as you.

5. Make your page filenames descriptive and keyword rich. Naming your page new_page_1.html is wasting an opportunity to do some SEO. Use names that describe the content and keep the keywords flowing.

6. Check your Title tags. You can use 90 - 100 characters in the title, so add some keywords. We know Google looks at them, and so do many more search engines.

7. Check your ALT tags. Searchbots can't see pictures. Make sure you have ALT tags on all of your pictures, and make sure they are descriptive and keyword rich.

8. Rewrite your URL (anchor) tags. Good anchor tags (the text between the http: and /a tags) reinforce the message and key words of your site.

9. Go post in a few forums and put your website in your signature. Forums are a great place to put one way links. And you can help somebody out at the same time.

10. Put together a text based sitemap and put it on your site. There's a lot of navigation that spiders can't understand, such as flash, forms, java and javascript. Putting together a text-based sitemap gives the bots a way to navigate around the site.

Fifteen minutes every couple of days will make a huge difference in getting your rank higher.