There are several ways to improve your websites search engine rankings through tested and legitimate methods. Your own website's ranking on various search engines is an important element of your overall marketing campaign. It is unfortunate that the Internet is filled with many dishonest webmasters trying to improve their link popularity by faking out the search engines. As with anything else, there is good and bad news.

First, the good news. Search engines have figured this very problem out and are now on guard for "spam" pages and any sites that have increased their rankings by "black hat" methods. Whenever a search engines finds such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine's index.

Now the bad news. Some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these "web page criminals". Your own web pages may be in danger of being caught up in this "spam" net and could be tossed from a search engine index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such terrible treatment. There are many things you can do and lots of things you should be sure NOT to do which will prevent this.

The methods employed to improve your websites search engine rankings might just seem like rocket science to you, so many people have avoided dealing with this issue entirely. I can tell you that a high search engine ranking for your website is extremely essential if you have even the slightest desire to actually succeed in your online business. To succeed online, there is no way you can continue to avoid this important issue.

Easily 85% of people (or more) are looking for products, goods and services on the Internet using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. As such, the idea of optimizing your pages to get high search engine rankings to attract targeted customers to your site will be even more important. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website will be. That is what search engine optimization (SEO) is all about.

It is completely possible to immerse yourself in all the technical information available online about this one thing alone - to figure out how to optimize your webpages to achieve higher rankings. You can look at a few simple items on your pages and make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings in time. It is also possible to go as far as paying to have this done for your professionally if you so choose.

So, what can you do to increase and protect your search engine ranking? Well, for one thing you can: increase your link popularity. Almost all search engines use some form of link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to as well as the amount of links that you have coming back to you. It is important that you be careful about which web sites you choose to link to. Check and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven't linked to a "bad neighborhood".

Other things to do: change the tags on your webpage, such as the title bar and meta tags. To increase your search engine rankings, the words on your title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases. Avoid repeating any keyword more than once in the title bar, and make sure that identical words are never next to each other. Concerning meta tags, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use these meta tags in their overall ranking formula.

Next, check your website content. Search engines usually list sites that contain lots of quality content. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site. Aim to have about 250 words or more on each individual page.

A few things to definitely avoid to protect your search engine rankings include: keyword stuffing. What is this you might ask? This is where you deliberately add huge amounts of the same keywords over and over throughout your web pages. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the text flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly.

Another evil trick that dishonest webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. For example, webmasters have made the keywords the same color as the background color of the page, so that you cannot see these words with the human eye. As soon as a search engine perceives the use of hidden text the page will be penalized.

The last "black hat" technique I'll tell you about is called "cloaking". Cloaking is when the server sends a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is said to be "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic. This trick tries to deliberately raise up the web site's search engine ranking. As such, search engines have responded to this by imposing steep penalties on any web sites using this method.

You must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your websites search engine ranking and you must be equally diligent in avoiding being unfairly penalized. Monitor your site closely and always avoid any appearance of trying to artificially boost your search engine rankings.

Search engine rankings are tremendously important for any successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you spend a lot of money on a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above yourself. Don't ignore any of the all-important marketing factors in Internet marketing. There are many things to do and probably just as many not to do. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking is, the more quality customers will be directed your way and the more traffic and sales you will ultimately have.

Copyright 2007 ? Debbie Ray ? All Rights Reserved