The #1 rule for on-site is SEO is relevance.  Make sure that the site or page you are trying to rank is relevant and useful for the visitors that click on your primary keyword.  A clean, straight to the point site will be appreciated by your visitors.  Use custom web design techniques which enhance the subject matter, don’t go over-the-top with flash, moving graphics, or anything distracting.

Start at the top.  The title of your page should feature your primary keywords and tell visitors and search engines what the focus of your page/site is.  Once you have attracted traffic to your site, they should instantly be able to see content which directly addresses the keywords you’ve placed in your title.  Article, video, or post headers should feature the keywords.

You can’t cram a ton of info onto your homepage, so include excepts with links to back pages that expand on the subject matter of the keywords.  According to Web Design Richmond you should keep the focus of the page simple and concise.  Function over form.

You want to make your site as clean and crisp as possible.  Even though most people have fast connections such as cable or satellite internet you don’t want to miss out on vital new consumers that are still kick’n it old school with dial-up.

Finally, make sure your link structure is easy to follow and intutive for finding information on your site.

For most legitimate web sites, the above steps will be all the on-site SEO necessary.  If you have a particularly large site, consider a site map.  For most though, they are unnecessary.  Keep it simple, stay focused, and above all – be useful!

Google is used as a verb instead of ’searching’. Bing/Yahoo have a long way to go before they steal permanent market share.  At this point I suspect Microsoft will shovel money into marketing for the next few years with no hope of generating anything close to a profit.  They have a big stockpile of money, but at some point shareholders will complain.  When the marketing ends, their product better deliver results as good or better than Google.  I doubt that will be the case.

The search algorithm seems fairly straight forward for Bing.  Unfortunately big company sites with huge budgets and blackhat auto link techniques will be more effective on Bing than Google.

My prediction:  the simple nature of the search algorithm used by Bing will be either exploited and results will look like your email spam folder, or they will look like Forbes 500 list — neither is as useful as Google’s results.

In other words, the first thing that you need to do with SEO is to have a main, authoritative site. If you haven’t built one, that would be the first thing to do. From that point, you can create niche sites that link back and tie in to the main site. If you don’t create niche sites that are related to the main site, though, you might find that the SEO won’t do you much good. It’s also important to keep in mind that it takes time to build authority, even if you have a good site.

People have to be able to find you and they have to believe that you know what you’re talking about. That means that the site – or sites – that you create should have valid and interesting content on them along with the SEO targeted words and phrases. If the site content isn’t any good, the SEO won’t be nearly as effective as you had hoped.

In the past, the Webpage could be hastily put together and it would be just fine that way, but that’s not the case anymore. Now, it’s more important than ever that both visitors and search engines can easily find your site based on keywords and that they get interesting and original content once they get there. That sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s becoming more and more difficult because people are changing the way that the Web is used, and how it evolves from a business standpoint is also changing.

If you don’t really know your target audience you’re going to have a very hard time getting them to your site and keeping them there, so make sure that you know who you’re talking to and what they’re looking for. Optimize your site for SEO with your target audience in mind.

The key to natural SEO is to write articles and other informational content that is good for the search engines and also good for the people who read it. The keywords should come in the body of the article in a natural way. If you are talking about SEO you should talk about SEO instead of rambling and sticking the term in there a couple of times in the hopes that the search engines will go crazy over it.

It’s possible that it will drive traffic to your site, but what will they find when they get there? They probably won’t be back if you don’t tell them anything worth knowing, so choose not only your SEO terms but your phrasing carefully.

In ancient web history (5 years ago) you had to use Silicon Valley firms for internet marketing.  Not so any longer.  Even in a small city like Richmond you can find talented SEO Companies capable of ranking competitive keywords at the top of the search engine rankings.

BloomSEO is a search engine optimization specialist.  To stand out among the top seo firms in Richmond, BloomSEO offers unique services few other companies can handle.  You may be able to find SEO companies in Richmond with the skill and knowledge required to place your site in the top 10 on Google for your most valuable keywords.  BloomSEO does that of course, but you shouldn’t settle for rankings alone.  After all, you want visitors.  It doesn’t matter if your business is located in Richmond.  If you are interested in dominating the search engine rankings and generating valuable traffic to your website, BloomSEO delivers.

For an example of one of the unique services, take a look at the Link Bait Case Study.  If this is a service you are interested in, make sure your server can handle 10,000 to 20,000 visitors in a single day!  If you are looking for search engine optimization in Richmond, or anywhere – you’ve found a specialist capable of helping you acheive your goals.

One of the easiest things you can do is let go of all the SEO work that you’re bogged down with and outsource it so someone else. There are both individual freelancers and firms out there today who specialize only in SEO and in helping other companies with it. They can market, promote the Web site, research keywords, build links, and market through places like the social networking sites, as well.

There are almost endless possibilities for SEO, and that means that there are endless possibilities for your business to make money, but you need to trust professionals to handle your SEO for you. Then you can focus on running your business and hiring new people to do the new work that’s coming in.

If you’re doing SEO for the holidays, you need to make sure that you get your keywords in order. Words like Christmas, Chanuka and other holidays are important. So is the word ‘gift.’ People search for those kinds of words, so put them in your SEO. You can find creative ways to do that or hire someone to do it for you, but you need to get the word out early and often, and make sure that if you give details about holidays, you get them correct. If you don’t it can really harm your credibility and how much money you might make from the traffic that you get to your site.

Driving traffic to your site is the point of SEO, but what people do once they get there will have a lot to do with whether you have good information for them, so make sure your holiday SEO is interesting and informative.

For the most part, they don’t protect anyone. The bottom line is that most SEO companies don’t even offer guarantees anymore because they know that they really have no control over rankings, even with good SEO. The only things that they can guarantee – and some of them do – are things like how much time they’ll devote to your campaign or how much experience the person working with you has. They can also guarantee performance improvements and customer satisfaction, but these are also hard to nail down.

There are risks for both the SEO company and the client, so it’s important to be sure what the real risks are before you offer or accept any type of SEO guarantee. Remember, there really are no guarantees when it comes to how well your site will perform, even with the best SEO in the world, so be cautious of such claims.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we’ve all seen some SEO get berated or pressured because a particular SEO campaign isn’t going at the ‘right’ speed. Even when every procedure is followed to the letter and every option explored, sometimes it’s truly out of our hands.

Let’s look at several reasons why SEO’s don’t function as well and as quickly as we all might have hoped:

1) Even algorithms take time. High quality links, for example, withstand the test of time. Shoddy ones, links that attempt to manipulate the crawler and create an illusory sense of legitimacy, simply don’t. In other words, earning the algorithm’s trust is essential.

2) Patience with engines is vital. I know we’ve all seen a colleague, or maybe even ourselves at one point, luck out and get highlighted in a week or so. But that’s not very realistic. Sometimes the crawler process can take months.

3) Don’t forget those link partners. It can be a frustrating wait while that new viral content you posted or some other feature gets the attention it deserves.

And perhaps the last thing I should mention on this topic: it may take awhile to attract links and increase your standing from that, especially if you’ve just created new content. You won’t get counted by the search engine until those links start coming in, so sit tight!

After suggesting that every webmaster study Google guidelines meticulously, it seems the dilemma revolves around just how to handle these creeps.

Responses from site owners range from apathy (survival of the fittest) to more community spirit (sweeping up Google’s SERPS is advantageous to all of us) to a lukewarm hostility (why do the job Google is supposed to be doing on its own).

I for one don’t see anything wrong with exposing others who put others at risk by benefiting off of ignorance and outright lies. What do you think?

There is more than one way to accomplish the goal of ranking well.  A concise, straight to the point site, can do very well.  TeenModelStar.com is a site with few pages, but seems to be a top ranked site for terms such as teen model.  The lesson here is:  keep it simple, if simple is all that your visitors require.

There are several misconceptions about what SEO methods really work at achieving higher search engine rankings. Below we have listed some proven facts that are sure to help with your SEO efforts.

#1 – Manual submission is unnecessary: A few years ago, submitting your site to Yahoo or Google was beneficial in SEO. This is no longer necessary as search engine spiders are now configured to automatically find your site through relevant keywords and links.

#2 – When you’re, you’re in: Once your site is indexed into a search engine database, it will remain there unless you happen to get banned for one reason or another.

#3 – Link popularity works: Links are one of the most essential factors of SEO. Similar to keywords, links going to and from your site should be relevant to your content.

#4 – Title tags are important: Whenever possible, keywords should be fused into the title tags of your pages. This is what will be displayed in the results page of a search engine.

#5 – SEO isn’t everything: Some get so enthralled in SEO that they actually forget about the base of their business. During your campaign, continue to market your site and focus on making sales.

Big websites carry out big marketing schemes, because they can afford to. In a sense, they have to, as competition is fierce. These companies often go to the extreme to reach the top of the rankings, investing in expensive services and staff to make their sites more search engine friendly.

If you find yourself competing with a company ranking higher in the search engine, don’t sweat it and certainly don’t break the bank trying to keep up. Instead, focus on a set of keywords that compliment your site and appeal to your audience. Most importantly, build your site with rich content, that will encourage the conversions for which you’re looking. Just because the big companies outrank you, doesn’t mean that they will have more traffic or sales than you.

The reason why so many webmasters fail with their SEO efforts is because they optimize with too much of their industry in mind, rather than the average consumer they are trying to attract. They incorporate keywords that are familiar to them, but foreign to the average web surfer. In this instance, all of that vast knowledge backfires, as the overuse of technical jargon buries them deep within the search engine.

To make the most out of your SEO campaign, you should stick to keywords your potential audience is more likely to reference. This practice involves learning how to back away from the business aspect, by bringing yourself down to the customer’s level and language. Sure, it’s your business, but it might not exist too long, if nobody can find it.

The truth is that most SEO services end up doing more harm than good in the long run. Those so called experts, claiming that submitting your site on a weekly basis, are blowing nothing more than smoke. The best way to boost rankings is to make your site search engine friendly, with relative keywords and inbound links. If the content is relative to what people are looking for, the search engine spiders will come crawling.

SEO is challenging, but it can be achieved on your own. However, there is no way to purchase a spot at the top, regardless of what the experts tell you.

This is the shotgun approach – a scatter blast of words that people will search for and that are related to your product. Then, when you see which ones of these are actually working well, you hone in on them and use only those, like a sniper. This is a great way to get your SEO working for you, but you have to do it correctly. If you limit your words too much you won’t accomplish everything you need or get the audience you’re looking for.

If you don’t start to limit your words in the sniper phase, you also won’t get the audience that you’re looking for, so balance is the key.

The Big Three search engines continue to increase their percentage of total search volume. In August ’08 Google produced over 70% of all searches. This is over a 10% gain from the August ’07 figures.

Search Engine Aug 08 Aug 07

1. www.google.com 71.01% 64.03%
2. search.yahoo.com 18.26% 22.89%
3. search.msn.com 5.32% 7.98%
4. www.ask.com 3.45% 3.50%

Source Hitwise

Sure, you may already rank for “YourBusinessName.com” – but when it comes to attracting new customers you must rank well for the keywords your customers are using to search for information about your industry.

Everyday you delay working for a top 5 spot is another day your competition has to solidify their positions. As more and more customers turn to Google before any other source, you will be allowing your customers to develop a relationship with your competitors.If you need an SEO Company, BloomSEO is here to help.

No matter why they search, they want to find what they’re looking for and get information that’s relevant. Navigational searches, where someone searches for a specific brand name but they search it instead of typing it into the browser bar, are becoming even more popular than ever.

If you want your site to be found no matter how people search for it, your SEO has to be properly optimized. This isn’t always an easy thing to do, and those who aren’t familiar with how to do it often see their sites falling behind and not being properly indexed.

Changes have been made to the industry in recent years, however, because SEO companies have realized that people are demanding more and more of their Internet experience. The code of ethics that some people put on their SEO company sites used to be a luxury.

Now they are becoming a necessity, because of the requirements of Websites that contract with SEO companies.

Using the Firefox Browser and SEO Quake you can perform this search on Yahoo: “linkdomain:urlgoeshere.com –domain:urlgoeshere.com” and easily scan the PR of all the top links for your competition. Be sure to replace ‘urlgoeshere.com’ with the sites you wish to investigate (leave out the http://www.) SEO Quake has a setting that allows you to view PR for Yahoo. Only do this search in Yahoo, it won’t work in Google.

Turn off the settings that show back links for Google and Yahoo. If you leave those settings on Google and Yahoo may temporarily block your IP address for overusing the search engines.

Now you can scan and click links to judge how difficult it will be to surpass the top ranking sites in your niche.

Search engine visibility is the peak of SEO, there is no substitute for a relevant result when a searcher is in need. Being in the right position at the right time translates into pure lead generation and profit for your business.

Where you rank defines your company. Out of sight out of mind has never been more accurate as it pertains to search engine positioning. To the victor go the spoils; in this case, those who rank at the helm of a popular keyword or key phrase have a higher potential of attracting a higher click through rate from search engine queries.

Remember: potential without expression is nothing; it’s all about getting the market’s interest, engaging the awareness of the niche and creating rankings from the vacuum; leave nothing to chance. If your site’s structure, relevance and commitment provide a useful resource about a subject, then your pages will have greater appeal to search engines.

More times than not, SEO clients do not understand what keywords are going to result in buyers versus search terms for window shoppers. Always keep in mind: Are the keywords being used as “buyers” search terms?

It’s nice to get a lot of traffic, but it is better to get buyers, and of course it’s optimal to have both ROI and search term traffic. When it comes down to it, how do you know if you’re getting any of these? Are the search words also in your content so that you can satisfy the visitor?

You need a balance of search term traffic (what keyword phrases result in the most traffic), then making sure that those phrases relate to the content on your various pages. On top of that, you need to make sure that you have a proper landing page that will hold the visitor, and ensure that those visitors actually buy or do what you want them to do.

If you get one visitor per month for a search term, but one out of twelve spends a million dollars, obviously you’d keep that keyword. Conversely, if you get a million visitors and only one buys, you should consider dropping that keyword phrase.

Here are 5 of the most common mistakes and omissions you can easily avoid while optimizing your site for search engines.

1. Not knowing your keywords – Far and away the most common mistake people make. Site owners often use keywords or keyword phrases that are, in their minds, descriptive of their website. However, an average user might use totally different words while searching for your product. You have to think outside yourself, remember, you’re not the target audience.

2. Empty pages (lack of content) – Another common mistake. All search engines are almost strictly text-driven, in other words: they see websites as a plain text. Spiders, while crawling the Web, are primary looking for quality, non-duplicate content. Without it, it’s virtually impossible to achieve high organic rankings.

3. Ignoring title and h1 tags – Leaving the title tag empty and/or not including h1 heading on your pages is fairly common. Both tags are extremely important; you should include your keywords in them if possible. Not too mention, text in your title tag shows in search results as your page title.

4. Frames-based website – Frames disrupt a fundamental concept of the Internet: individual pages linked together with hypertext. Each page should have an individual URL, and could be used as a stand-alone entity, with navigation integrated into it. Frames really mess this concept up. What’s even more crucial: search have problems reading content from them, and therefore rarely take the time to enter the site into their files.

5. A flash website without HTML alternative – You can create incredibly beautiful websites using Flash; however, while attractive to humans, search engines have a lot of trouble picking up the text. Spiders have problems reading content, and therefore are often not able to index it. If you really insist on a Flash-based website, you’ll need to provide an HTML version as well.

Linkbait refers to content on a web page that is specifically designed to attract inbound links from other sites. Some view the term as if it performs a malicious action while others agree that it actively reflects its purpose. Several websites currently participate in linkbaiting as it proves quite beneficial in building traffic and better search engine optimization.

There are essentially two types of linkbait: positive linkbait and negative linkbait. Positive linkbait could offer incentives for your audience such as a contest or something merely intriguing or informative. This type of linkbait normally redirects visitors to interactive applications. Negative linkbait tends to deal with contentious content that is both controversial and informative. This can be a highly effective strategy though it is often looked down upon by some.

The use of linkbait can be quite advantageous over the long run. It’s an efficient tool that can help you move up in the rankings and turn conversions on your site. At the same time, you must take caution whenever attempting to increase your links. Search engines examine popularity and authority so in their eyes, not all links are good links.

Why do you automatically turn to Google when you need to find information? The answer is probably habit. When you need to find something, Google just pops into your head.

However, new comers like Cuil, Trooker and Exalead want to break out of that bad Google habit and it only takes a quick stroll around any of their websites to see why Google won’t reign forever as King of the Internet.

How many of you know where that search engine that you look to for information on a daily basis, actually came from? How many of you actually care where it came from? No hands this time? That’s what I thought. But you should care, because it’s important, so pay attention…you just might learn something – like how and why Google’s going to be dethroned as King of the Internet Search Engines. But you’ll need a little background first.

Google got started – like most great inventions do – with a normal guy who had an idea. He told a friend about it, and then there were two guys working on the idea. Oh, and the fact that he was in college and doing this for his thesis, and had the help and support of an advisor and a school, and had access to all sorts of books and technology, didn’t hurt. His idea was to create a search engine based on a page rank algorithm instead of how many times a word was used on a page. What a novel concept. At the time, it really was. No one else had actually done that, and it paved the way for something big.

Larry Page (the guy with the idea) and Sergey Brin (the friend he told about the idea) were the original founders of what became Google – based on a misspelling of ‘googol,’ which is a number made up of ‘one’ with one hundred zeroes after it…but you knew that, right? Sure you did. Page and Brin based their idea on the logical assumption that a page with a lot of links to it about a particular topic, must be relevant to that topic. That completely made sense, so why had nobody else thought of it already? Easy. Because they were too busy saying Web pages should be indexed based on how many times a search word appeared on the page. This is also important, but not as much as it turned out, as the page link thing.

It didn’t take long for Google to get huge – enormously huge – and basically take over cyberspace. Google now runs more than half of all searches on the Internet; more than Microsoft and Yahoo! put together. Improvements are always being made to ensure that Google is as fast as it can be, and as accurate. It runs off of a big cluster of el-cheapo computers. One drops dead? No problem. There are a bunch more waiting to jump in and answer your query. To Google’s credit, it does let them replace parts without having to shut the whole thing down. Now that’s smart.

But have you figured out the head-fake? Google isn’t actually searching the Internet! No. It’s searching its own indexed and cataloged databases (three copies worth) with hundreds of computers at a time, so it can give you your results in 0.25 seconds. Where else can you get something worthwhile that performs that quickly? Nowhere, that’s where. Oh, and when it’s searching those databases, Google’s looking for character patterns, not words, so if you’re in a hurry and fat-finger something it will politely take the time to suggest what you might have been trying to say while it’s pulling up anything that matches what you actually said.

Contrary to the misguided beliefs of some die-hard fans, Google isn’t the only search engine out there. Yahoo! and Microsoft are the two other big search engines, and they want to merge. Google is trying to stop it, but the key is that Google really doesn’t care. It knows it can beat what’s been termed as a ‘Microhoo.’ It beats both companies on their own consistently, so only the misinformed would think that it can’t beat them if they’re together. Sometimes, a whole really isn’t more than the sum of its parts. Google’s interest is in slowing down the merger so it can make a lot of money off of people who won’t be trying the ‘new’ company because it doesn’t exist yet. That’s also smart.
See, Yahoo! has a problem. It started out so promising, but it’s not Google, and it shows. Yahoo! is struggling under the weight of junk ads and click fraud, and it doesn’t offer everything that its competitor does. It’s like comparing apples and oranges…or maybe something less desirable. Apples and prunes?

Google, on the other hand, gets part of its success from the fact that it’s just in so darn many places. There are lots of places out there where you can Google, but you can’t Yahoo! – like over 130 different countries. Really! That’s a lot of places for a company to not be in if it wants to succeed. Clearly, Google has the upper hand when it comes to moving into countries and getting its name and its capabilities out there.

As it stands now, Google is still the main source of internet traffic. When it comes to SEO, it is a good idea to keep this in mind. This may not be the case for long however. Remember, anything is possible on the internet and it is important to keep an eye on the future.

We’ve had this big talk about why Google is so great – and it really is pretty great – so why say it’s going to be dethroned? Because there are greater things out there. As soon as they catch on, Google will go the way of Yahoo! – not gone, but mostly forgotten. As an example of what’s about to step all over Google, take a look at a search engine called Cuil. It claims to search three times as many pages as Google. Why? Because Google, cool as it may be, isn’t keeping up! It doesn’t update as fast as the Web grows. That’s why it won’t stay king. Kings have to keep on top of what’s going on in their kingdom, and Google hasn’t been doing that. Without that vigilance, it’s going to be left in the dust. That’s already starting to happen. If you go to Google and your search results are hazy, it’s probably the dust cloud left by Cuil and others stampeding by.

So, what do the new kids on the search engine block have that Google’s missing? Lots. Visual searches that are, well, just stunning. Content-based searches that are relevant to the real world and not based on (a) how many keywords you’ve stuffed your page with, or (b) how many inbound (pagerank) links you’ve got. Faster Web crawlers. One hundred and twenty billion indexed pages. Oh, and they won’t save your user data and do stuff with it. They index the Web, not you. It may take a while – after all, Google didn’t conquer the ‘net and earn the crown overnight – but Cuil, Exalead, Trooker and many others, have made it past the moat and are scaling the castle walls.

Sources:

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/a_microsoftyaho.html

http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/04/what-you-all-are-missing-about-google/

http://news.cnet.com/new-search-engine-cuil-takes-aim-at-google/

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/113485

http://www.trooker.com/

http://www.exalead.com/search

http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/01/03/134-countries-where-you-can-google-but-you-cant-yahoo/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google

SEO myths seem to multiple each year. Some are based on reality while others are just uninformed misconceptions. Here are five of the most common SEO myths:

#1 – Your URL must be submitted - this may have been true once, but search engine submissions currently have no relevance.

#2 – You need Google Sitemap to rank in Google - this tool is not needed when your site is properly designed with relevant keywords and quality links.

#3 – PPC campaigns will increase or lower rankings – some believe that using Google AdWords will boost Google rankings while others believe it will bring them down. The truth is that such campaigns play no factor in any search engine.

#4 – SEO copy must be at least 250 words in length – Not true. Whether it’s a 250 word product description or a 500 word landing page, your site can rank well with the use of relative keywords and phrases.

#5 – Buying links will get you disqualified – there is actually some truth to this myth. Search engines may not count paid links as votes but often can’t determine whether they were paid for or not. You should know that buying links will not necessarily place you atop the rankings.

Contrary to what you may have heard, no SEO expert can guarantee top ten placement in any search engine, especially when merely relying on keywords. This is all a marketing strategy employed by so-called SEO specialists to get your hard earned dollars.

In fact, no honest business would even take on a client insisting that one or two common phrases will lead them to the top of the rankings. Its important to know that search engines base rankings on genuine content which includes link popularity and the proper use of relevant terms.

The best way to rank well in a search engine is to build your pages with the appropriate architecture and provide your visitors with quality content whether it’s a product, service or valuable information. While they may advance momentarily, those stuffing keywords into their pages or purchasing links never stay at the top for long.

Cheaters never win, even at SEO

So before you purchase service with that all-knowing specialist, consider this – there are no guarantees in SEO. You can save a few bucks and achieve a quality ranking by learning how to properly build and market your site.

SEO consist of various elements but keywords may be the most essential. Keywords should be thoroughly researched and cater to your niche audience. The content of your web pages should reflect keywords that appeal to visitors and the search engines. Search engine spiders crawl through the internet in search of fresh, relevant anchor text. Implementing no keywords or irrelevant text will lead to irrelevant viewers and have your site listed on the back pages of a search engine.

Keywords should be fused into all descriptive areas of your site. This includes articles or blog posts, title tags, product descriptions and metadata. You can take SEO one step further by implementing keywords and phrases into your URL.

There is so much more to SEO , but keywords are the easiest place to start and one of the most important factors. Properly implementing them into your site can lead to instant improvements in your rankings.

Building your website for SEO is a must if you expect to attract the many potential clients that refer to search engines everyday. An SEO-friendly website not only caters to the search engine spiders, but your visitors as well. Your site should be easy to navigate and include enough content to keep your visitors around for as long as possible.

Moving into SEO, your main concern should be keywords and the overall design of your site should reflect this aspect. Each page you design should be properly fused with keywords and relevant phrases web surfers might use to find you. This will enable the search engine spiders to detect your pages and index them in their database.

Keyword density doesn’t stop with plaintext. Its been proven that pages that properly integrate keywords and relevant phrases into metadata and image tags rank consistently higher than those that don’t. If you happen to use dynamic scripting languages for graphical objects, be sure to implement a link that redirects the search engine robots to your keyword-rich content.

You can find out just how effective your SEO design is by testing the website. Type in a few keywords to find out where they have you ranked in a search engine. Have a few friends visit the site to rate its performance and make sure the pages are loading properly and all links are active. This will enable you to make the needed adjustments before embarking on a long marketing campaign.

Ever wonder how a website gets the top spot on Google?It’s all made possible by a technique known as search engine optimization. Learning SEO doesn’t take a college degree, but knowing where to begin can be difficult. To get you on the right track, we have provided five easy tips to set things in motion.

Keyword Research

To rank well in a search engine, you must not only know your niche, but your target audience as well. Think of words and phrases potential clients may enter when looking for your product or service. Several research tools are available for this cause such as Wordtracker and Google AdWords.

Page Titles

Implement keyword phrases into the titles tags of your pages as they are favorable with every search engine. Make sure the title reflects the content of your page and consist of keywords your niche audience may use.
Build For Spiders

Spiders are the robots that help your pages get indexed in a search engine. They go after text and cannot comprehend images and dynamic graphics. If your site must contain these features, make sure they’re linked to text-rich content.

Link Exchange

Getting involved in a link exchange program is never a bad idea. The more your pages are listed on the web, the better your site will rank.

Be Diverse

Keywords are important, but you should never fall in love with just one. Just because your site specializes in baseballs, that doesn’t mean it has to be the only keyword.

Spidering is the action a search engine robot takes when downloading pages and storing them in a temporary database. From there, an indexer processes the web pages for inclusion in a permanent search engine database.

Spiders can be configured to use and follow a wide range of variables and guidelines including the speed it will download pages, what time of day it is to be active, whether or not it is to only seek previously indexed pages and how many pages it will accept from a single domain.

It Will Re-Evaluate Your Site

Once a spider crawls through your page and stores it into a search engine, it will make periodic visits and re-index the page from scratch. Search engines comprehend the fact that the internet is dynamic and always evolving, meaning they will constantly re-evaluate the content in their indexes and list the rankings accordingly.

Spidering plays a very important role in the exposure of your website. Keep in mind that search engine spiders are partial to text as it is mainly what they look for. This is where SEO comes in handy as you want your content to be rich with relative keywords.

If you feel that your site should possess dynamic content such as flash pages, be sure to implement text into the “ALT” tags of your graphics and provide a link that directs both visitors and spiders to the text-rich area of your site.

It’s no secret that comments are important. Bloggers like to get comments because they feel that it means people care about what they have to say.

They feel connected to others when their posts are commented on, and they are encouraged to keep writing and working toward building a strong readership base. Not everyone will be overly successful on their blog, but comments can help a blogger gauge how well he or she is doing.

Are there readers? Do they have an interest in what you’re saying? If not, why not? You might have to change your focus to go along with what society is looking for if you want people to keep commenting on your blog.

You might also have to find your niche and let people who are already in that niche know you’re around. If they haven’t found you they can’t read what you have to say. Once they read your words and start commenting you’ll be encouraged to write more and they’ll be encouraged to tell others.

Google AdWords has been
popular for a while, but it doesn’t always give people the results that
they’re looking for. To get good ads that are well-positioned, a person or a
company has to pay a lot of money. There is money to be made of course,
especially if a lot of people click on your ads and end up making a purchase.

This doesn’t mean that no one outside of that
demographic group will see your ads. If a man goes to a site that has women as
a targeted audience he may find your ad and you could make a sale that way.
The same is true for age, ethnic makeup, religious preference, or any other
criteria that might affect where your ads go and how much money you make
because of them.

Even though Google says that they talk about their ranking philosophy, some of it can still be confusing and there’s no real way to know if the company’s providing all the details or only a portion of what they actually do.

Originally they said that they had hundreds of reviewers who would make determinations as to how sites should be ranked, and that was how your Website got to the top (or the bottom) of the list. Now, they share more information about the algorithm that they use to produce the results that you get when you search for something – but they don’t really give the details.

Google doesn’t always return good results, either, and the company sees those times as a reason to adjust their algorithms and keep working to ensure that people get what they need when they search.

The company can’t give the specifics behind what they do and how they do it, though, or every search engine out there would be copying them. Despite the problems that they sometimes have with searches they’re still seen as being one of the best and most accurate search engines out there.

The following is a day-by-day example of the promotion in action. I’ve skipped the ‘creation of content’ step and moved directly to publishing and promoting.

	Day 1 Content published by 6 pm. Promotion through contacts begins. Pushing the content requires constant attention. It’s impossible to guarantee success but hard work and valuable contacts always help. It’s a long sleepless night with lots of caffeine.

	Day 2 Promotion of content through network continues until the early afternoon. By 3 pm all resources have been exhausted and the buzz / link baiting nature of the content is left to stand on it’s own. Visitors are compounding hourly. Finally time to take a break!

	Day 3 The content has been republished on social networks by complete strangers. Visitors per hour peaks around 5 pm. The campaign is a huge success. It’s not possible to predict how much traffic a campaign like this will generate, but we are always happy with anything over 5000 visitors. This campaign has already resulted in 30,000 visitors.

	Day 4 Direct visitors and search engine traffic now account for a large portion of the traffic. The site is ranking page 1 for all searches associated with the content.

	Day 5 Traffic is trending slightly up again. Mostly due to direct visitors. Likely cause: email to friends. Usually traffic tapers off by Day 5.

The traffic and links generated rarely have instant sales potential. For a concept to “go viral” it must appeal to a large audience and particularly to opinion makers and trendsetters. Trendsetters do not usually “buzz” about commercial products. The concept here is to give something away, and gain an audience.

The true value comes from attracting people and links to your site. Success results in a lasting flow of traffic and recognition from the search engines. It’s also been our experience that the search engines like to ‘follow a leader’ – once you’ve had a successful viral-buzz-baiting event, your content from that point forward gets unique attention.

What does it cost? From start to finish this internet marketing technique often requires close to 80 hours of work. In addition it is necessary to enlist the help of other internet marketers that will call in the favors in the future. Pricing will vary depending on the nature of the site being promoted and the ideal content for that site. At a minimum you’ll need a marketing budget of a few thousand dollars to implement this strategy.

The long term lasting effects of a successful viral-buzz-baiting campaign are a competitive advantage to your business. Once you have the ability to command an audience to your site, the web becomes a much friendlier place.

This technique is one of the many powerful SEO strategies the Bloom SEO Company can use to benefit your online marketing campaign.

Soon you’ll have 20 domains you control that are all within the niche your primary site is in. Now write a nice post on the front page of all of them. You just landed 20 of the highest quality links possible. A glowing review, a great link with the keywords you want.

SEO professionals have been using this technique for years. If you would prefer to have your SEO campaign professionally managed, start by getting your FREE SEO Report.

How do you find relevant sites that will provide links?  Good question.  Do a search on the top search engines for your keyword, plus some of the most common terms found on link pages.  Here’s an example:  Insert Keyword Here “add site”

Besides “add site”, here are some other common terms:  add link, submit url, submit site, submit link, add website, add web site, suggest link, suggest site, suggest url, favorite sites, favorite links, favorite websites, reciprocal, link exchange, and many others.  This list should get your started.

Be sure to keep track of which sites you’ve contacted.  You don’t want to annoy or spam other site owners.  Stay organized.

And now, “Dangerous Cult” is returning The Church of Scientology as the #1 result.

The Google Bomb is a clear example of what Google measures to rank web sites.

It’s unlikely that The Church of Scientology has pages optimized for “Dangerous Cult”, and yet, they are ranking #1 for this term today. Someone (the group known as Anonymous) has created a large number of anchor text links and pointed them at Scientology.org.

On the page itself, there is no mention of “Dangerous Cult”. However, the word “Dangerous” is on the page. “Cult” is not. Google’s algorithm decided the incoming links justified placing Scientology.org in the #1 spot. It appears anchor text not only outweighs content, but can still take the place of it!

* Use the powerful information with caution.  It’s highly recommended that you use a professional seo company to run your online marketing campaign.

I have been told that the only way to get site optimization is to get pay per clicks! I have been doing my own blogging but so far I have not seen much good. As well I was considering an autoresponder as well but I am told I need a list and purchasing lists I am told are not allowed to use. I am just working so hard on high site rankings. It is a lot of work that is for sure!

Just not so sure how long you have been working with SEO but felt I should write to see your insite on things. Take Care!

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Thanks for your question Christie!

Pay per click, or PPC is not Search Engine Optimization. SEO is considered ‘organic search engine marketing’ while PPC is paid search engine marketing.

SEO should start with keyword research. Here’s a great (Free) tool you can use to explore keywords: SEOBook Keyword Tool

Be imaginative. Think like your target market. For instance: If you owned a dog grooming company you’d first think of “Dogs” as a good keyword. You’d be right, but the competition for it will be severe. Instead, try adding in a geographical term – maybe “Dogs YourTown” — not only will this be an easier keyword to rank, but it’s also more likely to convert into sales. Keep working at this keyword list until you have at least 20 keywords in mind. 100+ is better.

Now, with your keyword list in hand start working on your site. Your index page (homepage) should discuss one keyword. Create a list of links on your index page. Each link will be a keyword that links directly to a new page that discusses that particular keyword. You following so far? So, if one link is “Poodle Shampoo” then that link would take visitors to the “Poodle Shampoo” page. On that page you’d discuss that topic. Be useful, be informative. Write your pages for humans, not for Search Engine Spiders. But at the same time, be sure to use the keyword and synonyms of the keyword often. On that page have the same links as on your homepage, but with 1 new one – the link back to your homepage which has “Dogs YourTown” as the text (assuming your homepage is about “Dogs YourTown”).

Once your site is operational and useful, it’s time to go link building. For maximum effect, you’ll want to concentrate on building links from related sources. Here’s the easy way to do that –> Search your favorite Search Engines for: “Dog Links”, “Grooming Links”, “YourTown Links”, and anything else you can think of. Go through the listings one at a time. Look for “add a link” buttons/links. Request a link. When you fill in link title or website title, add in some Keywords! So… if your site is YourTownGroomer.com then make the title: Dog Grooming by YourTownGroomer — always mix it up. You don’t want every site to have the same content about you.

This is simple SEO. But it works! It works very well. Don’t expect to rank for “Dogs” — but you are likely to rank very well for geographic terms and low-competition terms.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask!

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Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask share 40% of the total searches, while Google holds over 25% more market share than those 4 top search engines combined!

Most firms learn to do SEO due to demand. Web development companies are asked by their clients to “get my site in Google”. The web developers and designers looked up the conventional techniques and applied them to their customer’s web sites. Some of these techniques work pretty well, some are wasted effort (and dollars). For a web developer, learning the difference was never a matter of urgency. While getting the job done, was urgent – they were being paid to do the job, not learn how to maximize results and cut inefficiencies. In addition, they weren’t being paid to test the newest techniques or to experiment with original SEO concepts.

For the first 6 years we at BloomSEO only worked on our own sites. We earned our living exclusively online and we learned search engine optimization out of necessity. If we didn’t generate more traffic from our efforts, then our efforts were wasted. We quickly learned what worked, what didn’t, and what likely directions to follow to avoid wasting time on outdated techniques or misinformation.

For us, concrete results is the mission. It didn’t occur to us that our approach was different until we were asked for advice from friends and family looking to hire a web design firm. Once we realized we had a unique service to offer, BloomSEO was born.

If you do a Google search for your industry, chances are you will get millions of results. All of them are competing for the coveted top 10 spots. Now, add your city to the search (example: Richmond Virginia Real Estate Attorney) – chances are you are seeing competition there as well. It’s only going to get worse. The longer you wait to begin a SEO campaign, the more difficult, costly, and time consuming the work will become.

Wait too long, and you have given the web to your competition. For some industries (Real Estate, Law, and Elective Medical Procedures) it is already highly difficult to rank your web site in the top 10. It doesn’t matter what your industry is. The longer you wait, the more time your competition will have to get a foothold.

If you want to try WebCEO for Free — here’s a link: