Improve Your Search Engine Rank with Rank.org.uk

Improve your search engine rank in the search results for Google, Yahoo, Altavista, MSN and AOL search engines!

The rank.org.uk site started life as a search engine optimisation project between Leeds Metropolitan University, Austen Jones (of me-too.net ltd) and Saftronics Limited (see project background). The project was so successful that the proven methodology employed to boost the search engine rank of business websites has been extended such that the SERPs (search engine results positioning) of other bsuinesses can now be significantly improved in a reliable and cost-effective fashion.

Search Engine Rank FAQ:

1. What is search engine rank / SERP?
2. What are the main search engines?
3. Why is my search engine rank important?
4. What can I do to improve my search engine rank?
5. Why do I need to use Rank.org.uk to improve my search engine rank?
6. What do I do next to improve my site search engine rank?

1.) What is search engine rank / SERP?

When you use a search engine such as google, AOL, MSN etc and perform a search (i.e. type some words in) the search engine results are the list of sites that the search engine believes to be most relevant to the words that you type in. The search engine results themseves are ordered by relevancy i.e. the search engine displays the sites that it thinks are most likely to meet your needs at the top of the page. Your site's search engine rank therefore is the position in the search engine results that your site is listed for a particular search term / phrase.

Some people refer to this search engine ranking as SERP which stands for search engine results position.

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2.) What are the main search engines?

There are quite literally thousands of search engines, meta-search engines and directories that people use to find websites like yours (and mine!). However, the vast majority of searches are performed using a relatively small set of search engines, these include:

• Google search engine
• AOL search engine
• MSN search engine
• Yahoo directory and search engine
• Hotbot search engine
• Altavista search engine
• Lycos search engine

The search engine that is currently used the most is... Google! This may change!

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3.) Why is my search engine rank important?

Your search engine rank is vitally important if you want your business to get the most out of the internet. Millions of people, end consumers and businesses alike, perform millions of searches each and every day looking to buy pretty much every type of good and service imaginable. The trend is growing and increasingly more and more businesses are turning first to the web to source new suppliers and forge partnerships - if your webiste is difficult to find then it is like advertising in a magazine that nobody reads. Having a website that scores in the top 10 is like having an advert on the front page of a boradsheet.

If your website ranks highly for your target search terms (i.e. the words your customers would ideally type in to find you) then you have won half the battle. Prospective customers will then come to your site and if they like what they see they will contact you. View your website as a 24 hour, 7 day a week sales team.

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4.) What can I do to improve my search engine rank?

There are a number of very basic things that you can do to improve the search engine rank of your website, first off you need to submit your site to the search engines so they know it exists and so they will have a look at it from time to time and include it in their index / database. You should also make sure that the pages in your site actually include the words that your prospective customers are likely to search for! This sounds obvious but you would be suprised at the number of sites that are visually fantastic (lots of nice looking graphics and flash animations etc) but have very little textual content and therefore perform appallingly from a search engine rank perspective... this is the equivalent of constructing a wonderful storefront down a quiet cul-de-sac. Much better business sense to ensure you have your storefront on a busy High Street don't you agree?

To make matters worse all the search engines use different algorithms to calculate the ranking of websites in their results pages for a particular search. This means that optimising web pages to improve their rank in a particular search engine is often done at the expense of the rank of those pages in other search engines! It is often best therefore to have a balanced approach to search engine optimisation that takes into account the vagaries, likes and dislikes of all the main search engines such that your pages will do well right across the board. There are a number of important aspects of web page design that your web designer should pay due attention to in making a search engine friendly and high ranking website. These design aspects include the following:

• target keyword selection - the keywords and phrases that you are optimising for
• target keyword density - how close together the keywords / key phrases are within the page (i.e. proximity)
• target keyword frequency - how often your keywords appear in the page (too low a keyword density and you will slip down the rankings and too high a keyword density and you will be penalised for 'keyword spamming'!!)
• title tag text - the web page's title
• H1 heading tag text - text contained within the page's H1 tag
• keywords meta tag - an opportunity to put some of the most relevant keywords and phrases into your page's meta tags
• descriptions meta tag - a summary of what the page is about
• image alt tags - text that describes the content of image files
• anchor text - the words contained within hyperlinks
• frames - don't use framesets if at all possible
• domain name / path name / file name - if some of your keywords are included in your domain name and path name or file name of a web page this will count in its favour... this is one of the reasons why it is commonplace for many businesses to have a number of websites rather than just one. (Registering a domain name and getting web hosting for it are cheaper than you may think!)
• text content - content is king... if you make your content useful and informative not only are you likely to benefit from higher search engine rankings (for a number of reasons) but you are also more likely to have people revisit your website again and again thus cementing your business name firmly in their minds.
• ...there are many other aspects too but they are beyond the scope of this page.

Oh, did I mention that the results ranking algorithms that are used by the search engines change over time? So if you rank highly in a search engine this month for a particular search term then this is not a guarantee that you will next month! Is your head hurting yet?

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5.) Why do I need to use Rank.org.uk to improve my search engine rank?

Basically...

• we have an effective and proven methodology for search engine optimisaing that will increase targeted traffic to your website from the main search engines - fact!
• we have the search engine expertise that your web designer doesn't - despite his protestations to the contrarary! Web design and search engine optimisation are different... would you let a tree surgeon remove your appendix? Would you let a surgeon loose in your garden!?
• we undertake optimisation work with a very quick turnaround time allowing you to start benefiting from more traffic asap rather than having to wait
• we leave your existing website intact! We design optimised web pages that supplement your website not replace it
• affordable, risk free and guaranteed results!

We have an effective and proven methodology to search engine optimisation that will increase targeted traffic to your website from the main search engines! We guarantee this - if we don't deliver more traffic to your website from the search engines within six weeks you can have a full and immediate refund without question!

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6.) What do I do next to improve my site search engine rank?

If you want to put us to the test then contact rank.org.uk today for prices - remember, all you can lose is potential customers by not acting now!

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Please contact Austen Jones with any questions, comments or suggestions.

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