SEO Smart Toppers and Running a Membership Site
With more and more people creating websites, it becomes more difficult for websites to reach the top of the search engines. When running a membership website, getting to the top of the search engine can be very important to the success of your site. To get there, there are some ways to get there.
[Keep in mind while reading, that not everyone thinks that being in the top 10 is necessarily the best thing. There are some studies that show that just being in your 40's is good enough, especially since most people will take their time and look around a bit, especially since more people are getting high-speed internet and don't have the same time limits as dial-up connections. As such, being the seventh or eighth site someone looks at can actually be better than being the number one site. As usual, your results will vary.]
The key to search engines starts with designing your website. When a web designer marks up a site, one of the last things to mark up is the meta tags that search engines use to determine where the site will go in the search engine's archives. The search engine will index the site based on any other text that can be found on the site; The best search engines will highlight the text as it is used when sites appear. However, an additional check is underway:
The search engine will compare the meta tags to the text, and the better the link, the better the site will perform on that search engine's results page. This is because, in the early history of the Internet, a lot of people would put the entire dictionary into the meta tags of their sites in order to appear in as many search engines as possible. As such, it was one of the first things that was addressed as search engines became more and more complex.
The other is to have many links to your site and reduce the number of checkouts. Your best ally here is the discussion board, and the more famous that board is, the better. If you can find a discussion board related to your membership site, and post there often, you will do well in search engines, especially if your site is in your signature (that little text at the end of posts). If you can become a person of interest in that panel, the search engines most likely to index this site will be indexing your site.
Of course, banner exchanges should also be considered, especially if the site you're linking to is more successful than yours (remember you want the link to be inbound, not outbound). If you can find a great exchange program, your site will feel the effects. If you find a way to advertise on a popular site, even if you have to pay for the privilege, doing so will be worth it.
Anything you can do that draws attention to your membership site will help increase your standing in the search engines. If you can give your membership site positive attention, that will be much better. You should do everything you can to spread the word about your site, and do it often!