Introduction:

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to view my SEO hints and tips e-book on the often forgotten aspects of SEO. This book was written from the collective knowledge and information gathered by Chris Diprose, owner and manager of Kanga Internet. Kanga Internet are located in Melbourne, Australia and they focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Development for the Joomla Content Management System (CMS).

With Search Engine Optimization there are lots of unknowns, educated guesses and knowledge gained from personal and associative experience. Google, Yahoo and MSN keep their cards close to their chest when it comes to revealing how their ranking systems really work. They tell the community trickles of information on what things can affect search engine results, how they can be improved and what to do in certain situations, but mostly knowing what to do to achieve excellent results is achieved by studying and hard work. Much alike other SEO consultants I have gathered information from various sources and worked constantly on improving results for customers. I am always looking for new intelligent ways to improve search engine results. I believe in “White Hat” (or more appropriately, “Grey Hat”) principles.

Edition 1 of this e-book is intended for people looking to improve their websites from the ground up. I address SEO design fundamentals; the things you need to consider before embarking on any text and keyword analysis. I hope you find these hints and tips useful.

Delight in the readings herein.
- Chris Diprose

The Website Revelation – What owning a website really means.
As a Web Developer and SEO consultant I deal with many existing website owners who are looking to modify or improve their website. I also deal with many people who are looking to start their web presence with a new website. Through both of these interactions there is often a common theme; a misunderstanding or an attitude. I call this a misconception of reality, as often the reality of what the Internet can really do for the persons business and what they reckon it can do differ massively.

Often it is presumed that by simply owning a domain and having a website built and published on the Internet, thousands of people will magically find the website, visit it and buy their products. “If you build it, they will come” should be removed from the vocabulary as soon as possible if you are to adjust attitudes to the underlying search technology. As a businessman in the real World, it is obvious that it would not happen outside of the Internet ether, so what is so different online? Maybe it was the Technology boom 10 years ago that caused a rift in understanding or maybe the buzz that caused the meteoric rise in the stock prices of Tech Companies, I can hear the thoughts of the small businessman, “surely this can be replicated for my business” – in answer I would say, “well, it is unlikely, but you should be able to achieve some results over time”.

It is most vital when taking on a project like Search Engine Optimization for a website, to know that it is vital to be committed for the long haul. It is no small task and sufficient funds need to be allocated to the project. Delivery deadlines need to be correctly scoped against required changes, in order to meet client expectations. The key points of responsibility to the SEO project are in knowing that there are huge changes near the start and during setup but the changes do not stop after setup, there are a continuous ongoing refinements to the design and system over time. In this regard I find it vital to manage expectations and set realistic long term goals on what a website can be expected to achieve and in what time frames those goals hope to be met.

So what should your goal be when you are delving into SEO for your website? Well, everyone’s goal is exactly the same; improve page rankings, improve page visits and hits and finally gain more sales through the website.

When it comes to SEO and achieving these goals you have to have principles and my main principle is, “Excellent websites get excellent ratings and terrible websites get terrible ratings or none at all.” As time goes on with the improvement of search engine technology and the refinement of search engine results this statement becomes truer and truer. I believe in results through “white hat”(reads; “Grey Hat”) principles and methodologies.

What are “white hat” principles? I guess I would compare it to doing things the honest way and the right way without risk. So develop a excellent site, promote excellent linking, have excellent informative content and keep working on it and then you are on the road to excellent rankings through “White Hat” principles.

So, why should you do things the “white hat” way? Well, search engines do have some kind of understanding, an artificial intelligence. They soon catch on to websites spamming or linking to websites with no relevance and terrible cross linking. It’s about being smart, in for the long term and wanting your business to grow organically, naturally.

So how do I go about improving my site and making it optimized for search engines naturally? Well, that’s why you’re here! So let’s run through few of the things you should be doing in your websites from a fundamental level.

Domain names:

When choosing a domain name, choose one that is relevant to the product or service you are going to provide and that is as simple as possible. There are considerations of branding and product/service provided that should go into this choice. Involvement of marketing personal and product understanding is required but also consultation with your SEO professional is advantageous. In this step I would say, take some time and choose wisely. Keep it simple and simple to remember, often saying it out loud will make it clear whether it can be understood by a simple man.

It is a strongly held belief by many SEO professionals that buying a domain which is older, and that has been around for a while, means it will not be sand boxed by Google. What’s the sandbox effect? Well, it refers to what Google does to a website or domain that is new or is relatively unknown by Google. In many instances Google’s Sandbox effect relegates the new domain to sub-optimal inclusion in search results. Regardless of the sites optimization it lowers the websites relevance and ranking to the term searched upon. If you can use your ancient business domain name, then consider this very vital.

If, but, you are buying a new domain name then keep it relevant to the product or service being sold or offered on the website. Keep it close, relevant and simple. Relevance is primary.

Location specific domain or international domain ( .com or com.au)? Personally I reckon dot com’s are better, mainly because they appeal Internationally but if you want to you can keep it location specific and to your region then consider purchasing all similar higher level domains, yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com.au, if you can.

Choosing a Host:

Quick, reliable and gives you all you that you need and want. Preferably gives a unique IP. Again some SEO professionals believe this can also have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn’t. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IP’s and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. I guess a consideration

Traffic considerations: When choosing your host ensure the plot you are on can be expanded so that any new increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

Site Design:

There are several fundamental things to consider when you are modifying or designing a website.

Flash:

Flash is has been well loved for a few years now and I truly believe it has its place. It is a fantastic way of showing many products or services in a small area, has fantastic visual impact if done properly and can set a excellent friendly tone to the website visitor. Having said that, I also despise flash; it can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to search engine optimization.

What you should know about flash; it cannot be read by a search engine as the search engine cannot read the text or the images contained within it nor can it interpret what is in the pictures being shown.

When it comes to flash I would suggest, not making your whole website flash. If you are designing a new website and you want to use flash then use it in high impact areas to capture the attention of your intended audience but use it sparingly. It is vital to ensure that as much text content(to a maximum discussed in my next book, generally 300-500 characters) is available on the webpage and in simple HTML.

Frames:

Many older websites were designed with frames. Frames are where the main home page is really a frameset page that includes several other pages into it. This makes the page hard to index in search engines and should be avoided. While Google do now index framed sites, it is vital to note that most of the other top search engines still cannot follow frame links. They only see the frameset page and ignore the rest of the inner frames. This presents an SEO problem to us because it is highly likely those inner pages contain our content keywords.

Nowadays this is not really a huge issue as it is so uncommon for a designer to really use frames but the simplest way to resolve the issue would be to enforce a no use policy on frames.

Page Layout:

According to research the Googlebot trawls web pages from left to right and top to bottom. So given this small tidbit of information it is clear that you should be putting our most valuable keywords and information on the left and near the top. Of course this is a blanket statement and does not take into account design principles and beautification. Just keep it in mind during design of page layout. Position your go relevant keywords to the left of the page and near the top.

Excellent HTML Coding:

A lot of HTML generator programs out there bloat HTML to the point it is 3-4 times larger than what it would be if you hand coded it. Keep it simple, use a text editor, edit your HTML the ancient school way; until there is a HTML generator tool worthy of use. If you can’t code HTML then do a search on the Internet and find a decent, free, e-book and learn how to do it.

Javascript:

This is very well loved among many web development professionals for menu’s, popups, scollers etc etc. It would be my suggestion to use simple plain HTML menu’s or as small Javascript as possible in web pages. There are many small JavaScript menu’s out there that are slim on JavaScript code to reduce this issue and make it nearly negligible. Don’t over clutter your site with JavaScript as it increases page size, page load times and the search engines won’t know it.

Image Sizes:

Keep them small and use only what you need to. This is essential for decreasing page loading times and getting information onto the users screen as soon as possible.

Overall page size and loading:

The overall page size is an vital factor. It should load quickly and be easily trawled. If you have followed the HTML hand coding, used minimal javascript, used simple table layouts and excellent image sizing then you should be fine. There is much evidence that supports the fact that Google and probably the other search engines also, do not like to scan huge files, so keeping your overall HTML page size below 25k is my suggestion.

Dynamic URL’s & page/file names:

Dynamic pages are roadblocks to high search engine positioning. Especially those that end in “?” or “&”. In a dynamic site, variables are passed to the URL and the page is generated dynamically, often from information stored in a database as is the case with many e-commerce sites. Normal .html pages are static – they are hard-coded, their information does not change, and there are no “?” or “&” characters in the URL.

Pages with dynamic URLs are present in several engines, notably Google and AltaVista, even though publicly AltaVista claims their spider does not crawl dynamic URLs. To a spider a “?” represents a sea of endless possibilities – some pages can automatically generate a potentially massive number of URLs, trapping the spider in a virtually infinite loop.

As a general rule, search engines will not properly index documents that:
• contain a “?” or “&”
• End in the following document types: .cfm, .asp, .shtml, .php, .stm, .jsp, .cgi, .pl
• Could potentially generate a large number of URLs.
To avoid complications, consider making static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the glide.

Slightly Off Topic Thoughts:

The topics covered here are not considered completely SEO topics but in terms of overall objective – increasing sales, this section is very vital. Take these things on board, consider them, consult with your designer and marketing team. Make educated and informed choices on these topics when considering your audience and what your website objectives are.

Screen Size:

Over 65% of all screens in the World are set to run at the 1024×768 resolution. Of the remaining percentage, 13% are running at 800×600, 20% running at larger sizes and 2% are unknown. So this affects the way you design. It would be my suggestion to always design for the smallest user to visit your site, but often I find 800×600 restrictive so I tend to design for slightly larger. Not large enough to make an 800×600 user mad but large enough to make it look excellent on larger screens also. I weigh up my target users, my intended amount of content and find some pleased medium. I generally design for 1000×620 as this is the perfect amount of real estate for a 1024×768 user when they have the browser top bar and status bar and Windows taskbar.

colors and themes:

One vital aspect of marketing – selling – is the use of color. Meanings are attached to colors in the same way meanings are attached to words.

• Gold is the color of wealth and prosperity.
• White is the color of pure innocence and cleanliness.
• Pink is the color of femininity and softness.
• Green is the color of natural things and freshness.
• Red is the color of danger and stress.
• Blue is the color the calmness, intelligence. The majority of the World selects blue as a favorite color. It often represents “trust”

Use of color to establish an image or a brand is common in the marketing community, yet when you visit the websites of many search engine optimization professional’s, it’s obvious that color significance plays no part in their own web optimization. Some of the colors I found on SEO websites:
• Baby Blue, a color which implies weakness.
• Red, a color which implies risk, or danger.
• Orange a color which implies a cheerful “levity”. Orange is one of Americans’ least favorite colors.

Although color selection is off topic for SEO I would consider it a very vital factor in what SEO is trying to achieve, in the end, for your website – selling more product, making loyalty to your brand and customer impact. color research is something you should seriously consider. In summary of color choices I would suggest studying and learning more about your customers, researching color choices and their relevance to your underlying products and making informed choices on these in collaboration. If in doubt then I suggest sticking to safe and trusted colors within safe eye pleasing designs.

Gifs for logos & jpgs for pictures:

Ensure you are using gifs for logos and background placements and jpgs for photos on your website. This helps reduce size and improve clarity of the web site overall.

Browser:

It is vitally vital to ensure your web page works in both IE, Firefox and Opera. Testing other browsers is also an advantage but these are the main three in use nowadays (2007). I reckon quoting stats on the browser breakdown are irrelevant as you need it work in all browsers. W3C cross browser compliance is fantastic for this.

So, this brings us to the end of Volume 1: Fundamentals of SEO Web Design. There are many things to consider when designing a website or modifying a web site to make it more SEO friendly. Clearly I have a few more volumes left in SEO for websites.

Effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. Although in the search engines market exist very advanced tools that cost a lot, there are many free SEO tools which can help the novice and advanced SEO marketer to save valuable time.
Here is a list of free and proven for their effectiveness SEO online instruments:

1) http://www.alexaranking.com . It displays multiple domains instead of one. Therefore, you can have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings instead of typing and search each time separately.

2) http://www.xml-sitemaps.com . Sitemaps are extremely vital for websites because they help search engines crawl and index them. This is a free xml sitemap generator.

3) http://www.123promotion.co.uk/directorymanager . You can track your submissions to various web directories and you can also visit regularly to see new directories added to the list. You just tick the appropriate submission boxes when you submitted your website. It’s very simple to use it.

4) http://www.123promotion.co.uk/ppc/index.php. This is a very powerful tool. It displays, based on the Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

5) http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density . This keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters/SEO’s achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms/keywords. This tool will analyze your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one, two, or three word key terms.

6) http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keyWait.asp . This is another Brilliant Resource. When you enter the appropriate URL and keyword, it will show Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.

7) http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/robotstxtgenerator.php . You can make a free robots.txt file with this resource. So, you will be able to direct the search engines to follow the pages structure of your website and also direct the search engines not to follow and crawl specific web pages of your website you don’t want to be crawled.

All you have to do is filling the fields and when the robots.txt file is made you upload it to your root of your web server.

http://www.nichebot.com . This website displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results. You just enter the keyword and press the button.

9) http://www.webconfs.com/domain-stats.php . You Enter the domain and get: domain age, number of pages indexed, and number of backlinks. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.

It will help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

10) http://comparesearchengines.dogpile.com . Shows top results from 3 search engines. This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor’s domains.

11) http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm . This verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. You enter your URL/Keyword and it displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines.

12) http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx. This tool generates a list of possible keyword combinations based on lists of keywords that you provide.

You enter a list of terms, one per line or separated by commas. This is very effective for Google Adwords and Overture.

One of the oldest yet still more effective techniques in driving targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers is information-based marketing. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are at an all-time high.

There are many tools that you can use to make the process of distributing your articles simpler. But, although this is invaluable in getting your article exposed to more sites, there are common mistakes that some people make before submitting their articles to directories.

Let us take a look at the more common mistakes made in 3 key areas:

1) Confusing the reason to promote articles with the reason to write them.

In article writing, the main benefits of you promoting them is branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.

But, there is one reason why you write articles, and that is to inform your audience about a subject. It is greatly vital that your article is based upon this fact, or else you stand to fail in the promotional benefits as outlined above.

Of course, it is also highly vital that you figure out how to get people to read you article, and then to click on your site link in the resource box. I have produced a couple of articles that cover these areas so please check them out .

2) Failing to realize and maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You will more than likely already know that your article can generate links back to your site from the article directories themselves, and also from any sites who publish your article from these directories.  But, did you know that you can attract more visitors and better search engine results from the same article?

The first step to achieving this is to provide relevant keywords at strategic places in the article. But, do not overdo this.  A excellent benchmark is to aim for between a ten to fifteen percent keyword density. I won’t go further into this here as I’ve discussed this in other articles but if you want to find out more, look out for more of my article marketing articles.

You shouldn’t just aim for your article to be accepted by article directories, but should ultimately aim for it to be used by publishers who scour the directories for website content. You should not underestimate the potential that this can have on your promotional efforts, as many of these publishers may have hundreds or thousands of regular visitors who could then view your article.

Start out by having a plot of what you want achieved and make sure that you reach your targets. It is vital to do this so that you can reap the maximum benefits of every article that you write.

3) Making articles with content that does not help your readers.

Maybe your only plot is to make an article and get links back from article directories, and that any visitor that you may get from this is fine.

Well you may need to reckon again. Many article directoriesclamp down on the amount of articles that they accept that are simply not up to standard. And even if a poorly written, uninformative article does make it into the article sites, then the potential of being picked up by webmasters seeking quality content is certainly lost.

The benefits of one publisher with a hundred thousand website visitors picking up your article should be enough incentive for you to write an informative article. This is by no means impossible, and you may find that this value is conservative in what you may achieve from a number of publishers running your article on their site.

Researching into a topic that is sought after is vital. There may be many readers of this article who will feel that this information is all well and excellent but feel that they cannot write an article well, or may not know enough about a certain subject to write an article. This is by no means a dead-end. There are many places where you can research into a topic, or hiring a writer might be an option worth considering.

The choice really is yours on how dedicated you are in increasing the exposure of your article, and consequently your website. On a basic level you can choose to gain a few backlinks from article directories, or with a small more effort you can delight in massive exposure from providing quality content.

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.