Razorwest

If you are trying to search engine optimize your site - first read the following:

• Google SEO Guidelines
• Page Rank Explained

In short (and believe me when I say this is very brief), if you want to increase your website's visibility and traffic, continue to grow as a reputable business and try to partner with other reputable businesses. Over time, as your business grows and your web propoerties scale and spread and interconnect with other properties in your industry (as you do more business), your website will become more "important" to the your larger community and will over time generate more visibility and traffic.

Doing this is less about manipulation of your site in relation to its surroundings, and more about "optimizing" your site by increasing its ability to be seen by the larger community, enabling it to be indexed thoroughly by spiders (or bots), building out quality content and partners and community connections that establish your site in relation to other quality websites.

While this can quickly turn into a large time-consuming project (because there is much left out here), there are a few things you can do to quickly prime your site. Overall, the take away should be that while the below items can be done and may help to optimize your website, you should approach it strategically. This means focusing less on short cuts and more on a long-term approach that will generate an increase in visibility over time.

Consider your keywords thoughtfully...

You should decide which primary keywords you will use and ideally place those keywords in the URL. Then you should place the keywords in the Title tag (10-60 characters with no special characters), in the Description Meta tag (less than 200 characters), and in the Keyword Meta tag (less than 10 words and each should appear in the body text). Then, you should place your keywords in body text (at 6-8% density), in H1, H2, and H3 on your site page, and in the top part of the site page text. You should place keywords in Alt text and in links to site pages (keyword should be visible, not the underlying URL)

Be careful with your outgoing links...

You should only link to quality sites, not link farms, and all outgoing links should use Anchor Text (keyword as URL, not "click here" or other). Longevity of the outgoing link is important (once set, let it be) and outgoing links should be valid and limited to 100-200.

Micellaneous things to be aware of...

You should stick to hyphens (-) and not underscores (_) when building URLs (because a-b becomes a and b, whereas a_b becomes ab and noone will find your product if the primary keywords are mashedtogehterlikethis. You should also keep site page content fresh and change over time (don't allow your content to become stale) with a positive ratio of old pages to new pages and also keep the majority of the site content fresh. You should frequently make updates to your site (more updates means more spidering) and you should "theme" your site keywords and content structure (meaning that your site should read like an outline with each level down serving as a sub of the one above). Also, each subsecquent page should reinforce the one above it.

You should use multiple variations of the keyword (ie. web content management system, content management system, content management, web content management) and URL length should be less than 100 characters in length, less is better. Also, Google likes big sites with more content and the older the site the better. You should have a site map off the home page and have primary text as "anchored" and linked text to the inner page of that name (or to that services page)

Don't do any of this...

Don't link to bad sites or use redirects, and don't use bad language. Don't create multiple sites and excessively cross-link and don't submit to DMOZ more than once. Don't use products that spam or send automatic queries to Google or insert hidden, random text to raise your keyword density. Don't use frames or have = and ? in URL (keep it simple)

Incoming links are very good...

Backlinks (or incoming links) are important and a high Page Rank of the referring page is good. Any inbound links should be as anchored text (not as URL) and the older the inbound link the better (the older the site the better still). It's good to have a high position of the referrer page and having links from an expert site is very good, as is having a referrer with the same theme.

Directories help to spread the word quickly...

• Fast Search Add URL (Alltheweb.com)-http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
• AOL Add URL (Free) -http://www.aolsearch.com/aolcom/add.jsp
• Add Hotbot URL (Free) -http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/lite_step1.asp
• Add Hotbot URL (Paid) -http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/
• Add Ask Jeeves URL (Paid Inclusion)
• Add Open Directory URL (Free) -http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
• Google Add URL (Free) -http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• Add Looksmart URL (Paid) - http://listings.looksmart.com
• AltaVista Add URL (Free) -http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new
• AltaVista Add URL (Paid) -http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/kpsrch.php
• Add Yahoo URL (Free) -http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
• Add Yahoo URL (Paid) -http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/submit.html
• Google SiteMap - http://www.google.com/webmasters/(Create sitemap for index)
• Add MSN URL (Free) -http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
• Add MSN URL (Fee) -http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

Watch who is coming and going and how long...

You should want to know many times your page was clicked on and much time was spent on each page. You should also want to know if it was bookmarked and also how they left the site. An upward trend in site traffic is good obviously) and having an authoritative referrer (expert references) is good as well. It's important to know if people are doing keyword searches to find you, and you should know which keywords they are using to find you. You should also want to know how much time people are spending on your site.

Don't do any of this either...

You shouldn't have zero links to your site (that is bad and means it's all by itself) and you shouldn't run out and purchase links in a very short amount of time from unrelated sites. You should not use mirror sites or cloak your site (showing one page to a spider and another to everyone else), and your should not have bad links from bad sites (do what you can). Don't domain hijack (when a copy is made of a site and hosts it elsewhere with few changes) and make sure your hosting provider offers reliable server uptime. And do all you can to not be cut off from large sites you've been previously linked to.