SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Promoting your website
I have a few sites I write blogs for and a couple of my own website. I have been working night and day to get them listed high. I have read a million different pages on how to choose my words. After a lot of hard work, I have managed to get quiet a few of my pages and sites to number one position and a few on the first page of the search engines.

So I thought I will share some of the tricks and tips I learnt through reading so many articles to save some time for my dear friends.

Firstly nobody can guarantee you positions in the search rankings. Search engines keep their search algorithms very secret and update them regularly to make sure they produce true and accurate results. To be honest with you, there are no set guidelines to guarantee you any positions.

The second thing to know is that SEO takes real hard work. You’re going to have to give it some thought and make changes to all the pages in your site. This will take time and you may want to adjust things after a few months as you start to see results. The Internet is a great potential market but you need to invest time and effort in marketing your site if you want it to be successful. SEO is a good way of doing this but like most things it doesn't always come easy.

Next, it's going to take time for your rankings to improve. Search engines can take months to even list your site and then further time to assign you a rank. They will then review your site periodically and check for updates but the frequency of this can vary. So don't expect too much too soon. Be patient, build your credibility and presence, and good things will come. Many sites that rank highly have been around a long, long time.

And finally, SEO isn't everything. There's never an excuse for not marketing your site in other ways if you're serious about getting it noticed. Traditional offline marketing, online marketing (banners or AdWords), putting your URL on letterheads, posting it on industry specific directories/message boards etc can all help and these actions will also support your SEO efforts too. So don't forget to look at other forms of marketing too.

Promoting your site has a lot to do with off page search engine optimization strategies. These strategies will develop back-links to your website as well as increase traffic and your authority in your topic area.

In terms of optimisation it’s important to know that search engines look for consistency and relevancy within a number of different areas of your in-page content and within your referral links. These include:

•The URL (or web address) of your page

•Your Page title in the HTML

•Your Keywords meta-data in the HTML

•Your Description metadata in the HTML

•Your page content, e.g. the text that is on your page, including headings (or section titles) which are treated differently from body text

•Links on your page, including the anchor text, e.g. the text on which the link is set

•Images on your page, including the name of the image file, and the link (if any) set on the image

•Referral links to your pages, including the anchor text of the referral link, e.g. a link on another site referring to your site.

Keywords are the words or phrases that you want people to be able to find you under when they do a search on the Internet. These are essentially the words or phrases that best describe your business and the things that people would think of when they are interested in your goods or services. The more specific the words or phrases match what you offer, the more likely it will be to drive people to your site.

1. Submit your website to the three major search engines

Submitting your site to a search engine does not mean you will be automatically included in the search engine's index. By doing this you alert the search engine to your websites presence and are added to a list of sites to be crawled.

Submit your site to Google, Yahoo and Bing or you can go to http://4jokerz.com/   where you will find the ones I have recommended plus some top directories you can submit to.

2. Verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap

We have an excellent tutorial that will step you through this process. Please see Google Webmaster Tutorial for instructions on verifying your site and submitting a sitemap.

3. Submit your site to Google Local Business Center

If you have a business you can submit your site to Google's Local Business Center Submitting your site to Google's Local Business Center is FREE! When potential customers search Maps for local information, they'll find your business. Here is a link to learn more about Google Local Business Center.

4. Do link exchanges

Link building is an extremely important part of SEO. The search engines will look at the amount of links that come into your site as well as the status of the sites that link to you (the amount of traffic those sites get). Although the search engines look more favorably on links that are not reciprocal, exchanging links is a great place to start!

•Find other websites that have the same topic as your site and send an email to the webmaster asking if he or she would like to do a link exchange. This is where you place a link on your site to them in exchange for a link on their site to you. Don't be too ambitious with this as big popular sites are not going to link to your site out of the goodness of their heart. Try to find sites of a similar size and subject to your own which will entertain the idea you helping each other.

•Ask your friends and family members with a website if they would like to exchange links.

•Write articles about your subject including a link to your site - any article must actually contain useful information otherwise it won't get published. So if you're an expert in the area you’re writing about and it is relevant to your site, give the article to other site owners who are likely to publish it with a link back to your site. Make sure the article contains some of your relevant keywords. (This may also be possible with useful contributions to blog articles or forums, but be very careful about link spamming - if you don't have anything genuinely useful to say, don't say it!)

And remember, while search engines are mechanical they are not stupid! They are in a constant battle with link spammers who attempt to manipulate ranking results for profit. Optimising your pages and encouraging genuine link backs from other relevant sites will help but getting involved in link spamming and other dodgy techniques such as spamming keywords or content can get your site black listed. So more isn't always best, make sure links, content and keywords are all genuine.

5. Submit your site to website directories

There are numerous directories on the Internet that accept paid and un-paid website submissions. You’ll be able to give your listing a title, short description and link to your website. Don’t ever pay someone to “submit your website to 200 directories,” this is not looked highly upon by search engines.

6. Get involved in social networking

A great way to develop a following for your website is to get involved in the social networking arena. Becoming active on social networking sites will bring traffic to your site as well as develop back links. The goal of this is to get social with others on the web while promoting your site at the same time.

A few hot social networking sites right now:

•Twitter.com

•Facebook.com

•Myspace.com

There are many more options including niche focuses social networking sites to get involved in.

7. Submit articles to article directories

There are many article directories on the Internet that accept un-paid submissions of articles for inclusion in their article database. When you submit articles you have written to an article directory you give other people permission to reprint your article in their Internet publications as long as the Author Bio is included with the links back to your website.

8. Consistently add more content

Building up more content on your site is an extremely important part of search engine optimization. When you add more content to your site you are:

•Providing visitors to your site a great reason to come back.

•Giving search engines a reason to visit your site often. Search engines want to keep the most updated version of sites in their index and they also want to consistently add new and improved information to it as well.

•Adding to the searchability of your site. The more pages your site has in the search engine's index, the more possibilities your site has of being found for keywords searches.

9. Write a blog

Blogging is an exceptional way to consistently add new content to your site!

Once your site has been indexed, you're in a much stronger position for the future. Sites that have been around for a long time have a legitimate history and tend to stay in the indexes. If you have an existing site that is indexed, then try linking that one to your new site.

You can check and see if your site is listed by typing 'site:www.youraddress.com' into the Google or Yahoo search. Remember if you have multiple domain names make sure you try each of them.

There you have it, the basics of search engine optimization; it’s a bit of science, art and marketing mingled together. Nothing is a "given" in the world of search engine optimization; it's not a short process, it is ever evolving, and it is something that we can help with by providing information and ideas, but do not have control over.