Search engines change their page ranking and relevancy formulas frequently to keep sites from artificially boosting their rankings above where they would normally be based on their content. The trick that works to boost your ranking today, may actually hurt your ranking in the future based on changes that are made.
One example of this is the keywords meta tag. Some web sites stuffed popular keywords into their keywords meta tag to boost their rankings though the site contents had nothing to do with the keywords entered. Search engines did rank such sites higher for a period of time. However, search engines gain users by providing quality results when visitors enter search terms and thus search engines use all means possible to identify, track, and prevent sites from manipulating search results. Thus, most major search engines no longer use the keywords field since it is prone to abuse. (See "Death of a Meta Tag" article)
So, with constantly changing methods of ranking, we cannot provide you with a set of steps to ensure your site will appear in the first page of search results. We can however provide a series of guidelines that, in general, search engine experts agree should help to boost your rankings:
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Build a quality site—This may seem obvious but a site that looks professional and offers a good experience for visitors will get more traffic, more referrals and in the end higher rankings. Don't submit a work in progress or publish your site before it is truly ready to be seen.
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Get big—sites with over 100 pages will attract more attention from search engines looking for sites with quality content. A hundred pages is not a magic number that you have to hit but you should build unique pages for each product or each article on your site.
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Say something—sites with frequently updated and new content rank higher in search engines typically. If, for example, your store sells aromatherapy bath soaps and candles, you could have an article about the benefits of various scents and the influence they have on well-being and attitude. You could also publish testimonials from your customers on the use of your products as you receive them. As such, your site will become a destination for readers that may then become buyers.
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Use keywords not only as a tag—Choose non-competitive keywords and include them in your page titles, description, headings, and in the body content of the page. Search engines like when your keywords appear more than once on a page, but if they appear too many times and you could be penalized for trying to spam the search rankings. You can choose a page title for your store home page and other non-product pages and add this to the title field in the Variables of the Store Editor. For your product pages you should try and include a page title specific to the product's keywords/keyphrases. When creating the names of section pages (pages that display items), include keywords if possible in the names.
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Exchange links—include links to sites similar (but not necessarily competitive) to your own. Send an email asking for a link exchange. Some sites may say yes and some may say no. The more you get (as long as they are quality sites) the better off you will be.
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Get involved and get your name out there—if you have a store selling crafts, read and participate in popular forums on this topic. Many will let you include links to a website in your forum signature. When the forum gets crawled by search engines, your link should get picked up as well. Don't put your link in postings on non-commercial message boards however if this is against the policy of the owner. You could do more harm than good. However, if you have a wealth of knowledge to share, you can become a leader that others will look to for answers and possibly referrals for products or services.
To learn more about submitting your store to search engines, we recommend Search Engine Watch, an unbiased, up-to-date resource for search engine news, submission tips, and strategies.
To suggest your site for a listing in the Yahoo! Directory, you'll need to use the Yahoo! Directory Submit service. ( Note: The Yahoo! Directory is not a search engine -- placement and inclusion are determined by Yahoo!'s editorial staff.)
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