Search Engine Optimization

1) KEYWORD CREATION

Establish 10 "keywords" that describe what problem you will be solving for the average consumer (searcher).

Establishing proper keywords are the key to Search Engine Optimization. These words need to accurately reflect the content of the site, and will be the basis of the "keyphrases" that will be in your title tags and body (as copy), meta tags and meta description of the specific pages you will submit to search engines and directories.

The keywords are chosen from frequently searched words that present little or no competition when searched for on the web. The combination of these words in a search would therefore bring your site higher on the search engine lists (top 20 is the target, any lower than top 30 brings much less return).

The further goal is that these people would then be highly likely to become customers, since you targeted those who want the solution you offer. The industry standard keyword research tool/program is called "Wordtracker": http://www.wordtracker.com/

At Wordtracker, you can take a trial to determine if the keywords you have brainstormed are searched on the web, as Wordtracker tracks frequently clicked web on most of the search engines and directories on a daily basis.

You can also enter possible keywords to determine their value at "Overture" (formerly GoTo) where you bid on keywords: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

The ultimate goal would be to establish the perfect keywords before the site content is even written. The correct choice and use of keywords, and the resulting keyphrases that include them are critical to search engine placement, identifying the correct customer base, and retaining customers.

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2) KEYWORD TESTING

While the 10 keywords are being settled on, they should be tested against the search engines and directories. What pages come up when you search for them?

Are they "heavy hitters" or have you found a niche where there is not much competition? The less competition you find when you search for your keywords, the better.

Research the sites that do come up, and copy their meta tags & descriptions, and copy on the front of their pages. If they are not paying the search engines, they must be doing something right.

Check their traffic on Alexa, and check their link popularity (See section 3, LINK PROMOTION). Check your competition in Yahoo, Google and Altavista, the big 3.

What other words do your competition use as their keywords? Can you vary what they say, to offer a niche? Can you squeeze in edgewise? Can you differentiate yourself from them? All these are questions to ask while settling on your keywords.

Furthermore, any sites that come up on a search for variations of your company name should be examined closely. These people come up in your rightful place in a search. Copy their meta tags, descriptions and front page content.

Pay attenion (and copy) the Google, Altavista and Yahoo search pages for these searches. They tell you who was where on a certain day (the day you started, etc.) and can be compared to what you find later. Check these at intervals, for example monthly. See who was added, and dropped.

Check also how LITTLE, and what part of the site is being reproduced as your "description" on the search page. The "pitch" of your keywords, and keyphrases need to pop out of these small, abbreviated descriptions.

You can also track where you list in engines for different dates, and what you looked like at the time, etc.

Lastly, what do the big Search Engine Optimization firms do on their sites? What about their customers? How highly do they rank, since it is their business, they should rank highly, correct? What tricks do they suggest, and advice do they give for free?

All this is time well spent, and many tricky firms offer questionable tactics like shadow domains, automated frequent submission. 

An excellent site describing what is acceptable, and unacceptable in the industry can be found at: http://www.bruceclay.com/EmergingStandards.htm

Incidentally, the single most popular article on Search Engine Optimization (judging by the highest link on Google, therefore the most highly linked) is an indispensible article by Webmonkey: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a.html

The second ranking is the previously mentioned site, which has numerous free tools for Search Engine Optimization: http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

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3) LINK PROMOTION

While the keywords research is going on, a link promotion campaign should also be pursued. In order to rank high on Google, the fastest growing search engine on the web (as of July 2002) your site must be referenced in links from other quality sites.

A quality site is defined as a site that is already referenced highly on Google, and therefore is linked to other quality sites. Other search engines, like Inktomi, (which powers HotBot, AOL and MSN) and Altavista will likely soon adopt variations of this policy, if they have not already.

It is critical to link with sites that generate traffic, not stagnant sites. It is better still if these sites content complements your content.

Site traffic for prospective sites can be tracked with sites like Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/ and Traffic Ranking: http://trafficranking.com/

Popularity for links to existing sites can be checked at Altavista and Google. (Popularity is the tracking of the number of quality links to existing sites) The more popular the site you will link to, the higher you will rank, especially in Google.

Note that other search engines are more closely modeling themselves after Google, since they are the fastest growing search engine. Search engine algorithms (methods) for ranking are not required to be revealed, since we are talking about private businesses, so anticipate the others to follow the industry leader, at least to some extent.

The best way to establish good links is by link trading. This is not the same as a link exchange, where you run banner ads for random companies on each other's sites. Link trading is targeting sites that complement yours, not compete with your site.

A good way to find "up and coming" sites that can trade links with you is to use about.com, who only allows quality sites to link to it. The more quality sites that link to yours, the better.

Many fall into a trap of building "Gateways", fake sites to link to theirs, or get involved with sites that display hundreds of unrelated links.  These can bring short term gains, but search engines recognize and penalize for these tactics.

Being affiliated with sites that cheat can bring your site the wrong kind of attention. Sites can be banned (unlikely) or just ranked lower due to these types of affiliations. It is safest not to trick search engines in any way, as short term gains will turn to long term losses.

Establishing links on quality sites can bring years worth of free long term customers, as once the links are established.

Write quality personalized emails to webmasters proposing a mutual trade of links on your site, for a link on their site. A good introduction of strategies for this can be found at: http://www.link-popularity-guide.com/

The goal is to have links on 50+ quality sites.

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4) KEYPHRASES

After the keywords are established (step 1) these keywords need to be worked into "keyphrases" that will be used to draw your targeted customers in, and simultaneously get well crawled by search engines and highly placed in the search engines and directories.

A search engine (used by Inktomi [HotBot,MSN,AOL] and Altavista) will penalize or reward sites that overuse or wrongly place the keywords or keyphrases, so placement and frequency is key.

Highly important directories, such as Yahoo (the single most lucrative placement on the internet) are reviewed by hand, and selected based on subjective quality, so these descriptions of what your site offers need to rawk AND match what you have to offer!

The best combination is to have keyphrases that jump out of the search engine list, and content that delivers what is promised. The process of writing keyphrases is well addressed at sites like: http://www.rankwrite.com/ and http://www.highrankings.com/

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5) TITLE TAG

The HTML "title" tag on your page, is the single most important, and widely used part of your homepage, for a search engine. Your title can be used for ranking and can appear as the description on some search tools.

Your "titles" must match your content, your keywords and your meta tags. This presents a difficulty, because your title tags also tell the user what page they are currently on, and for that purpose, they should be short and clear. This is contradiction to what the search engines appreciate. Favor the search engines, while giving brief navigation info for the user.

Many site owners mistakenly believe they should put their company names in this tag.

This is only a good idea if you are a well-known company that people will be searching for by name, such as Coca-Cola or McDonalds. Otherwise, you should assume that most potential customers will be searching for specific products or services, not a particular company name.

If you absolutely insist on including your company name in the title tag, put it at the end of the tag, after the more important keyword information. (A number of search engine gurus believe that some search engines give more weight to words that appear first in the title tag.)

An effective title tag for a Dallas Tax Firm might be: <TITLE>DALLAS tax accountants dallas CPAs</TITLE>

You'll notice that word "Dallas" is used twice and also placed in ALL CAPS once. Most search engines are not case-sensitive; however, AltaVista and HotBot are.

This means that your site may well rank higher on those search engines in response to a query that is entered in ALL CAPS. (Studies have shown that most people use all lowercase letters when they type their search engine queries; however, enough use ALL CAPS to make this worth the effort.)

Some experts say a title tag should be as little as 40 characters, and others say you should use 60 to over 100, so perhaps 40-60 is a good compromise.

The key here is the keyphrases need to appear in the title.

Here is a good article on title tags in SEO: http://www.rankwrite.com/allabouttitles.htm

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6) BODY TEXT AND VISIBLE HTML TAGS

After your keyphrases are built, these need to be used as frequently as possible in the body of your targeted pages (the pages you target for submission). The safest thing for a search engine is to have at least 200 - 300 words of quality copy (content) on it. Search engines love content, especially when it is peppered with your well built keyphrases.

The key is to get your keyphrase on your page as often as possible, and in as many variations as possible, to cover any possible search for similar topics, while enticing the user to click further into your site. Some engines will rank you higher on a particular search if the keywords are clustered closely together.

Try to include your keyphrases as creatively as possible, in as many places as possible. Use them in "alt" tags for images. Use them in the links on your pages. Some proponents claim the "density" (how often the keywords appear, and how close to each other) is important for Altavista, and others.

Keep the first paragraph as close to the <BODY> and the top of the page as possible. Limit graphics or other HTML in front of your first paragraph. Also, use the <H1> or <H2> tag to emphasize your opening sentence. These tags can be used for search engine optimization purposes to make a certain word stand out more than others in some search engines.

Since search engines focus on approximately the first 300 words, they need to be at or very near the top of your pages. Lycos in particular concentrates on the first paragraph.

Some claim that text appearing in bold or italics are given more importance. If so, having keywords in bold or italics would be a good idea.

Some SEO experts stand by the technique of using the links on your page to further support your keywords. If your link descriptions, and the links themselves include your keywords, then this will support your keyword density.

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7) META & OTHER HIDDEN HTML TAGS

The next thing to create are the meta tags. Meta tags were originally included for search engines to categorize web pages. These tags are invisible to browsers, but are designed to include keywords and keyphrases for web page categorization.

There was a time that all you needed to be included in a search engine was the information in the meta tags. This has been so abused that now most search engines ignore much of the meta tag information, and use the actual information in the body of the site, and the title.

Developers would "spam" (repeat) keywords in meta tags, since they were not visible, to draw more hits for a certain topic. Now sites are penalized for using a keyword more than twice. Using a keyword twice, (not in succession) is a method many developers stand by, however.

Here are the individual meta tags, and in general order of relative importance.

* Description tag:

The most important meta tag. The purpose of this tag is twofold. The words placed within this tag are given some weight with most search engines and can help a page to rank high in the search results for these particular words.

Just as important, the words placed in this tag appear under the title in a search engine's list of results (in most search engines, except notably Google).

Try not to repeat words in this tag; however, you can use various forms of words in this tag, i.e., plural/singular, "ed" or "ing" forms of words, etc. Always make sure this tag is an actual sentence, not just a list of keywords.

Regarding rank, the search engines don't give this tag nearly as much weight as they give the title tag. However, some engines do index the words in this tag, and therefore it is important to get some keywords into it.

In many engines, the information in this tag is what shows up under your Title, so it helps if the information in it is enticing to the user.

Note that Google does not appear to bother with Meta descriptions at all. Google takes a snippet of text from your site that best meets the user's search query, and shows that under the clickable link in the search engine results page. An example:

<meta name="description" content="Nobscot's online exit interviews streamline your exit interview process to improve employee retention and reduce employee turnover.">

This uses important keyphrases for those engines that place some weight on this tag (most notably HotBot), and also explains succinctly what this page of the site is all about.

* Keyword tag:

Many experts don't worry about this tag anymore, as they have found it to have minimal to no benefit with most search engines. However, since it is easy to use with all the other work you have done, this will be optimized as well.

Spammers found that if they repeated keywords enough times in this meta tag, the search engines would "think" they were relevant to the page and perhaps give it a high ranking for those keywords. Because of this abuse, too much repetition will now hurt you rather than help you.

Never insert the same word twice in a row in this tag, even if you're using different variations. (Plurals, ALL CAPS, different tenses, etc.) You can use the same word in different phrases, but never use that word more than three or four times within the tag, even if you're using different variations of it.

If you do use this tag, put the keywords from the title of the page in the meta keyword tag. The first words in any tag are assumed to be given more weight, so these are most important.

Go through each paragraph of text on the page and take any important phrases that might be used in the copy and paste them into the meta keyword tag. Separate the phrases with a comma and no space. This is simply a personal preference. Using no commas at all in this tag is basically the same thing, since most engines appear to treat commas as a space.

After every important word or phrase from the text is included, add some common misspellings of some of these same words. I know for a fact that in the past, this could bring some traffic from some engines, most notably AltaVista.

An example from a popular Sauna building company:

<meta name="keywords" content="sauna,airwall,airwall saunas,american sauna,buy a sauna,buy a sauna kit,steam sauna,do it yourself sauna,sauna kit,european sauna,healthmate sauna,home sauna,home sauna kit,infra red,infrared sauna,infrared sauna heater,portable sauna">

Note that this company is the premier example customer from one of the highest placed SEO firms on Yahoo. They disregarded the suggestion to only put words once, but they included the same word repeatedly in different contexts, between commas.

SEO is not an exact science, and there are many interpretations.

* Comment Tag:

Comment tags are not visible to the user, but can be seen by the search engines. As such, these have also been abused, and can be a help, or a hindrance to include them.

If the comment tags are positioned AS IF they were necessary, or logical, you may not be penalized. This tag was designed to help a web developer get their bearings in the code of the page.

The Comment tag should be used sparingly, if at all for SEO. This is a tag that when overly used or abused may cause the search engines to penalize a site or all out ban it from their database.

The comment tag can be used to boost your keyword density. If you decide to use it, you will use your keywords in various ways inside HTML comment tags, as in the example below from a top rated Sauna selling site:

<!--sauna,saunas,sauna building,sauna construction,sauna design,sauna for sale,sauna kit,sauna kit price,sauna manufacturer,sauna massage,sauna room,sauna rooms,sauna steam,sauna therapy,saunas,soft heat sauna,steam room,steam sauna,afordable sauna,airwall,airwall saunas,american sauna,best sauna,buy a sauna,buy a sauna kit,comfort steam sauna,do it yourself sauna,easy to build sauna kit,european sauna,healthmate saunas,home sauna,home sauna kit,indoor saunas,infra red sauna,infrared sauna,infrared sauna heater,modular sauna,outdoor sauna, portable sauna, precut sauna kit //-->

Contrary to the previous example, the comment tag should appear in different locations of your page, but the order in which the keywords appear should be changed. The search engines can otherwise pick up the pattern, (if it is left the same) and penalize for spamming.

Example:

<!-- Comment: sauna, healthmate, therapy //-->
<!-- Comment: therapy, healthmate, sauna //-->
<!-- Comment: healthmate, sauna, therapy //-->

All these would be separated by HTML code.

 

(Step #7 continued --- in right column)
 

 

7) META & OTHER HIDDEN HTML TAGS (continued)

* Robots Tags:

The Robots META tag indicates to search engines whether the page it is on should be indexed or not, and whether the links on the page should be followed.

It differs from the Protocol for Robots Exclusion (See step 8) in that you need no effort or permission from your Web Server Administrator.

The content of the Robots META tag contains directives separated by commas. The currently defined directives are [NO]INDEX and [NO]FOLLOW.

The INDEX directive specifies if a search engine should index the page. The FOLLOW directive specifies if a search engine follow links on the page.

The defaults are INDEX and FOLLOW. The values ALL and NONE set all directives on or off: ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW and NONE=NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW.

To index the current page, and follow all links: <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

To skip indexing this page, but follow the links on the page: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">

To not index this page, or any linked to it: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

To index this page only, but none linked to it: <meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow">

The name of the tag and the content are not case sensitive.

Syntax for the Robots META tag content is:

content = all | none | directives
all = "ALL"
none = "NONE"
directives = directive ["," directives]
directive = index | follow
index = "INDEX" | "NOINDEX"
follow = "FOLLOW" | "NOFOLLOW"

The following site has SEO info regarding all the previous HTML tags and more: http://www.topsitelistings.com/html_tags/body.htm

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8) ROBOTS.TXT FILE /Sitemap.xml

Before you have your site indexed, you may want to specify pages that you do not want the engines to index (crawl and categorize).

If you do not have access to the root directory, you can still specify the action of search engines in individual pages via the "robots" meta tag (step 7).

This would be the case if more than one company shared a web page domain. Not a good idea for search engine optimization.

If you do have access to the "root" directory of your server, you can choose to exclude files that are private, back-end oriented, login only, etc. This is done by including a special text file, named "robots.txt" that is inserted in the root directory (the lowest level) of the web site.

In the robots.txt file, you indicate which pages or directories to exclude for indexing, and you can indicate specific search engines.

To exclude ALL search engines from your site (which you would NOT want to do, the file would only include:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This indicates all engines (User-agent, with the wildcard "*".) and the directory to be disallowed (not indexed) is the root directory, or "/" which indicates the lowest level directory. Since the lowest level directory is disallowed, NO OTHER directory stemming from it would be indexed either.

This example demonstrates how powerful this technique is, so it must be used wisely.

Here is an example of being more selective about which pages to exclude:

# /robots.txt file for http://webcrawler.com/
# mail webmaster@webcrawler.com for constructive criticism

User-agent: webcrawler
Disallow:

User-agent: lycra
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp
Disallow: /logs

The first two lines, starting with '#', specify a comment. The first section names 'webcrawler' has nothing disallowed. All pages may be indexed.

The second 2 lines indicate 'lycra' has all relative URLs starting with '/' disallowed. Because all relative URL's on a server start with '/', this means the entire site will not be indexed.

The last 3 lines indicate all other engines should not visit URLs starting with /tmp or /log.

Note the '*' is a special token, meaning "any other User-agent"; you cannot use wildcard patterns in either User-agent or Disallow lines.

A drawback of this single-file approach is that you must have access to the root file of your directory. If you are sharing the directory with other sites, all sites must be addressed inside the one robots.txt file. If a robots.txt file is empty, it will be ignored.

Individual files can be excluded. Here is an example to exclude one file from all engines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrators.htm

Multiple files and directories can be singled out, and excluded in this way.

• fully qualify links
• meta tags and descriptions
• prepare your site to be crawled. Fix all broken links, and all dead end pages.
• robot.txt file for exceptions

Sitemap.xml

 Since Google is such a big player in SEO, we recommend special steps to take to be maximize placement in Google.  Sign up for the Google Webmaster Tools and create a Sitemap.xml file per their specifications.

You can get some help in getting this created by having a free service generate a Sitemap.xml

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9) CLEAN YOUR SITE UP FOR SUBMISSION

Double check your site, and be sure that there are no broken links, dead end pages or other problems. Hopefully you will be linked to by some quality sites by this time. Make sure all pages on your site are well linked to each other.  Pages "floating" without being linked to other pages (or excluded) could be cause for search engine "demerits".

Check your title tags and meta tags. Are they consistent?

Check your competition one more time. It's not too late to "tweak" the site prior to submission.

Are your keywords still popular?

Is there any new advice on the internet about changes in search engines, or directory submission? This is your last chance to make changes before the big day, submitting your site.

Google Webmaster Tools: Since Google is such a big part of the SEO puzzle, sign up for the Google Webmaster Tools, and prepare your site to follow the

Go to Search Engine Optimization sites, and check out the latest info. Some sites offer free evaluations of your site. The most popular example of this is at: http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

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10) SITE SUBMISSION

AFTER you've cleaned up and optimized your site read this whole section before submitting to the big 5:

• Yahoo hhttp://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/...
• AOL http://www.dmoz.org/add.html...
• Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html...
• MSN http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm...
• AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/addurl...

The first page you will submit, and the most important page to target will be your index or default homepage.

This page should not have any redirects (automatic redirection to a different site) , dynamic linking (ampersands, question marks, etc. in the link) or Flash on it.

Study each major search engine to target for submission. Is there any info on their site to indicate what is favorable for submission? Have you got your bases covered?

Research each engine, and plan your submissions based on the latest info from sites like: http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf

Here you click on each major search engine or directory, and get free advice on submission and frequency of resubmission, etc.

Prepare to keep a detailed log for all pertinent information as you submit your site. You should track your keywords, keyphrases, pages you submit, the engines you submit to and any other pertinent information.

You will NOT be submitting your site with any "automated" submission service, and you will NOT be submitting your pages repeatedly, as both these activities are HIGHLY penalized.

Remember that many search providers (like Altavista) ignore machine or program submitted site submissions.

While the first page to submit is the home (default) page, you should plan to submit OTHER pages of your site at intervals.

Prepare to wait up to 2 months to submit the next page (as your site will be likely be entirely crawled with each submission.

Don't worry if people find your site via a links page, About Us page, or some other page, as long as they find it. All pages that will be targeted should be designed to accomodate a first time visitor, and exhibit the keyphrases designed to gain their interest and trust.

You want people to bookmark your pages and visit them often, so offer them free, quality content to keep them coming back. Make sure your site is easily navigable from any page you have targeted for eventual submission.

Ideally, ANY page on your site, besides the ones you choose to EXEMPT from submission (see step 6 and 7) should be designed for a first time visitor, without damaging it's usefulness for the repeat customer.

DO NOT RESUBMIT RIGHT AWAY IF YOU DO NOT SHOW UP in the search engines (Inktomi,Altavista, etc.).

Research each of these engines more thoroughly. After all your targeted pages have been submitted, at proper intervals for the engine (perhaps 2 months check each engine for frequency).

You could start again with a re-constructed default page (update your keywords, keyphrases again based on the latest searched words) and resubmit, again, one at a time at a proper interval.

DO NOT resubmit if you are showing up at reasonable places in the searches, as you could place lower by too frequent submission. Effort is best spent gaining quality links on other sites, rather than redesign, and resubmission.

The best case scenario would be to only resubmit after content redesign (retooled keywords, text) and after substantially more quality sites are linking to your pages.

Remember that some Search engines penalize for frequent submission, automated submission, or re-submission of sites with no content changes.

Each engine is different, and each must be researched for each submission! This is one reason for keeping an accurate log of your submissions.

On a redesign, it is not the design that must change here, but the words, especially the content and possibly the keyphrases.

Changing and adding quality content is key to success, both for the robots and the humans involved, so don't let your site sit stagnant.

Keep diligent track of the dates, methods, changes, etc. of submissions you have sent. Track your traffic, both before and after submission. Check your traffic as you submit to more engines.

Get a program to look at your server logs, such as Webtrends: http://www.webtrends.com/

Or better yet, get a server that offers it as part of it's service. With Webtrends, you can instantly see graphs of where your customers are coming from, what browsers they use, what pages they hit, etc. Webtrends also offers keyword and keyphrase assistance.

If you have signed up for Google's webmaster tools, you'll follow their directions for submitting your Sitemap.xml

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11) PAY PER CLICK (OR RANKINGS) (PPC) & PAY PER INCLUSION (PPI)

There are a number of ways that the search engines and directories charge people trying to get a higher ranking.

Any money paid directly to a major search engine or directory (for example Altavista and Yahoo) are paying only for the right to be included. You are not being guaranteed any particular placement, in fact you may not be guaranteed placement at all. This process is called Pay Per Inclusion, or PPI.

At this time, if you have a business site, you HAVE to pay both Yahoo! and LookSmart to be considered for inclusion. You get no special treatment, or high rankings.

In the case of a directory, such as Yahoo you must submit an appropriate keyword-rich description that doesn't get edited too much. It's the only way you can hope to get a decent ranking in the directories.

Once added, if you're not happy with the description they give you, you may appeal and ask for a different description. After that, you may be stuck with your rank. Research this carefully, because a high rank in Yahoo can be lucrative.

The other major pay-for-inclusion is Inktomi. They are different than Yahoo! and LookSmart, since Inktomi spiders the information on your web site, as opposed to simply using the title and description that you submit to them.

When you pay for the privilege of being in Inktomi's database, you are supposedly paying to ensure that Inktomi will spider your site every 48 hours.

Again, paying their fee will *not* affect your RANKINGS in their databases. It will only ensure your page is listed. HotBot, IWon, Canada.com, MSN, NBCi, AOL and GoTo all use Inktomi for some of their results.

Some SEO experts have used a backdoor method to get into Yahoo by submitting (for free) to Canada.com. After a number of submissions, and fluctuating ranking, the sites rank usually stablize. Inktomi has discussed a penalty for "free" rankings, so check with them before submittal.

Besides the above pay-for-inclusion programs, there are the pay-for-rankings (and clicks) programs such as Overture.

Overture has partnered with nearly all of the major search engines to provide some top "sponsored" links.

What this means is that if you have a top one, two or three listing with Overture, you can be in a top spot with many of their partners. In most cases, these links are spelled out as sponsor or partner links, and be highlighted separately from the regular search results.

Overture uses a bidding system for keywords, so the competition can be stiff. Overture rates are above the reach of many small businesses.

There is some logic to bidding for the right keywords until your other search engine optimization techniques kick in.

It will usually take many months to correctly optimize a site, submit it, get listed, see results, build traffic, and make sales. During this waiting period, it might be worthwhile to pay for clicks that can lead to some immediate results.

The traffic you can receive from the major search engines and directories will be much more qualified than the traffic you may receive from pay per click listings. People may also be less likely to click on "sponsored links" as they are glorified advertisements.

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12) OTHER METHODS TO CONSIDER

Other clever (legal) methods of gaining traffic, links and higher rankings include increasing the target size (your sites size) by adding an pages of content, or by adding an old fashioned bulletin board, getting involved in special interest boards as an expert, and including the link to your site as a signature, offering something of value to the internet community that will draw lots of attention.

Another strategy is to link a special "spider" page to a top level page, in an obscure location. This page has nothing but links on it to the pages to crawl, but no title, copy or meta tags so the spider will not rank that page, just the pages to which is leads.

This topic is one of many discussed in the excellent webmonkey article that has the single highest ranking in Google for "search engine optimization". http://www.hotwired.com/

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13) ONGOING RESEARCH

Don't forget this is a constantly changing field, with many different opinions on many of these subjects. Check frequently with the following sites, and others you find, to keep up with the industry.

Search engines are changing, for example, one of the newer ways to rank a site is by "theme".

A site that has a "theme" does not split time and effort between more than one main issue. Sears, for example sells more than lawn mowers. They therefore may not rank highly on searches for "lawn mower", even though they sell thousands of them.

Read more about themes at: http://www.spider-food.net/

Besides the links referenced in the text above, here are some more sites that can be off assistance in the science of Search Engine Optimization.

Above all, remember that it is singularity of purpose that will gain the customers.

You put your site together for a single reason, and that reason was to solve some problem. Your site needs to be designed to attract people who are searching for your solution, not someone else's.

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14) Loads'a Links (to keep us informed)

• Search Engine Optimization TUTORIALS
  
• Search Engine Optimization 101
• Search Engine Optimization Tips (Multiple articles)
  
• Search Engine Optimization Tips (Single Page)
  
• Meta Tag Tutorial
  
• http://www.theseoshop.com/
  
• High Rankings (Jill Whalen's SEO site)
  
  
• Yahoo hhttp://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/...
• AOL http://www.dmoz.org/add.html...
• Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html...
• MSN http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm...
• AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/addurl...

1. Bruce Clay - audio interview (Ranking on Page One of Google: It's all about SEO!)
2. http://podcast.neo1seo.com/ (interesting podcasts about SEO101)