Great Rankings Released!

It's here! You'll have to forgive my excitement as I've been wanting to launch a newsletter for some time but until we were able to commit to producing a regular monthly publication I've had to hold off - but not any more!

So now it's here, what will Great Rankings do for you? The aim is simple - to help you better understand the Search Engines and how they work, so you can increase the amount of business you generate through your website.

To achieve this I'll be passing on tips and techniques that will not only help you improve your website's ranking on the Search Engines, but also the effectiveness of the website in converting visitors to prospects or customers. To help keep you up to date with various activities in the Search industry I'll also be reporting on some of the more interesting news on the Search Engines.

There's also a 'Your Questions Answered' section so if you have any questions or concerns about promoting your own website, drop me a line - I'll answer every question as best I can, and I may also publish some that will be of interest to a wider audience so don't hold back!

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Promoting your Website

To successfully promote your own website, you need to do four things

1. Find out what people look for in relation to your offering
2. Focus your website content on your services using what you found out in step 1
3. Make sure your website is designed to engage the visitor and achieve the website's goals
4. Build incoming links from other websites

Over the coming months I'll cover each of these sections in detail including how to use the tools available online for your keyword research, how to optimise your site for both the Search Engines and your visitors, getting incoming links and how to go about creating a site that will ultimately increase demand for your offering.

Being the first issue it would be very easy to just tease you with the promise of things to come, but I don't want to do that - do I? Of course not! So I'm going to jump straight into some of the things you should think about when creating content for your web page and focus on two of the most important areas when creating your website content.

Title Tags

Title tags (<title> </title>) do exactly what they say on the tin, they are used to give each page it's own title and are displayed in the top bar of the Browser window and the header for each page listed in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These are fundamental to achieving great rankings and should be carefully created for each page - you should aim to give every page a unique title that is specific to its content, but especially focus on those pages containing the topics you want to rank well for your chosen phrase. Here are some do's and don'ts for your title tags:

• Only use your main keywords.
• Do not include you company name (unless it's a well know brand or its the title for the 'about us' page.
• Don't try to use this to 'spam' the Search Engines by blatantly repeating your main keywords.

You should aim to keep your title to about 10 words or less although there is no predefined limit, most search engines stop after the first 10 words and often display less that this in the SERPs.

Headings, Emphasis and Bullet Lists

Just as they do for your readers, text in section headings, bold text or listed in bullet lists are highlighted to Search Engines and are given a greater weighting of importance than the rest of the page content. However, this does not mean that you can just make your entire page Heading 1. The point about emphasising text, and creating headings is to separate it from the rest of the text. If everything on a page was all a heading, then no one part would be any more significant than any other part. So use heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc) when it makes sense to do so, and will help add focus to your page content. Also use bullet lists and emphasis (making text bold) to pick out specific content within the main page body

NB: Most search engines do not read style sheets or page styles so you should use standard HTML tags when emphasising text or it will not be of any benefit.

In next months issue...

Next month I'll look at how best to pick your keywords/key phrases and what tools you are available to help you.

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Your Questions Answered

Undoubtedly, as you learn more about Website Promotion, you will have a number of questions in your quest for great rankings and in this section I'll post answers to some of your questions. If you have any concerns about anything to do with Search Engines and Website Promotion just drop me an email to simon@greatrankings.co.uk, you never know it may make the next issue of Great Rankings!

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NETsposure Joins SEMPO's UK Working Group

Along with 11 other leading experts in Search Engine Marketing in the UK, we are launching SEMPO's (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation) new UK working group.

The main goals of the group at this stage are to define the best route forward in establishing SEMPO in the UK including ensuring regular and open communications with the growing SEMPO UK membership and along with the other group members, I'll be working hard to raise awareness of the Search Marketing industry and the value it brings to any organisation with an online presence.

SEMPO is a non-profit professional association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing worldwide. The organization represents the common interests of more than 245 companies and consultants worldwide and provides them with a voice in the marketplace. For more information, or to join the organisation, please visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

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We're Moving

This month is our office move - or more to the point our office stay-put. We were planning to move into new offices this week, and had spent most of the weekend moving stuff in preparation of this Monday however due to the unquestionable wisdom of BT who conveniently lost all instructions to transfer our phone lines to the new location, so we've had to put the move back a couple of weeks while they sort themselves out!

When it happens in the next week or so, our new postal address will be:

Snuff Mill Warehouse, Park Lane, Bewdley, Worcestershire DY12 2EL.

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Search Engine News

Here are some links to some of the more interesting news topics to come out recently about the Search industry:

Ask Jeeves Serves It Your Way
Jeeves has launched the facility to store their own personal web pages database.

Search Marketing in Europe
Why marketers are turning to Europe for increased activity.

Swiss Army Knife Meets the Kitchen Sink
A great new add-on for your Web Browser that will save and monitor your favorite searches and keep track of breaking news at the same time.

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