The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself.

1. Content
Effective, professional, optimized Copywriting is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. With a thorough understanding of the language and grammatical conventions combined with intensive research, to find and exploit the market focus, one can move a website to the upper echelon of the “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page) in a methodical as well as ethical manner.

2. Analyze Web Logs.
Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content.

3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine.
Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim, which they have no intention of keeping, or they have an inside edge at Google, something which they will loose, quickly, when the honest folks at Google find out about it. The other option, that they will take the money and run, is worth mentioning here but I’ll be polite.

4. Some things are just plain silly.
You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on it’s own. Four (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web. As for any supposed benefit which may accrue from being listed in an obscure search engine in Botswana which specializes in safaris to the Kalahari Desert and receives 7 hits per day; well, you figure it out.

5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click.
While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service.

6. SEO is not witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism.
Neither does it require any special chants, ceremonial fires, or vestments, though some of us do like to howl at the full moon, on occasion. There are no “Top Secret” practices which a reputable SEO can not tell a client, a judge, or his mother, for that matter. The very nature of the Internet has always been cooperative and there is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with a heavy dose of time and money. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with.

7. Do-it-yourself SEO.
Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you. About one half of my own clientele do some part of the actual work themselves, or have their in-house dedicated personnel do it, after discussion of the goals and aims of the business/website, a thorough website analysis, comprehensive search phrase research, and focused instruction on the ways and means of achieving high SERPs. These preliminaries are followed up with a detailed program of suggestions and methods which the client can then implement themselves or hire others to perform. Average savings; 30-40%.

8. Phased Implementation.
While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow.

9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one. Accept that a steady upward movement, over time, will place you worlds ahead of a flash followed by a crash.

10. A thought to ponder.
At stake, in the race for the top, is the very existence of your website, your business, and quite possibly your reputation. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. In this case, not only is Ignorance not bliss, it could very well be the beginning of the end for your business.

11. All incoming links are not created equal.
Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good.

12. It’s more than just facts and figures.
The relationship between an online business and SEO is, perhaps, one of the closest of business relationships. In order to be effective, a SEO must know not only the facts and figures pertaining to the endeavor, but s/he must know something of the dreams and aspirations of the business principals. Things which don’t normally come out in a prospectus are often invaluable information when searching for the “right fit” into the complex world of the Internet. My own clients sometimes ask, due to the frequency of my calls and email in the early phases, “Am I your only client?” I usually laugh and say something to the effect that until I know your business almost as well as you do, yes, you are the only one that counts.

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What if a geek friend already did the on-page optimization and now you want to know how you can contribute to the “search engine goodness” of your website? Off-page optimization is the next step. And the results you will have to pine for are one-way backlinks. Why? This is how many of the major search engines such Google, Yahoo! and MSN rank websites. The more backlinks from relevant sites with good page rank, the merrier.

So how exactly do you gather backlinks? It’s not an easy task but it’s definitely less nerve-wracking than HTML if you are not the techie type. Here are some off-page SEO tips:

1. Article Marketing

Quality content has been discovered to be real king. Everyone is hungry for fresh and quality info and providing it will make backlinks go pouring in. It helps a lot to be a keen writer to be successful on this endeavor. Also, practise the proper way of using a resource box. It should only include a website that contains information relevant to the article you submit to article directories.

2. Forum Participation

Look for forums that are relevant to your website’s content and keep on sharing information that will be indispensable for the members of the forums. Your signature or that tag-along message at the last part of each of your posts is what will work for your off-page SEO campaign. Keep it simple and make sure that it conveys something about your website. Learn how to hyperlink to make it easy for the people who want to visit your site.

3. Blogging

Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEO experts. Aside from being easy-to-update, they don’t require a too formal tone, which is what many readers are into. Informal dialog which can be accomplished through readers leaving comments and the blog author replying to the comments is what also keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining a blog that’s again relevant to your website’s content will keep the search engines in touch with your site. Don’t forget to have a link on your main website from your blog.

The secret to be successful in carrying out these off-page SEO methods is to be consistent. Submitting quality articles to websites at least two to three times a week and regularly producing content for your personalized blog is a surefire way to make your website stand out. Forum participation should also be something done more frequently since it will not only help you up your website’s popularity with the search engines but also make you learn new stuff from other forum members’ participation. Also, if you discover that you don’t enjoy these stuff, there’s always a plan B – hire someone to do them for you!

Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR’S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.

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1. Get listed in more search engines. There are tons of them out there. There are also many free services that will help you get listed. Or just set aside some time to get it done yourself. Here is a free search engine submission site that will let you cycle through the top 100 search engines and get your site submitted.

2. Get listed in more directories. Again, there are a lot of them out there. Look for higher pagerank directories. Improvingrank.com has some listed by pagerank. Look on the left side of the homepage.

3. Clean up your html and check your links. You want the bots to have smooth sailing through your site. Use the tools on W3c.org and have a real person check them over too.


4. Get a few more links to your site. Make them relevant and at least the same pagerank as you.

5. Make your page filenames descriptive and keyword rich. Naming your page new_page_1.html is wasting an opportunity to do some SEO. Use names that describe the content and keep the keywords flowing.

6. Check your Title tags. You can use 90 – 100 characters in the title, so add some keywords. We know Google looks at them, and so do many more search engines.

7. Check your ALT tags. Searchbots can’t see pictures. Make sure you have ALT tags on all of your pictures, and make sure they are descriptive and keyword rich.

8. Rewrite your URL (anchor) tags. Good anchor tags (the text between the http: and /a tags) reinforce the message and key words of your site.

9. Go post in a few forums and put your website in your signature. Forums are a great place to put one way links. And you can help somebody out at the same time.

10. Put together a text based sitemap and put it on your site. There’s a lot of navigation that spiders can’t understand, such as flash, forms, java and javascript. Putting together a text-based sitemap gives the bots a way to navigate around the site.

Fifteen minutes every couple of days will make a huge difference in getting your rank higher.

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There are TONS of ways to build up your traffic. Here are some of the most common methods.

1. Learn Search Engine Optimization – this is probably the most important way that you want to get traffic and probably the hardest too. Search engine traffic is highly targetted traffic of people who are searching the web for a specific item. If they get to your site after searching for it, you’re almost guaranteed a sale or at least a “bookmark for later”. lot of ebooks on the subject

2. Trade links with other sites – It’s important to get your site name out there.
So trade links with several other sites, even your competitors! People really do look at those links pages and they will find their way to your site from another site.

3. Post on message boards – When you post on highly trafficked message boards, BE SURE to put your site link in your signature! This is a highly effective form of marketing, especially if the message board you are posting at is relative to your site content.


4. Use email signatures – Make it easy for your customers to contact you! When they write to you and ask for more information, be sure that you are using a signature with your site URL and name inside of it. That way if they want to retrieve it later, it’s easier for them than having to memorize your URL and open a web browser.

5. Join Yahoo Groups – This is pretty much the same as message boards. Join groups that pertain to your site’s content and advertise (but don’t spam!!) your site there.

6. Post on free classifieds sites – Sites like Craig’s List or other free advertising classifieds sites will accept your site for free! Just do a Google search for “free classifieds” and you’ll see a ton of sites come up where you can promote your site!

7. Buy ad space – If your monthly budget allows, you can buy some ad space for your site. Find another site that pertains to your site’s content and ask them what their advertising prices are.

8. Hold auctions – Ebay gets TONS of traffic a day, while you’re not allowed to post your site URL within your auction listings, you are allowed to put it in your “about me” page. So think about listing some of your products as auctions and advertise your URL.

9. Offline advertising – Get custom t-shirts, bumper stickers, car decals, etc made for your site URL. Then whenever you are out in public, you are passively advertising yourself!

10. Submit your site to directories – If your site is a site about “fishing” for
instance, do a Google search for “fishing directories” and see how many directories are out there that pertain to your subject matter. Most of these directories will allow free submissions.

11. Write articles – Writing articles that pertain to your site is another excellent way to get your site out there. Just write a short, informative article of 5-6 paragraphs and submit it to any site that accepts article submissions and make sure that your article includes a link back to your site in your “author biography”.

12. Submit press releases -  Or you can do a Google search for “submit press release” .

13. Have great interactive content – People will bookmark your site if you have interactive and dynamic content. Have polls, message boards, interactive games, news items, guest books, item of the day….whatever! Just make the site relevant and have good SUBSTANCE in your site content. Don’t overload it with silly animated graphics, sounds, etc. That just makes it look like you had nothing else to fill your site up with but this annoying stuff. And Flash intros are only good if you are two
years old and need to see flashing lights and colors. Most of all they are slow loading, and people generally click away if they see Flash.

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- Site Navigation

The navigation menu that appears on your website should include your page’s titles if possible. Also, your sites navigation should be consistent and on every page so that not only people may easily navigate your site, but search engine spiders as well.

- Choose Less Popular Keywords

Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some special keywords relative to your website. This is especially true if you are just starting to market your site on the web.

- Choose Related Links

Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely the links on your site are related to your site, the better the chances of being ranked well in search engines.


- Update Your Content

You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change. Search engine spiders give better rankings to sites that update content often.

- Don’t Oversubmit

You need to consider the fact that many search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions. Therefore, submit only once and don’t use a whole slew of submitting software.

- Subscribe To and Read Search Engine Relevant News.

Always be on a look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competitors.

When it comes to massive profitability, high search engine rankings can’t be beat. Keep on top of the game and you will be happy you did.

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