What is SEO and do I need it
SEO is the process of driving more quality traffic (“visitors”) to your web site from a search engine via the organic (“natural”) listings.
Organic search results are returned free of charge by a search engine and as such you are not charged every time someone clicks on a link to your website.
The process of SEO has to consider how search engine algorithms work, how “bots” crawl your website and what keywords people would key in to find your site or what products or services you sell.

How does SEO work
We have just demonstrated the process of SEO to you, How? We hear you ask, well you are probably reading this page or came to this website because you found us listed on a search engine like Google, Windows Live, or Yahoo, there you go that’s what SEO is all about, you type in a search phrase or keyword, a list of website are shown in the results, you click on a website you think can answer your question or provide you with a product or service your looking for, you visit the website and bang job done, that’s what SEO is all about.
Now if your in business can you afford not to have your website listed on the first page of the major search engines, well probably not because the chances are your competitors are already there and are no doubt “raking it in” with all those visitors that come to their website, after all if your not listed then how would these people find you.

Google SEO tips
There are over 200 factors (some listed below if you fancy a bit of DIY SEO) which Google can use to determine where your page should list in the search engine results (SERPs).
How may of these factors are used when scoring your website or web page is based on your competition and your website theme along with how complex your website is.
Here is a list of some of those factors based on our research and knowledge within the industry and we would like to stress that this is from our knowledge.
The SEO rules listed below are not listed by any relevance as at the end of the day that exercise is down to you along with your type of website and competition.
Please note that when we refer to the word keyword it can mean either one word or multiple words that are always together when users search the internet for a particular product or service, i.e. “SEO” is a keyword as is “SEO Company”.

Domain name factors

Main keyword in domain name
This helps and can add points but it’s not as important as it used to be.

Top level domain name extensions
(TLD)What sort of domain extension you have can get you points without doing anything.


.gov gets very high status
.info can get high status depending on topic
.edu gets very high status
.org can get high status.

What you need to do is have a TLD that is based in your country or the country you are aiming at, i.e. co.uk for UK companies or for people searching in the UK.

Internet users also look at the extensions of a domain in the search results and many will click on links that they think are in their own country.
Try to avoid domains like .uk.com, as these are hard for your customers to remember and seem not to rank well for searches based on the country your aiming for.

Age of domain
Old websites do well, older websites are more trusted if they stay within the same topics or themes.
New websites are not so trusted and can end up in the Google sandbox, it can take up to 6 months to get out of the sandbox if you have a good website.
In some cases we have seen it take up to 1 year to get out of the sandbox, this can depend on your type of website and theme.

URL factors

Main keyword in URL
This is a must and scores big points, use hyphens or underscores to separate words.

However Google can see the separate words even if they are all joined up.
Not to many words as that can be classed as spam, (max 5) with a max of 3 hyphens or underscores and use one or the other, not both.

URL length
Keep this to a minimal but try to use your main keyword or even what someone might key in as a search term, i.e. “Google_SEO.asp”.
Caution should be used as if it’s to long you could raise a flag for spam.
Less than 50 characters is a better idea.

Meta tag factors

Description Meta tag
Still in use and is often displayed as the search result text.

Must show theme with a max of 200 characters and no special characters.

The description must be unique to each page.

Keywords Meta tag
Apparently not used by Google, but we still use it as "G" are not the only search engine out there, could be used if the bot has problems working out what your real keyword are, Max 10 keywords words and every world must be on your page.

Robots Meta tag
Only needed if you want to stop your page being indexed

OR

If you don’t want the description from the open directory project to be used then use the robots tag with NOODP

Author Meta tag
Have seen this used by other search engines, so pop it in with the name of the author of the web page.

Copyright Meta tag
Have seen it used by other search engines, use it for any copyright info and normally you just put the company name or domain name in.

Web page content factorS

Main keyword in the title tag
This is a must and scores massive points, use | to separate keywords
First or second word using the main keyword is best
Title tag 5 to 60 characters max, also max 3 special characters, unique for each page.

Latent Semantic Indexing
This is one of the biggest factors when writing content for your web page.
Latent Semantic Indexing is really synonyms, but based on user browsing habits rather then synonyms from a dictionary.
A lot of time can be taken up writing content that includes other related words to the main keywords of your web page.
i.e. people who search for “labels” also looked at sites that provide “stickers”
Therefore Google will relate the word stickers to labels meaning that if you have a web page with both words on then you are more related than a page with only one of the words.
Extra caution should be used with this, it’s easy to over do and end up being marked down for spamming.

Keyword density in body text
Aim between 10% to 30% of total words in you total content.
Some keywords are sensitive to the total amount, other keywords are sensitive based on topic or theme so % threshold varies.
Individual keyword density in body
2% to 10% Max depending on the total amount of text or content on your page

Keywords inside H1, H2, H3 tags
These must be used correctly, Not to many, but does depend on theme and topic.
H1 at the top of page using main keyword followed by H2 but only if needed then H3 if required.

Keyword font size
This must be used correctly based on your page layout as putting in large text inside normal size text can make the website look messy and put your visitors off.
Idea is to use in headings where you have already used H1, H2 and H3 tags.

Keyword font weight
This is a must and is a good idea around the beginning of a sentence where you keywords are highlighted by using bold or strong, Google treats bold and strong as almost the same thing so you should use either based on what looks best for your web page.
Italic can also be used and scores points if used in the correct way, normally used when quoting what someone has said or a slogan of some sort.

Keyword proximity
It’s best to place your main keywords at or around the beginning of a page, usually best when within the first 20 words.

Keyword prominence
This would be a mixture of keyword proximity, keyword font weight and keyword font size.

Keyword stemming
Used to try and match words that might be keyed in during a search.
i.e. Google, Google’s, Googled etc

Page freshness
Google loves fresh pages, ones that are updated over time, have new content added.
This must be done very carefully as some pages should never really change and some pages should only have small changes done every now and then.
Home page should not really change unless you have a new service to offer, have a small news section on it, or have things like special offers displayed, otherwise this could cost you in your listing or a loss of some of your main keywords.
Other pages like About Us, Contact Us, Terms and conditions should also only be updated for good reason.
Info pages, product pages, news pages, special offer pages etc, should always be updated on a regular basis.
Depending on the page in question, updates should be once a week or once a month otherwise Google may have trouble keeping up with you and will cause visitors to “bounce” which is a bad thing.
Frequent updates will lead to frequent spidering which in turn leads to a newer search engine cache.

Content changes
As above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.
The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.
Content changesAs above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.
The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic, providing you can justify it. Everyone will get annoyed and link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers - quote your website as the source.

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.

51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.

52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.

53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.

54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.

55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.

56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.

57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)

58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).

59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).

60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.

61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.

62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.

63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.

64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.

65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”