1. Choose the right keywords (keyword optimization)
2. Optimize your pages for your selected keywords (web page optimization), and
3. Get quality inbound links to your pages (off-site factors).

In the next few pages, we will teach you how to follow a systematic approach to complete these three steps, using free tools available on the net.

PART I: Keyword Optimization
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

1. clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
2. allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.

A good position doesn’t depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let’s start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Overture is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.

For example, if your first keyphrase was “Italian Restaurant”, the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: “Gourmet Italian Restaurant”, “Northern Italian Restaurant”, “Italian Restaurant Pizzeria”, “Italian Restaurant Miami”, etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: “Italian Cuisine”, and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: “Fine Italian Cuisine”, “Italian Cuisine Miami”, “Northern Italian Cuisine”, “Italian Cuisine Fine Dining”, “Gourmet Italian Cuisine”, etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing “Italian Restaurant” alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.

Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

1. Best describes the topic and content of your page
2. Is a popular search term according to Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool.
3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.

If “Gourmet Italian Restaurant” is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider “Miami” a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

After this, you will take your selected keyphrases and optimize your pages heavily for them. This involves placing them in strategic locations in the title, headings and body of each page, as we will see in Part II: Web Page Optimization.

PART II: Web Page Optimization
Once you have chosen your keyphrases, the next stage is to optimize your page for those keyphrases. You do that by positioning your keywords in strategic locations within your page. What follows is a checklist of tips and steps you must follow to optimize your page:

• Keyphrases in the web page title:
  • Create a descriptive title for your page: Your web page title is very important because it is what the search engines display as link text as the result of a search. The title must include your main keyphrases, while at the same time it must describe your business very well and should entice readers to click on it.
  • Unless your business is big and well known (like Microsoft or Coca Cola) don’t start your page title with the name of your company. Start your title with the words search engine users will most likely use (your keyphrases)
  • Put your main keyphrase at the beginning of your page title (keyphrase prominence) and keep your keyphrase together (keyword proximity).
  • Put your second keyphrase somewhere else in the title.
  • Make the title short (8 words or less).
• Keyphrases in your Keyword Meta Tag: Search engines rarely use the Keyword Meta Tag any more (Google completely ignores it). However, place a list of your main and secondary keywords in the Keyword Meta Tag of your page, just in case search engines decide to use them again in the future.
• Keyphrases in your Description Meta Tag: The Description Meta Tag is still important, since some search engines use them to elaborate on the results link. Remember to:
  • Include your keyphrases (main and secondary) in your Description Meta Tag.
  • Make your description ‘descriptive’, concise and professional. Avoid using hype.
  • Make it short (25 words or less).
  • Don’t make your description sound just like a collection of keywords.
  • Keep your keyphrases together.
• Keywords in the body of your page: It is important to use your keywords heavily on your page, since this will help the search engine determine the topic of your page. Follow these tips as much as possible, since they will help search engines determine your page’s relevance to your chosen keyphrases:
  • Use your keyphrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible.
  • Place your keyphrases between Header Tags (H1, H2 or H3) in the first two paragraphs of your page.
  • Place your keyphrases in bold type phase at least once.
  • Repeat your keyphrases often to increase your keyphrase density. Repeating your keyphrases between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective.
  • Since you have to repeat your keyphrases often, you must be especially careful not to make your text sound awkward. Your visitors should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly. Remember that ultimately it is your readers who will decide if your page is worth the time they spend on it. A pleasant experience will make them more likely to come back.

• Other Web Page Design Considerations:
  • You must make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.
  • Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar. Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won’t be able to read it.
  • Avoid frames. Search engines have trouble following them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
  • Avoid Flash and JavaScript: search engines don’t follow either one. If you use flash, make an HTML version of your site available to your readers and the search engines. If you use a JavaScript navigation menu, include an alternate text menu at the bottom of the page, so it can be followed by the search engines.
  • Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site!
  • If you use a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page. Make sure you include your most important keywords there, too.
  • Make sure that all your internal pages link to your homepage.
  • Don’t try to describe all your products or services in one page. It will confuse the search engine and dilute your page’s relevance to your selected keyphrase. Instead, create different very focused pages, each with its own content and keyphrases, and optimize them too.

This is pretty much all you have to do to make sure that your page is optimized for your chosen keywords. The next and final step to increase your site’s ranking is to get as many links to your site as possible, from quality sites that have a topic related to yours. This is what we will see in

Part III: Off Page Factors
Once you have selected your keyphrases and optimized your pages for them, the last step is to make sure that you get linked from the best directories, and from lots of quality sites with a topic related to your site’s. The best search engines, and in particular Google (who alone can deliver 80% of the search engine traffic to your site) “crawl” the web looking for links to your site. They interpret a link to your page as a vote, and the more links (votes) you have coming from quality sites the higher your page rank will be, and the higher the possibility that your page will achieve a good position in the search results pages. It’s that simple. Following these four steps is the best way to get the quality links you need:

1. Get listed in DMOZ: The Open Directory Project ( http://www.dmoz.org ) is the world’s largest directory. It is maintained by voluntary editors who review your site prior to inclusion. Being listed in this directory is important because it is used by Google and America Online to build their directories. Getting listed is free, but it may take a few weeks or even months to get listed, which can be a bit frustrating. However, there is a strong believe among search engine optimization experts that an Open Directory Project listing can significantly increase your page rank in Google, so you must take the time to submit your site and do it right (list your site in the right category and strictly follow their submission guidelines). For how to get listed in the Open Directory Project go to: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html .
2. Get listed in Yahoo!: Submissions to Yahoo! are no longer free for commercial sites (your site can be reviewed in about a week for a fee of $299 although inclusion in the directory is not guaranteed. However, if you do get accepted, the $299 fee will be due every year if you want your site to continue to be listed). A link from Yahoo’s directory is still one of the best links you can get, and it is worth the money you spend getting listed. For tips on getting listed in Yahoo! go to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/suggest.html .
3. Submit articles: There are many sites where you can publish articles in your field of expertise. This is a great way to establish yourself as an expert and to drive quality traffic to your site. The key is to include your resource box at the end of your article. A resource box is a small paragraph with a brief description of you and your business, where you include a link to your site. This way, every time somebody picks up your article and publishes it in their website or newsletter, your link will be there for readers and search engines to see and follow. For tips of getting traffic by writing articles you can visit: Where can I submit an article for publication .
4. Exchange links with reputable sites: You must try to find quality sites that are compatible to your site’s topic (not direct competitors), and ask the webmaster for a link exchange. This will give you highly targeted traffic and will improve your score with the search engines. For tips on a good link exchange campaign, visit: How do I get links to my web page.

Domain Spam
Probably the most popular spam technique today involves creating and hosting a number of Websites. These sites rarely have any intrinsic value other than providing ranking support for the owner’s main Website.

Duplicate Domains/Content
More than one domain contains the same content. Now the question arises what is duplicate content. If I display news ticker from BBC is that considered as duplicate because there may be lots of webmaster who has the same ticker. No its not duplicate but if I copy the same file to two different domains that’s what is duplicate content.

Link Spam and FFA
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or Page Rank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Irrelevant keyword rich stuffs
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. Don’t use the content rich in word “Microsoft” when you are no where connected to it.

Links in No Script Tags
Links inside comment and other tags like no script tag which are not displayed on the screens or by text browsers can be considered as spams and should be avoided.

Doorway pages
A web page designed to rank well on a specific search engine for a specific keyword phrase. These pages usually rely on frequent repetition of the keyword phrase, and often try to “trick” search engines into ranking them well.

Less Number of parameters in Dynamic pages
If you decide to use dynamic pages, be aware that not every search engine spider crawl’s dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small.

Web server Configuration
Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Search engines whether your content has changed since Search engine last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

Robots.txt
Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Avoid the directories and files that are not relevant to Search engine crawls. This files are files used for user registration, admin panel, etc.

DHTML Layering and Hidden Text
Text hidden by layers of DHTML to increase the keyword density of the keyword on that particular page can cause more harm then we can think of.

Redirects
Avoid using redirects but if redirects are necessary use 301 redirects in .htaccess file. This should be permanent redirect rather than temporary.

Automated Search engine submission tools
Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume lots of resources.

Different Content for Bots/SE
Avoid different sites for bots and users as this can be considered as spams and can be penalized.

Other Miscellaneous stuffs to be avoided

• Tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known web sites
•  More than 100 outgoing links keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
• Check for broken links and incorrect HTML.

When looking for sites to link back to your site, look for sites having a higher page ranking than yours and are related to your site in some way. Higher-ranked sites help up your page ranking more than lower- ranked sites. Although, just about any site that links to your site will be a plus. Links of this nature are called one-way links.

Another type of link is a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is linking back to the other website that is linking to you. Make certain the other website retains your link on their site. If they do remove your link, ask them to put it back. On the other hand, you can remove their link from your site.

In addition, set up a trade links page. When you do, it should contain pages that are sub-categories (i.e. marketing, investing, real estate). By doing this, it is much easier for you to maintain the list of links. The other reason is that you do not want to have over 20 outbound links on any given page. What do I mean by outbound links? An outbound link is any link that points to any web page that is not part of your website.

Indexed pages verses ranked pages
There is a difference between having your website or web page indexed verses ranked. To have your website indexed; search engines crawl your site at least once, know about your site, and insert your URL into their index of sites to crawl.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to have your site indexed is to include your URL in a message on a blog or forum that has a lot of traffic. Another way, although it is slower, is to submit articles and press releases.

Page rank is harder to come by. Three things determine the page ranking of your site: use of keywords in the content of your site; how many sites link back to your site and the quality of those sites (link popularity); and the text that these sites have used to link to you (anchor text).

When your site has a page rank, it usually means that you are receiving a fair amount of traffic and are building up what is called back links. Back links come when another site puts your link on their site. If, at all possible, you want to link with sites that have a page ranking of 3 or above.

Things to stay away from
Here are some things that can get you banned from search engines:

* Hidden text o This is when you make the font color the same as the background color so that your customers are not able to see the wording. A way to check if sites are doing this is to press (Ctrl A). You could hide keywords in the body of your web page and no one will see them. You could also put other content on the page that no one would see but the search engines.

* Hidden links o This is the same thing as hidden text only you do it with links. Let’s say on your squeeze page you want to put a link to another page on your website, but you don’t want anyone to go there, for whatever reason. This would be an example where you would hide the link and run a chance of having your site banned from the search engines.

* Keyword stuffing o Keyword stuffing is using the exact same keyword repeatedly and in your alt tags, Meta tags, and title tags. This practice could get you banned from search engines. If you use your keywords in these tags and they are not repeated more than three times in each tag, you should be fine.

* Page cloaking o A cloaked page is a page created to be invisible to the regular visitor of your website. The cloaked page contains code in it to detect when a search engine spider comes on the site. The spider is diverted to this cloaked page, which is set up to make your site look like one thing to a search engine in order to increase your search engine position on searches. What your customer sees is something entirely different.

* Doorways or bridge pages o Doorway or bridge pages use the same concept as a cloaked page, but usually are located at different web hosting companies.

* Link Farms o Link farms are “black hat” (taboo). Link farms are sites that consist of links to other sites and advertising of some sort. Their main goal is to provide a link to other sites and make money off advertising. There is usually no valuable content at all on these sites.

1. Search engines read source code
2. Search engines follow links
3. Search engines rank every webpage

Search engines rank every web page

1. Don’t use frames if you are designing a Website for search enginesThere are some ways to work around the issues of using frames but the best result will be achieved by not using frames at all.Search engines assign a ranking of importance to every webpage in your site. Google call this Page Rank and Yahoo calls it Web Rank. Both of these methods of ranking work on measuring how many links a web page has. Framed websites tend to produce orphaned web pages (meaning webpages with no or few internal links). This reason alone is enough to not use frames when designing a website to rank in search engines.The other problem that frames produce in search engines is that each web page is made up of 2 or more individual webpages. For example, the menu can be in one page and the content in the other. Search engines can pick up these pages individually and show them out of context. Typically, the content pages are picked up in search engines and displayed without the menu. 
2. The look of your URLSearch engines have been able to spider dynamically generated webpages for quite some time now but static HTML webpages will always out rank dynamic webpages.Dynamic webpages can be set up to appear as static webpages. This can be achieved by using a rewrite engine for your URL’s like the “apache rewrite module”. This will require programming and server configuration to do.
   • If Dynamic URL’s cannot be rewritten. It limits the parameters in the URL to one.
   • Use descriptive names when naming your templates/webpages

1. Search engines read source code
2. Search engines follow links
3. Search engines rank every webpage

Search engines follow links

1. Optimise hyperlinks within your siteTry to hyperlink from text rather than an image (when possible and relevant) and use keywords in or near your hyperlink. Search engine look for keywords in hyperlinks because it tells them that there is more than one page of information matching the customers search query. Do not overdo this and always do it in a way that flows with the website’s content and objectives.
   • The keywords in your hyperlink should reflect the topic of the page you are linking to (the landing page)
   • Plain text website navigation is one way of achieving this
   • When you are referring to one of your other webpages in you text, always include a hyperlink.
2. Site maps are search engine food
   Develop a map of links to each page of your website and link it to your home page. This will give search engines a clear path to every webpage in your site. Keep the site map up to date – add new pages and remove the old ones. With dynamic websites this can be dome by programming it to refresh itself on a regular basis.

1. Search engines read source code
2. Search engines follow links
3. Search engines rank every webpage

Search engines read source code

A search engine uses a spider (automated piece of software – also known as crawlers and robots) to find content to include in its searchable database. Spiders are
getting more intelligent with every search engine update; however, they
still rely on what is inside the source code of a web page for content.

Four source code rules

1. Images and movie files are invisible to search engines.Avoid putting keyword rich content in images or rich media files. Search engines read source code and therefore can only read the file names and not the words that are inside an image (or movie) file. An example of keywords in an image file is when a page heading is written as an image. The heading could read “blue widgets made to order” but the file name is likely to be “image.Jpg”. The consequence is that the search engine would read is the name of the file (image.Jpg) and not the keyword “widgets”. If this same heading was written in text the search engine would read the keyword “widgets” and know that your website has something to do with widgets.
2. Eliminate any unnecessary code or comments, text or imagesSearch engine calculate the keyword density of each webpage in accordance with a search query. Consider a customer looking for a “blue widget”. A search engine has the task of finding the best match for that search query. Leaving link analysis aside for now, (which is a key determinant of where you finally rank) search engines calculate how many times the keyword appears in the webpage as a proportion of the total source code. Any unnecessary code text or images can increase the amount of content in a webpage and therefore decrease the keyword density.
   • Put JavaScript in external files
   • Do not clutter the code with unnecessary tables or comment tags
   • Apply source formatting to the webpage
   • Use Title, keywords and Description tags but avoid any other tags
3. Use keywords to name images, files and subfoldersBy using meaningful and descriptive terms to name your images and files you can increase the keyword density of your webpage.If your website sells 10 varieties of widgets and you have pictures of all of them on your site you can increase your keyword density for the search term “widget” if you use the keyword “widget” in the file name.Image creation software sometimes automatically names images numerically.

   E.g. image.jpg, image001.jpg, image002.jpg and so on.

   These can easily be renamed to widget.jpg, blue-widget.jpg, greenwidget.jpg and so on.

   This will give you a higher degree of relevancy when customers search for keywords that match your products and or services. The same applies to naming subfolders and other files.

4. Formatting for search engine advantage
   
   Another way that search engines determine how relevant a webpage is to a customer search query is by looking for keywords in formatting.They count the number of times the keyword appears in the document. Then they measure the density of the keyword in the document, and then they look at where the keyword appears in the document.If a keyword appears in the heading or in bold or italics it will be considered to be highly relevant. You should always have your keyword in the heading of your webpage.e.g. <h1> Blue widgets available in all sizes </h1>

   Use bold or italics to highlight keywords when it is appropriate.

This is a comprehensive list of tools that my team and I use daily.

The first one, Firefox with the three extensions, are the tools that I spoke about at SES London 2007. I encourage you to install it and check it out. It’s one of the better tools I have used.

Firefox 2 with SEO Add-Ons (1) , (2) & (3) (Density, links, code cleaner, W3C Compliance, etc.)
Google Analytics – Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
IBP – Several tools for checking rank positions, basic SEO page analysis and link building tools.
WebCEO – Site optimization, promotion and analysis.
WeBuildPages – Free software for SEO analysis, back link and anchor text tool.
Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization – Keyword optimize instructions and tips.
Black Hat – Search Engine Optimization tutorial.
Google Webmaster Central – Statistics, diagnostics and management of Google’s crawling and indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

Pay Per Click Tools
WordTracker -Data is based on the Metacrawler and Overture search engines.
KeywordDiscovery – Data is based on the number of search engines.
Keyword Optimizer – Enter a list of keywords and this tool will remove any duplicate entries and re-order the list alphabetically.
Google Analytics – Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
Google Suggest – As you type, Google provides the top 10 most popular keywords that begin with the keyed-in letters, in order of popularity.
SpyFu – Find out what competitors are bidding on, estimates for the cost of PPC advertising and other bells and whistles.
Hittail – Finds and easily groups the actual terms being used to find your site into an Excel format. Great for finding niches and long keyword strings.
Google Trends – Graphs historical trends of various Google searches.
Google Keyword Tool External – Historical trends in keyword popularity.
BidCenter – A good tool for comparative analysis and easy to use.
SEO Sleuth – Find what AOL users search for (AOL produces 2x the retail conversions as any other engine).
ROI Calculator – This calculator measures the ROI (return on investment) of a CPC (cost per click) campaign.

Site Tools
C-Class Checker – Use the Class C Checker if you own several cross-linked sites. If you do, it may be more efficient (for SEO purposes) to host them on different Class C IP ranges.
Code to Text Ratio – This tool will help you discover the percentage of text in a web page (as compared to the combined text and code).
Future PageRank – This tool will query Google’s various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a given URL.
Internet Officer – Checks for redirects.
Live PR – The Live PageRank calculator gives you the current PageRank value in the Google index, not just the snapshot that is displayed in the toolbar.
Keyword Cloud – This tool provides a visual representation of keywords used on a website.
Keyword Difficulty Check – Use the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool to see how difficult it would be to rank for specific keywords or keyword phrases.
Page Size – This tool will help you to determine HTML web page size.
Site Link Analyzer – This tool will analyze a given web page and return a table of data containing columns of outbound links and their associated anchor text.
Spider Simulator – This tool simulates a search engine spider by displaying the contents of a web page in exactly the way the spider would see it.
URL Rewriting – This tool converts dynamic URLs to static URLs. You will need to create an .htaccess file to use this tool.
Keyword Misspelling Generator – Allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common typing errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.
Keyword Density Analysis Tool – Finds common words and phrases on your site.
Hub Finder – Finds topically related pages by looking at link co-citation. Post about tool.
Page Text Rank Checker – Tool allows you to check where your site ranks for each phrase or term occurring on the page.
XML Sitemaps – Makes free Google Sitemaps for sites up to 500 pages in size. Sells a cheap and useful script to build Sitemaps for larger site sizes.
PageRank Toolbar For Mac – A widget to show PageRank for the site you are on.Google Tools

• Google Webmaster Central
• Google Labs
• SpyFu for Google Bidding
• Google Future PR
• Google Sandbox
• Google Dance Watch
• Google Algorithm’s Top 10 (Assumed) Positive Factors
• Website optimization Information and FAQ
• Google Reinclusion Request
• Banned by Google
• Google Data Center Pages Indexed Check
• Google Page Rank Check (All DC’s)
• Google Keyword Ranking Check
• Check Google Keyword Prices
• Adwords / Adsense Information

And Even More SEO Tools

• Getting into DMOZ
• Meta Tag Generator
• Keyword Density
• Robots.txt Generator
• Domain Age Check
• Code-to-Text
• Spider Simulator
• Who Supplies Who with Search Results
• Abuse IP Checker
• IP Information
• IP, City and reverse IP Lookup
• Ping
• Traceroute

Wikipedia defines it this way:
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given “tags”, and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.

Each time you publish an article put a Google Alert on a unique phrase. Each time Google sends you an alert, bookmark it on every bookmark site. This will take some getting used to, but will eventually become second-nature. Remember what I said in the beginning; “One of the best free ways to get links and traffic, for very little time commitment other than setup”.

When you start seeing traffic coming in and your SERPs getting better you will use the heck out of this. I’m waiting for someone to come out with software that will automate this process completely, but by the time that hits nofollows may come into play. But for the time being it works and it works well.

Press releases are a fantastic way to get natural one-way links, and also attract fresh traffic. If they are done correctly they can be the main source for building traffic, gaining ranking positions and building trust with the search engines.

In the United States I use PRWeb, and in the UK and Europe I use SourceWire to syndicate articles. Both originally started as PR companies before the web came along so they have excellent connections with real syndicated sources. The websites that they send the articles to will re-syndicate them to even more websites. You will pay between £20-£40/$30-$60 depending on the amount that you send them.

The articles that you syndicate should be authoritative or about something that will attract people to them, like My 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking. You should quote trusted authorities and always reference the source when possible. I use Wikipedia or news sources like Google News, BBC, or CNN. I believe this actually adds trust to an article and in 3-6 months when Google pushes out Page Rank, the probation period for giving you full value is reduced.

Pull a unique phrase from the article (mine is garythescubaguy) and add a Google Alert to it (#9 above). Choose to be alerted “as it happens.” When you get an alert (typically within 6-12 hours), go to the page and place a Social Bookmark on the page. (I will talk more about this technique in the next tip).

If you are not using Google Customized Desktop, Google Reader, or some type of RSS feed reader already, you should definitely start using one. The easiest way to accomplish this for a complete novice (but is actually the way I do it) is with your GMail account. A GMail account is something else you should already be using. For the data storage alone you should be using it. You will need a GMail account to use these tools. You can signup GMail here.

With a GMail account you can go to the Google home page and log in using your email. In the top right corner is a link for “Add stuff.” It allows you to add specific URLs; it will pull the last 1-10 entries from that page and populate your Google Desktop. Here’s a snapshot of what mine looks like:

It’s not the best snapshot but I wanted to show as much as possible. This is actually only about 1/3 of what I have on mine. These are different places that I used to go to individually to find information.

Google Alerts is a fantastic tool. You enter your search term and whenever Google finds your term while crawling the web it will send you an email with a link to it. I have alerts on everything from “google datacenters” to “DMOZ” and “Matt Cutts” to “Danny Sullivan.”

When I look for content, I use these as reference tools. They are not meant to be used to scrape content or plagiarize other websites.

There are many other uses for these if you put your head to it. )

A simple “You have found this page in error, please select from the menu on the left side of this page” will do here, and you will retain more traffic.

12 More SEO Tips for 2007 – The Final Four SEO Tips

12 More SEO Tips for 2007 part 9
12 More SEO Tips for 2007 part 10
12 More SEO Tips for 2007 part 11
12 More SEO Tips for 2007 part 12

1. Check for 302 redirects or any other redirects.
2. Check for Load Time, Browser Compatibility, Spell Check, and Link Check.
3. Check Server Headers
4. Code to Text Checker
5. Keyword Density
6. Spider Simulator
7. Plagiarism Checker
8. Atom & RSS Feed Validator
9. W3C Markup Validation Service
10. Domain Directory Checker (top 10 Directories)

Navigation and usability is a fundamental element to search engine optimization. It is also one of the first things I look at when a potential client comes to Stickyeyes for a consultation.

Unfortunately in most situations there is a Director, Manager or Webmaster that is married to the current design. If we see a need for a complete redesign, hopefully we are lucky enough to be given the “nod,” but in most cases that does not happen, so we are forced to change bits and pieces.

Before I touch on some good tips, let me just say this to the site owners, webmasters and upper-management people out there. If you are not ranking well, not getting a good click-through rate, experiencing high bounce rates or cart abandonment, or you get a myriad of traffic without a minimum of a three percent conversion rate, then you probably have usability issues.

You have more than one choice.

1. You can let a professional redesign your website; choose a good one and this will almost guarantee every element I mention above will be resolved.
2. You can let a professional create microsites in subdomains with full access to tinker around, test and improve. This way your “top-secret” back-end won’t be exposed (or cause any infrastructure or complicated matrix/server issues).
3. You can let a professional change elements within your current site and test them; a good professional will certainly know what they are doing.

At the end of the day what I am getting at here is that this is a serious fundamental element in a successful website. To use my company as an example, we typically sit down with 10 or 12 of our best people when looking at the website’s functionality. This is a very strong focus group because we also know end-user behavior. Keep an open mind to these types of suggestions because they are usually one of the major issues most websites have.

So on to more tips.

Be sure you have definitive CTAs (Call To Actions) throughout your site, preferably in the navigation bars. These can be Call Us, Contact Us, Get a Quote, Add To Cart, Sign Up, Request Information or whatever. These CTAs should be in an abridged form that has as few fields as possible.

I recently looked at a website (a major name that you would recognize) that sells insurance online. Being an ex-insurance agent I know the information that they need to give a quote is certainly not 15 pages long. We actually timed it at close to 20 minutes to complete.

Look at your checkout procedure. Whether it’s for an ecommerce site selling widgets, or an insurance company trying to give a quote, the information that is required should be kept to a bare minimum. Human nature is the “path of least resistance” and you can scare them off with a daunting list of required fields when all they were looking for was a quick comparison quote. People don’t want to have to give this personal information away in the first place, and doing it online is an even scarier scenario, but now you want it all!?!?

Cut this down to just a few fields over a maximum of two pages…and even just one if possible.

Using JavaScript/AJAX style forms are great. With these you only show a few fields at a time and if the appropriate radio button is selected, it opens additional fields to be filled in. The idea is that if you get them mentally committed by filling out a few fields, they are more likely to fill out the remaining fields.

Placement of “information request” forms are important as well. If you carry hundreds of products, don’t put a “request more information” button or form in your side navigation bar. Put one below each product and add script that will pre-fill the request form so that all the end user need do is add minimal personal information.

For those that are etailers, or those who have actual physical products that they sell (not necessarily affiliate marketers) and are competitive with their competition and their pricing, put a Low Price Guarantee like the one that you see here. You’ll be surprised at the increase in sales opportunities that you will see.

It seems like a small thing, and even overkill to some, but I have participated in some testing on these suggestions and in all instances positive results were seen. The first, rewriting external file names, would be taking your external CSS or JavaScript files and using your keyword/keyword phrases within their actual file name. As I believe meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are still in use to a point, I believe things like the file names and HTML comment tags are as well. Google mentions looking at HTML comment tags in their Adsense Help Center. Does this mean that their algo also looks at HTML comments? Maybe, maybe not. But It can’t hurt. (Only add one keyword phrase though; use it in a sentence, but not as the first word).

Last, but not least, create PDF versions of your pages that are already ranking well, or have had content written for optimization purposes. In other words, I have pages that have what I feel is the perfect SEO formula, with on and off-page optimization. Take these pages and get the trial version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. This will allow you to automatically create PDF versions of your pages, and add a few other optimization elements. Be sure to name the files with your keywords. Take these PDF files and put them in a subdirectory off of your root, and in the same directory add a your-keywords-here.xml sitemap, separate from your site XML map. Submit it separately to Google for a crawl.

You need to set some type of budget. Whether you’re an individual with one or two accounts, or an agency with dozens, you need to have some type of budget set aside for this. It can be money or it can be time.

Here is how I segment my campaigns :

• 15% – 25% to purchase one-way back links to internal pages. Not text links. I create custom/bespoke articles that will complement the owner’s site, and that have my keyword phrase within it as my anchor text. I also make sure that it is a relevant site to my article/anchor text.
• 25% – 30% reciprocal link exchange. Not text links. I create custom/bespoke articles that will complement the owner’s site, and that have my keyword phrase within it as my anchor text. I also make sure that it is a relevant site to my article/anchor text.
• 25% for blogs and forums. It’s considered Guerilla Marketing. This takes a little longer because you need to establish yourself within communities and become somewhat of an authority that can post links to relevant and useful content on a site. This will attract actual traffic (and improved rankings), and also create natural back links from other end-users.
• 25% Use an automated tool (IBP 9.0 – Axandra) to find potential link partners. You can find a complete guide on how to use this along with Firefox and SEO Quake extension on the SES London Presentations Page. The username is london2007 and the password is febpres07.

Now whether you hire students to do these tasks or you do them yourself, they need to be part of your daily routine. Obviously there are other considerations such as building good content that people want to link to, creating top 10 lists, how-to guides and reviews, but not all markets have the ability to do these in a relevant way. My recommendation in this type of situation, and really any others, is to do a who-is lookup, pick up the phone and start calling. These are the best kind of back links.

Video is huge, and will continue to grow quickly. Yahoo and YouTube average visits were between 13 to 15 minutes. Imagine getting people to watch an ad on television that long — or what you would have to pay for that audience.

All it takes is a video camera or good webcam, some basic editing software, and you’re ready to go. Be sure to keep the video short, something that people want to learn about or that will keep them watching, and place your URL somewhere in the video. At the end of the video include a call to action. Submit your instructional video (or whatever you choose to do) to free video publishing sites such as YouTube, Shorkle, Veoh, Furl, Bolt, MovieMasher, Zango, Badongo, MyUseNet and many others. Continue to work on this and master your editing skills. Be sure to name the file with your keywords. You would be surprised how many of these video ads are showing up on the first page in normal Google searches. This will give you a great advantage over your competition if videos (or what I like to call free advertising) can be applied to your niche market.

This has been covered over and over again, but it is a very important element and ongoing research is crucial to help you stay ahead of the competition. There are several tools out there, most of which are free, or offer free trials. I typically use several different tools. Google Trends – According to Google “Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it. This is great if you are in an industry that has seasonal traffic. This identifies the seasonality of keyword searches. Google also has a keyword tool that will take a large list of keywords and, when filtered by Search Volume Trends, give you a list that contains 12 months of data and which month showed the highest occurrence.

KeywordDiscovery collects search term data from just over 180 search engines worldwide. Their database contains approximately 32 billion searches from the last 12 months. Their Premium Database contains over 600 million results.

What I like is that they cover a wider demographic than the other paid tools available. Although the new WordTracker UK version is a great addition for our company, being that it is based in the UK, KeywordDiscovery seems to be a better choice for those in a European market. Major differences are the databases from which they pull their results. WordTracker uses 4 or 5 sources (e.g. MetaCrawler, DogPile and Overture), while KeywordDiscovery uses Google, Yahoo Groups, DMOZ, MSN, Teoma, Miva and over 50 other databases. They also pull from databases in Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, India, and Norway. In the UK alone they use 11 different engines including google.co.uk.

SpyFu is a neat (and free) tool that can eliminate keywords that you may think are good to use, but may not convert well. It is a tool for Google Adwords and useful if you are trying to determine an estimated spend for individual keywords.

I use this keyword tool to see what terms companies are bidding on that are related to my query. Chances are, if they are bidding on it, then it’s probably converting. This helps me eliminate broad terms as well (e.g. parts, cars). I guess you can use other tools to base KEI (keyword effectiveness index) on and do close to the same thing, but SpyFu makes it a little easier and faster.

It will also show you misspelled terms. Of course many of these tools have this function but again, this tool does it quicker. Here’s an example of what SpyFu came up with when I searched for ‘advanced auto parts’

advaced auto parts
advancd auto parts
advancded auto parts
advence auto parts
advenced auto parts
after market auto parts
aftermarket auto parts
anvance auto parts

So it doesn’t just show ergonomic misspellings, it also shows ‘stoopid’ misspellings.

HitTail is a tool that I hold near and dear to my heart because I had some of input into its development, and they added a few features that I requested while using it for Pay Per Click keyword research. (Well, that and the fact that the tool saved my client £90,000 a year).

The tool was originally designed to do what log files can basically do, but quicker and easier. HitTail gathers the keyword and keyword phrases that brought your visitors to the site and graphs them to identify niche phrases that have high KEI so that you can use them in articles or online content. They added an XML export feature that I love because I can use it while creating AdWords campaigns and save myself a ton of time.

The reason I use it for keyword research is two-fold:

1. It’s quicker and easier than log file data mining.
2. I can quickly identify the long 4-6 keyword phrases to use in my content.

Search engine users are become more savvy and their knowledge increases every day. They know that the more words they use to target their query the better the results will be. I see 20-30 percent of my visitors using 4+ keyword strings. Two years ago it was around 2-3.

End users are becoming more and more knowledgeable about how search engines work; the more descriptive words they use, the more likely they are to get the results that they are looking for.

What this means is that last year the key phrase for company “A” was Debt Help. This year their top keyword phrase is Get Debt Free. I don’t know why, maybe there is a major company out there doing debt consolidation ad campaigns that have “coined” this phrase to make it more memorable than debt help. Who knows? The point is that they are using a completely different search phrase, and the phrase is three words rather than two words. Generally speaking, “the lower number of words the better” has been the overall suggested recommendation to target because human nature is the path of least resistance.

To a point it still is, but the people using longer phrases (based on my analytics) know what they are looking for, because they convert at a significantly higher rate. Once I have identified these phrases I start building additional pages, or even microsites (for purposes of A/B, funnel, and conversion testing) and I target the 3, 4, 5 or even 6 word long tail phrases. Use these longer keyword phrases within your content as well.

If possible, replace enough of the current keywords with the long-tail keywords. (This presumes that you do not build separate pages). If you are in a highly competitive market, this could be the answer that you are looking for to attract the middle 40-80 percent of the target audience that you are looking for, plus get great conversion rates.

Just be sure to create well structured “calls to action” in the page. (See 12 Make Money SEO Tips for 2007 part 5 ).