Search Engine Optimization or SEO

Content

The text in your site should be original, focused and clearly written. Content needs to be written in a manner that convinces your audience to take action or to return to your site in the future. It also needs to be written so that it's valued by search engines.

Link popularity

Link popularity is a measure of how many sites link to a Web site. The more sites that link to a site, the higher the link popularity is measured. The less sites that link to a site, the lower the link popularity. Search engines list sites with high popularity first.

Be realistic

I know of a site that belonged to a regional replacement window manufacturer. The owner could not understand why his site was not on page number one for the word "windows". He failed to realize that he was competing with Microsoft Windows. I'd bet Bill Gates site would be a bit more popular and that there are tons of sites on that topic. Searching Google the day I wrote this page, the first site that is about windows (the glass type) is on page 5. There are thousands of links to this site.

Bear in mind

The search engines are constantly updating the way that they rank pages, which is what ultimately places you at the top or the bottom of the list. It makes sense that Google might give more weight to certain domains such as .edu, as these sites are often good sources of free information, which is what Google is looking to deliver.

SEO Techniques

There is no magic wand that will make your site number one on search engines. However there are some techniques that with time, will make you competitive.

1. Make sure there are no code mistakes
2. Gain incoming links to your site
3. Develop new content and tools
4. Make sure the pages aren't duplicates
5. Advertise

Mistakes

A mistake in the html code of your pages is more likely to keep your site from being listed than a lack of extra optimization techniques or meta tags. Mistakes can make search engines completely unable to read your page.

Also, many site owners have complained that their sites have been penalized by search engines for what they call "over-optimization". So, I believe that it makes sense to have a balanced site in the eyes of the search engines. If your site goes from under-optimized to over-optimized too quickly, especially without much of the actual content changing, it may appear suspicious. A step-by-step approach is recommended.

Gaining links

I have left out the obvious: getting links at DMOZ and Yahoo. Anyone can submit their site to these directories. And almost everyone who owns a site knows to do so.

Incoming links can be gained by issuing articles that other sites will use in their news pages and related blogs. Any article that someone uses, that you wrote, displays you as the original author and links back to your site. This is a very easy way to get links that you don't have to reciprocate. Fees for PR distribution depend on the placement of the article. It can run from free to thousands.

By writing articles and press releases you come across as an authority for writing the article, and people who read your article may click to your web site from the article. There's also the possibility that someone may print your article.

Content and tools

Another way to get links from other sites, is to provide fresh content and useful tools. For example, weather.com offers scripts that can be added to a web site that display the weather in your area. That script has a link back to weather.com. So anyone who adds this weather script to their web site, is providing a link back to weather.com. This is probably not relevant to your industry, but it is meant to illustrate a point. The sky's the limit with content and tools.

Adding fresh, new and useful information gives visitors a reason to return to your site. Don't underestimate the power of useful information. Why do you return to sites?

Duplicate pages

HTML documents that contain similar code can be seen as duplicate pages to search engines. There needs to be enough text and other content to make the pages unique from one another. This is especially true of sites that have a very large user interface and very little text per page. If most of the html code is the user interface, with a slight amount of text that changes from page to page, search engines would see these type of pages as say 85% similar. When a page is deemed a duplicate, it's penalized and may disappear from search engines.

Advertise your site

Advertising...a site isn't just a means of getting business through search engines. It should be part of an overall marketing plan. How else do you market your company?

You should take advantage of any relevant method in which you can afford to advertise. Yellow page listings, newspaper ads, magazines, other sites, you name it, it WILL help your search engine standings to advertise. Between the traffic increase and the links advertising will generate, your site becomes more relevant and popular. And that is the name of the game.