Analyzing your competition is a excellent place to start when optimizing your web site for search engine placement. SEO or search engine optimization is about topping your competition. By looking first at web sites that rank high for your key word phrases you will have an understanding of the time and cost involved to have high rankings in the search engines. If you are going after a competitive keyword phrase the amount of time involved will dramatically increase.

When analyzing the competition, search for your keyword phrase or phrases in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Look at the top sites and especially look at the sites that rank high in all three of the major search engines. You now have a list of competitor web sites; these are your targets to pick off one by one.

Check your competitors’ backlinks or links to them from other web sites; this is going to be the best indicator of how much effort you are going to have to place into your search engine optimization project. You can check backlinks in Google and MSN by typing link:www.yourdomain.com. In Yahoo you would type link:http://www.yourdomain.com. Yahoo also has a special command that will show you all the links to an entire web site. This can be done by typing linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com. Now you can see all the links to the home page and sub-pages in a web site. The linkdomain command is the most helpful when evaluating links. Be sure to check links in all three major search engines so you do not miss anything. Also check backlinks on competitors sub-pages. You will not need as many deep links but this can make a huge difference when trying to get a keyword to rank on a sub page.

When evaluating your competitors’ links, keep in mind that this can be a link source for your web site. See if the web sites linking to your competitors accept web site link submissions. When submitting to other sites use your keyword phrase for your anchor text when ever possible.

Using the Google toolbar can be helpful too when evaluating links. Google assigns each page a page rank score based on a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being the highest. Do not solely look at a page’s page rank score; it is better that the page be on topic rather than an irrelevant topic and a high score.

Next look at the competitors’ title tags; are they using keywords in the tag? Be sure to check the keywords tag and description tag – I always find excellent keywords this way. There are some fantastic free SEO tools on the internet that will automate these processes. Just do a search for free SEO tools and you will have a lot of tools with different and unique features for your needs.

Links are very vital but if you are smart you will not need as many to beat out the competition. Build your inbound links slow and steady, and from a variety of sources. Make sure to use your keyword phases in your anchor text and vary the text for some of the links. This will appear natural to the search engines and should help you to avoid over optimization or spam penalties. If you are trying to buy one hundred inbound links to your web site, space your acquisitions out over a three month period or longer. One hundred backlinks appearing all at once looks very unnatural especially if you do not keep building backlinks at that rate. Make sure you have well written relevant content. When optimizing your web site stay with in all search engine guidelines. The guidelines will give you a excellent thought of what and what not to do for you web site to rank well in the search engines. You do not want all your hard work to go to waste because of an over aggressive tactic or simple mistake that is outside of the search engine guidelines.

Search engine optimization is increasingly being accepted as a powerful and critical component of the marketing plot. With the costs involved in other forms of online marketing growing significantly, it has become nearly a necessity for companies to include SEO in their overall marketing mix.

It’s thus no surprise to know that professional SEO today is huge business and this industry is growing at a quick pace. There are but many different types of SEO firms out there and finding a reliable service can be a daunting task.

Search engine optimization firms use varying methods to get high rankings for websites and not all of these techniques are considered ethical. With the increasing number of ‘black hat’ SEO firms, (companies using unethical and unfair methods and techniques to manipulate search engines), and the thin line between actual ‘black hat’ and ‘white hat’ SEO practices, it is crucial to be well informed of the methodology the company plans to use for your website before you choose to hire them.

Here are 8 simple tips to help you in your evaluation and selection of a trustworthy and professional search engine optimization service:

1.Educate yourself with the basics
Make sure to do your homework carefully before you venture out to hire a SEO service. It’s imperative you know in advance exactly what a firm can and will do for you to enable you to evaluate them. There are several resources online dedicated to search engine marketing and search engine optimization and taking the time to know and learn the basics will go a long way.

2.Fee structures and your budget
There are no standardized fee structures and most companies offer a range of packages instead. A package may in itself contain a variety of services like keyword research, optimization of a certain number of pages, directory submissions etc. Selecting a company should not be only about cost. A firm that charges more may not necessarily be better at SEO and likewise a firm that charges less may not necessarily be providing you the same services. Use prudence while understanding pricing models and the risks behind them. One way to go about deciding what your budget should be is to first identify your website’s and business’ unique needs, tailor a package to meet these requirements and then compare firms’ pricing models to choose a realistic baseline budget.

3.Size and specialty of the firm
Depending on the size of your website and requirements of your company, it might be a excellent thought to check out whether the firm is adequately staffed and what their customer to SEO team ratio is.

Another vital thing is to ensure that the company specializes in all areas of SEO and has a team of professionals experienced and accomplished in each of the areas including design, development and actual coding.

4.Location
The location of the firm largely depends on your comfort level. You may favor a local company or one at least within your country or prefer to outsource completely to another country to benefit from their lower costs. There are also few companies using a blended offshore delivery model with marketing and client services offices in one country and the actual design and development work being done in another. With the combination of lower costs plus client servicing available within reach, this upcoming balanced model may be a excellent option to consider.

5.Client testimonials and references
References are a fantastic way to start and should be freely available. If they haven’t been provided, question and make sure to use them to find out exactly how credible and trustworthy the company really is based on their past client’s experiences.

6.Guarantees
Most firms won’t guarantee top position results and shouldn’t. It is justifiable for a company to guarantee increasing your traffic or rankings from its current positions; but if any SEO service is guaranteeing you a specific position/ranking in any search engine, make sure you read the fine print of the agreement.

7.Ethics / Spam
Ethics is of paramount importance when it comes to selecting a search engine optimization company. There are a variety of unethical practices a firm can use right from while selling their services to you, to, the actual methods they use while optimizing your site (keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc to name a few). Make sure to question as many questions as possible and specifically about the methodology they use. If the firm does not offer you ready explanations of the process they undertake to optimize websites, you probably need to look elsewhere.

8.Reporting and success measurement
Some of the key questions to question – How long will it take to see results? What type of reports will the SEO firm furnish and how often? How will success be measured? Will a maintenance plot be included?

It is largely up to you to define the goal and success level of your SEO campaign. It may be an increase in the traffic to your site, potential leads from a mailing list subscription, or an increase from last years sales. Make it a point to discuss and articulate your goals with the SEO firm and come to an agreement before you hire them. It is but vital to set realistic expectations. Unlike PPC and other forms of paid advertising, SEO is a time consuming process, both in terms of implementation as well as results.

To conclude, hiring a SEO services firm can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line, but the choice to partner with a particular SEO firm should only ensue after a careful evaluation of the firm and after you have done the groundwork necessary to help you choose your own goals for the program.

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On-page search engine optimization is certainly one of the key methods if a website owner want to improve the results for his or her website’s searchability. But, on-page SEO often entails technical skills. Why? Not a lot of people are HTML enthusiasts. This is often what needs to be tweaked to do an brilliant job in optimizing web pages.

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

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

1. Article Marketing

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

2. Forum Participation

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

3. Blogging

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

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

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

As with any other business practice, Search Engine Optimization can be performed within or without the boundaries of accepted business ethics. White hat SEO is optimization that follows the guidelines set forth by search engines. Black hat SEO intentionally undermines these guidelines.

For those who haven’t heard, for the past year or two some have labeled different forms of search engine optimization by different hat colors. Those who practice what some refer to as “ethical” SEO are the White Hats (like the excellent guys in the movies), and those who some refer to as “spammers” are the Black Hats (like the terrible guys in the movies). Those who are not quite as pure as the driven snow but who aren’t quite as… umm… aggressive as a full-fledged “search engine spammer” are sometimes referred to as Gray Hats.
There are various new shades added to the list:
Dark Inky Black Hat SEO: So evil he’s a typo squatter installing spyware. Plain illegal, too.
Charcoal Hat SEO: Optimizes really unrelated pages for all kinds of queries, but within the bounds of legality.
Dark Gray Hat SEO: This SEO is e.g. a splogger stealing content from other sites. (What, that’s better than charcoal?)
Slate Gray Hat SEO: An SEO making link farms and such.
Gray Hat SEO: An SEO who really reads the search engine’s webmaster guidelines, but then tries as much “evil” as she can get away with.
Light Gray Hat SEO: This SEO makes original content (lots of it), but the content is still only aimed at search engines.
Off-White Hat SEO: This guy not only ensures the site is indexable – he’ll also make sure to get lots of backlinks from friends.
White Hat SEO: This person puts up the content that people are really searching for, and prepares the site to make it very accessible. White Hat SEOs only optimize those of their pages they deem worthy to be ranking top in search engines.
Luminescent Pearly White Hat SEO: Not only does this SEO do everything the White Hat SEO does, the LPW Hat SEO also makes sure pages will not show up for irrelevant queries.

But are these marks helping anyone, and do they really mean anything? Certainly, the SEO methods I use would place me into the White Hat category. Does this make me better than those in the Black Hat category? I guess the question would be, better at what? It doesn’t make me a better person, nor does it necessarily make me a better SEO. It might make me better at not getting a site banned from the search engines, but then again, most Black Hats know that their sites will eventually get banned and have figured that into their business model. So it’s not really a question of excellent or terrible, like the hats seem to imply.

White hat SEO includes:
Increasing keyword density within text in a relatively natural manner
Designing keyword friendly Titles, Meta Tags, Meta Descriptions, Headers, and Alt text for your site
Natural linking between your site and similar sites
Developing new, link-friendly content for your site

Both White Hat and Black Hat SEOs have their place. Lots of people are indeed looking for the types of products and services that Black Hatters specialize in. There is a huge demand for their black magic. As much as I despise lousy search results, as long as the Black Hats are doing their thing to the types of sites that I wouldn’t be seeking out anyway, then it really doesn’t bother me; it’s the search engines’ problem to get rid of it.
The vital thing to note, but, is that most sites don’t need to resort to Black Hat SEO.
There are certain advantages to cutting corners and utilizing black hat SEO, mainly that your page will increase dramatically in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rank within a relatively brief amount of time. But, search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) are constantly updating their algorithms to detect and penalize black hat SEO.

Formerly, it was common practice in black hat SEO to make hidden text within web pages. This text increased keyword density without making phony sounding text. For instance, if I wanted to increase my keyword density for copywriting I could simply insert the following line at the bottom of my text:
Then I could change the text font color to white and “presto” the text disappears — my keyword density for copywriting increases but my visible text remains the same.
It all depends on what the Website owner’s goal is. Do they want quick fixes and throwaway domains for the chance of a temporary huge payoff, or do they want a stable business that takes a lot of time and energy, but which pays off handsomely over time? Neither one is necessarily right or incorrect — just different. It’s just like the stock market or gambling in many ways. If you’re willing to be extremely aggressive, there’s a chance you’ll make a ton of money. But, there’s usually even more of a chance that you’ll lose a ton also. It really comes down to how much of a gambler you are.

Fortunately, this basic black hat practice is no longer viable, as search engines have developed methods to detect ‘keyword spam’ and same-color text. Websites with such black hat tactics are not only recognized by the search engines as black hat sites, but are penalized and often completely removed from SERPs. If this happens to your page, it can take months or years to regain your ranking.

Most current black hat SEO takes place on the design or programming side of website development. These tactics include:
Cloaking — Showing a different page to search engines than to site visitors
Duplicating content — making numerous copies of web pages in order to increase page rank
Link Farming — Buying into ‘link farms’, sites with no other intention than to increase your links unnaturally
Page jacking — Copying and pasting text from other websites and using it as your own

fIs Black Hat SEO worth the Risk? In my mind, no. You may get away with it and it will be very lucrative for you to quickly climb the SERPs. But, keep in mind that competitors and Search Engines are extremely suspicious of quick-climbing websites. If your site is found to have black hat SEO, it will be severely penalized by if not completely removed from the search engine.

For a company looking for long-term success, there is absolutely no reason to gamble with their site. But seriously, even though it may take more lead-time, the White Hat method is a lot less stressful, and quite frankly a whole lot simpler.

Have you ever sent a amusing video website link to your friend? How about a news or opinion article? Have you learned an fascinating website and shared it to the rest of your family members? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you are already a participant in online social bookmarking. It’s an vital aspect of SEO and if used properly you can gain advantages over your competitions.

Social bookmarking, to clarify in a few words, is about keeping and organizing memorable web links in an online account. It’s like having our computer hard drive within the World Wide Web, but the difference is, the account focuses on exclusively storing sites that we deemed as relevant, helpful, or simply worth remembering. Submitting your blog posts to social bookmarking sites is a time consuming process, but the excellent news is that there are automated social bookmarking scripts or software you can use to simplify this process.

If we keep on saving vital links in our computer’s web browser, these links will eventually clutter up in the favorites page until they become disorganized and hard to retrieve. Through a social bookmarking account, we can clearly separate websites into various topics and visit these sites even if we don’t use our own computer. Through these marking sites, we can revisit and share well-loved links in any device that has online connection anywhere. These bookmarking services offer creative minded people like web designers the opportunity to find inspirations quickly and cost effectively.

Putting a system to the websites that we want to remember is just one of the components of social bookmarking. The word “social” should be given focus here. Social bookmarking sites enable us to share the news that we learned, videos that we watched, songs that we listened to with our family, friends, and online acquaintances. The sites strengthen relationships in as much as we get to know the things our loved ones are interested in, and get to inform our loved ones things that we currently like.

And although we are not fond of bookmarking the sites that we visit, we can still take advantage of social bookmarking sites by making them our reliable search tools. Most bookmarking sites provide data on the most well loved topics that people read and discuss, and through these we can be updated on news related to various fields like computers, gaming consoles, fashion, celebrity gossips, etc.

Most novice so-called SEO professionals reckon stuffing keywords on the page is the best way to achieve top rankings in Google. The truth is… this is not right of course. Those days are long gone. The search engines have improved a lot since the ancient days, and they will just get smarter in the future. If you want to truly get top rankings for your site for long time, you need to know how the search engine works and what they want from you. You can either learn to do the work yourself or find a professional web design company to help you. Even if you choose the latter you should have at least some knowledge of SEO so that you communicate effectively with them.

It’s not hard to please the search engines if you know how. But if you want to take the shortcuts you will eventually have to pay for it. So.. stick to their rules and you will delight in years of free traffic. The other thing that misunderstood by most people is the number one position. NO, SEO is not about getting your website to position one for one keyword. This may get you some traffic but you will never know how well it converts. Also, by focusing on just one keyword will limit your traffic and benefits on the search engines. If you can get 10 different keywords, with lower competitions, on the first page you will most likely receive more customers, maybe not traffic, but do you really care? Would you rather get more customers than traffic?

In order to get the maximum benefits from the search engines you need to have a plot. This plot should guide you through the whole process of SEO. Your budget, time of work, expectations, link partners per month should be estimated before carrying out any work. This way you will know where you are down the road and how far you are away from your target. Because SEO is long process, some people may get disappointed if the results are visible within a month or two. And if you reckon you are one of these people you need to focus on low competition keyword phrases. This way you will see results more quickly and build up on that. Because keywords can be overlapped so when you are working on longtail keyword phrases you are also working towards your main, and more competitive keywords. Hopefully knowing this will help you stick to SEO longer.

Google happens to be one of the most well loved search engines of the present day for web masters and surfers alike. And why is that? It is because Google gives searchers the best of the available results in the shortest time span. Do you want your website in top 10 search results of Google and start making money online? Read on to know how to make it there.

Why Google It?

The search engine follows a complex system of algorithm density and page ranking method. The system by which Google works is very different from other search engines as they are highly return-based, thanks to the spider crawler that works for site indexing quickly and efficiently. There are a few essentials that help the owner choose upon the popularity of their site. Google’s indexing time is quicker than what it is in most of the other websites, which allows webmasters to edit their pages in the following places:

* Page title
* Headings
* Keyword distribution
* First few sentences
* Incoming links

Page Rank Technology: The Google Page Rank technology makes sure that the web pages link to each other so that the browsers can obtain search specific-results. In order to get your website in top 10 search results of Google, you need to place in as many relevant site links as possible. Make sure that these portals accept external links.

Link exchange is another way to optimize your website. Listing your website in top 10 search results of Google requires paying attention to their Page Rank technology. It depends upon the popularity and quality of link, as well as on content analysis. The latter implies that the content has to be fresh and updated at intervals with new and fresh content with frequent and relevant keywords. Google attributes a lot of importance to the page title and this means ensuring that the keywords and phrases are listed on the title. A website in top 10 search results of Google in this case implies that the page title should have 35 to 40 characters.

Getting indexed in Google is vital as it is one of the most viable and dependable search engines. Other than that, Google is the ranking provider for other search engines like AOL, Excite Network and Netscape. Having your website in top 10 search results of Google is therefore crucial as the search engine also offers relevant Paid Results Ads to AOL, HotBot, Question Jeeves, Lycos, Netscape and Teoma.

Ranking Tips

* For getting your website in top 10 search results of Google start with a site that has never been indexed in search engines and web directories. Select an ideal domain name and optimize the home page.

* With html knowledge, you can do some out of sight code editing.

* Make a wise keyword choice/analysis with tools like Word Tracker.

* Have 200-250 words of copy written on the keywords as it helps make excellent rankings by ‘reading’ keyword rich copy to place your website in top 10 search results of Google.

* Go for a fantastic title tag and substantial meta tags.

* Extra props to enhance page rankings are alt codes, keywords in file names and hyperlinks etc.