How To Rank Your Articles Higher in Search Engines

All of us, the authors, know that to enhance our sites' listings in search engines we need to do certain things and some of them are :

(a) get fresh content on our sites on regular basis
(b) get backlinks from high PR (page-rank) sites

Get Fresh Content:

Inserting RSS Feeds on related subjects is a great way to create automatic fresh content in a website. However, we can also put our own published articles in a section, say, 'My Articles'. Many authors aim to write at least one article every week. So, every week whenever search engine robots come to our sites, they can get fresh content.

Get Back-links:

Back-links are considered an important factor in search engine placements. When we submit our articles in article directories, we get a link back from those sites. Mostly all article directories have good PR (page rank). The benefit of submitting articles in article directories is that not only is there a fair chance of getting our articles published, but also our articles get published in many other web sites with our resource boxes. So, when different sites link to our site from a related page (the page where our articles are published), there are chances that search engines would look at our sites respectfully and rank us well. So, submitting articles to article directories is a good choice. We get link back from a page, which talks about related subjects.

Actually, upto this part, I have not talked about anything special. Authors write free articles knowing these features.

But, how many of our articles are positioned high in the search engines? If not, what could be the reason?

Outbound Links:

The another important factor of ranking high in search engines is 'Outbound Links'. Search engines consider this factor equally important as back-links. As back-links from related sites are important, outbound links to related sites are equally important. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why mostly all article directories have high PR. Because, in every article directory, there is a huge amount of outbound links. And each outbound link is sent out to a related site from a page where the subject is being discussed!

Sometimes we exchange links with related sites and both the parties put those link in a seperate pages. That 'links page' contains only links and links -- no content! So, how would search engines consider them as valid outbound links?

How can authors like me factor this element in our sites?

Not many of us would want to link out to sites which are of our competetors. But wait, article writers can do this wisely.

As I have discussed above, authors should publish their own articles in their own sites, before submitting them to article directories. There is a reason for this. When multiple sites publish our articles, the search engine finds duplicate content in large number of sites. Therefore, search engines list on top the site from where it got the article first. So, if we publish our own articles first on our sites, it is possible that our own sites would be listed on the top of all other sites that published our articles.

After submitting the articles to article directories, we should keep track of when our articles are published in those directories. Most of the directories inform us when when our articles get published. We must visit those sites and get the URLs of our articles.

Let us put the links of those pages in article pages of our sites. If we put, "These article is also published by :" with a list of links of the sites where those particular articles are published, we cleverly send out links to pages where our subject is discussed. This will definitely help us creating authenticated outbound links and rank well in search engines without hampering our businesses.

Subhendu Sen is the owner and the webmaster of The Web Content - an article directory, which uses XML/RSS feeds. Authors may also submit their articles at: http://www.thewebcontent.com