The topic of ranking high in search engines is widely discussed in the web. Just a quick search will yield a plethora of results. They have one common flaw, maybe not a flaw but a bias, though: they usually assume English is the only language. To some extent, they are right, English
is the language of the world wide web.
However, there still are a lot of blogs and sites written in their native languages and little has been said about optimization (a term I do not favor, which almost always brings manipulation to my mind) and the best strategy to achieve a good ranking with cyber-crawlers. I have a few non-English blogs and want to share my observations with you, in order of weight they carry.
One of the most important factors for ranking well is the time you cover the story, the earlier the better. If you succeed in making them spiders pick up your story as soon you publish it, you will have a guaranteed spot in SERPs, i.e. search engine results pages.
Since you want your article to be discovered by search engines soon after you publish it, posting frequency becomes a prerequisite to the item above. When bots find out that your site is updated daily, they usually scape your site at least once a day. If you can keep the habit of updating your e.g. blog every day, your efforts will not be wasted.
- Schedule some articles in advance
If you want to stick to the recommendation of daily posting, keeping three or four pre-written articles handy becomes a necessity. They need not be super original, hot content articles, but remember: you have to post daily and you are only a human. So write them when you have the time and keep them in a scheduled status. When a hot story comes up, insert and publish it right away and move the scheduled ones forward by changing their dates. This way your stock will remain intact and will not deplete.
- Build quality outbound links
You heard it right. The outbound links in your hot articles must point to authority sites and be as close as possible to the original source. One link per post should suffice.
Using meaningful titles will not only help you rank high but also encourage people to click them in SERPs. Think them over. Do not unnecessarily stuff them with keywords.
- Fill in the alt tag of your images
Giving a descriptive explanation to your images is not only good netiquette, it is also a recommendation of W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. People using text browsers or with disabilities will benefit from correct and to the point image descriptions, and so will you.
- Use a natural language in post body
Do not unnecessarily tweak your style in order to follow an obscure advice of a nobody. Humans will read the things you write, not robots. What is the purpose of getting found if nobody can read your articles?
Also important is finding the balance between "People will look for this" and "very few have written about it." Fall one way and you'll be among many, fall the other and nobody will find your site. It's a tough battle to fight, but ultimately one which you need in order to succeed.
ReplyDeleteA healthy mix seems to be the ideal solution and I really know what you mean. I have a blog about antiques and artwork limited to Middle East only. When people incidentally search something related, it always rank well, but very few people can come up with those keywords.
ReplyDeleteI made the above list specifically for non-English blogs where anything hot and important all around the world is to be translated. And being close to the source and covering the story before media is very hard to beat search wise. Normally local big media will pick it up from foreign media and there is a lag until locals cover the story. This period is to be exploited in order to be succeeded.
Let us take the case of popular science articles, or the popularized form of scientific research papers. While the local media is unaware of the research (let us assume CNN or FOX has not covered it), you can have the RSS feed of their public releases. This will ensure a good ranking because:
1- You will be among the few covering it first
2- You will be linking to the original research paper instead of CNN or whatever.
Yes you are correct, I forgot the assigning of tags to images more often
ReplyDeleteAlthough I did not go into detail in the post, topical images that are properly described with an alt tag not only is a good optimization technique, it also enhances user experience.
ReplyDeleteThis post is so helpful! I am still learning about how to rank higher in search engines and there is so much I do not understand. This was very clear and well written. I didn't even think about things like using image tags. Thanks so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nessa. Image alt tags are really important for people with a poor vision or who have to use different types of browsers for any reason. It is a win/win situation really. You make your site more accessible for them and it automatically becomes better indexable by search engines.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. I find that in order for me to rank high in search engine with my posts, in addition to what you said, are the following:
ReplyDeleteWhen I submit my posts only to the major social bookmarking sites like DIGG, Reddit, Delicious and Stumble Upon - I rank high. I don't even bother with the other social bookmarking sites.
It is necessary for me to use a keyword throughout my posts. SEO is very important for search engines, and I find that if I sprinkle the keyword throughout my blog posts I rank higher.
It is not possible for me to create new blog posts every day. However posting daily is important, so I do utilize the free article sites that are availble. I simply look for an article that has to do with my blog.
Jolie
I especially liked the idea of utilizing free article sites. I am aware that posting daily is a tough if not impossible task but it is necessary to make search engines behave and crawl your site daily. So, grabbing a number of articles from similar sources and scheduling them in your blogging software is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteAs far as social bookmarking or networking sites are concerned, there really is no need to use all of them. Which one most will ask? Well, it really depends on your niche. For example, my experience with Reddit is such that it is very good for computer and internet related blogs. Diigo, on the other hand is useful for scientific and research oriented sites. It all depends on the user base of the network.