Niddy's dashboard

Some thoughts on how to get top ranking search engines:

1. Choose your keywords carefully

Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/Key... It is a free tool from Google. You will be able to find more specific keywords that can better describe your site.

You can also try this free software from http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/...

2. Find your market

Download Google Toolbar from http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/t... From this tool bar you can see your competitors' page rank.

3. Look at your competitors' source code
View your competitors' source code allows you to see if they have efficiently performed on page search engine optimization. You do not need to be a programmer to do this. All you need to look at are "title", "keywords" and "description" tags. I'm not suggesting to copy thier tags but learn from them and use the keywords tool from Google to help you build better keywords for your site.

4. Create a relevance title
Your title tag should include top 3 keywords. From many articles I read, it said that your title should not be more than 95 characters and should not have no more than 3 commas. Having more than 3 commas in your title, some search engine may consider more than 3 commas as spam.

5. Create a useful keywords
There are some suggestions to have about 15-20 keywords in your meta-keywords. Do not overuse or repeat your keywords. For example, "Thai recipes" is already a good keywords. I should not add "latest Thai recipes." Use Google keywords tool to help you find good keywords.

6. Create a short, concise description
Your description should include most of your keywords. Description can be upto 255 characters, avoid using more than 3 commas. Also try to remove prepositions like "and" as this will only hurt your search engine optimization. The fewer, more relevant the words, the higher your search engine ranking will be.

7. Add meta-robots
Add <meta name="robots" /> It tells search robots to index the page and follow the links. Of course there are other combinations if you like to use, for example, "index, nofollow", "noindex, follow" and "noindex, nofollow"

8. Body content
- Use <h1> <h2> ... tags to highlight your most relevance keywords.
- The body content of your Web page should be rich with keywords and relevant content. You should have each keyword appear at least once for every 1-2 paragraphs. Do not stuff your content with keywords. Do not over or Under use keywords!
- For images, give your image a good title and description (providing title and alt tags for images).

9. Add Google Analytics
Get Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/ It is a great tool to have. It tells you lots of information.

10. Site map
Add site map in your footer. Search engines love site map because it help them to find links easily.

11. Validate your site
Your code should have valid html and doc type. If you are using firefox, install web developer 1.1.6 and Html Validator 0.8.5.2 Or you can validate your site online at http://validator.w3.org/

12. Seach engine submission
Submitting your site directly to the search engines can take weeks or months to get your site listed. If you like to here're some links:

Google : http://google.com/addurl.html (require an account)
Yahoo : http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/r... (require an account)
MSN : http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submi...
Open Directory Project : http://dmoz.org
B2B : http://jayde.com

The best way to achieve high search engine rankings for new Web sites is to get listed on top ranking pages that are relevant to your Web site's content. These high ranking pages are often optimized on a weekly or even daily basis. Every time the site is indexed your link will appear and the search engines will automatically list your site in its index.

To do this you need to search for Web sites indexed by search engines and get them to link to you. You will need to write article(s) relevant to your site. At the bottom of the article you include your web page URL to get picked up by the search engines.

Here's a list of the most popular article directories:

1. GoArticles.com
2. Ezinearticles.com
3. ArticleCity.com
4. Certificate.net/wwio
5. Amazines.com
6. Articledashboard.com
7. Article-directory.com
8. Submityourarticle.com/articles
9. Magportal.com
10. Isnare.com
11. Pubs.acs.org/hotartcl
12. Article-hangout.com
13. Webarticles.com
14. Articlecube.com
15. Article-buzz.com

Some article directories may not apply to your business, so you may need to browse around the site at first. I have started to write articles and submitted to 5 different article sites. Your article will not be posted right away. It needs to be reviewed and gets approval.

13. Ask a website to link back to your site
If you know someone that would put a link to your site, do so. If you don't, you can certainly write to them and ask.

14. Tell your family and friends.

For now, we can't really do anything about meta-keywords, meta-robots. I'm waiting for Synthasite to add these features. As for site map, I can do it now but I am not sure if I should follow the Google's site map guidelines.

Don't try to win over search engines, do the best you can and let them find you.
I did everything I can and now I'm going to wait and see. You're welcome to visit my site at http://thaicookinghouse.com

Good luck to all.

Niddy
Learn Authentic Thai Cooking at http://thaicookinghouse.com
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