Content is King

One of the most important things you can do to improve your website in the eyes of the search engines is have fresh, unique content. In order to keep their customers happy, search engines need to provide the most relevant and up to date information. If the search engine results pages (SERPs) are filled with spam or low quality sites, users will not continue to use that search engine.

As a result, search engines want to make sure you have fresh unique content on your site before presenting it to their users.

When a search engine spider crawls your page, it is looking at the frequency and amount of keywords on your web page. It is looking at the amount of repeated content as well as duplicate content. It also looks for any new content that has been added since the last time your page was spidered.

To keep the search engines happy, you should avoid duplicate content on your website.

Make sure the content on your website is not found anywhere else on the Internet. You can check this by using a site such as Copyscape. If you are using content that is on someone else’s webpage, you can be penalized in the search engine rankings.

The frequency with which your site is updated is also an important factor to search engines. If your site has not been updated in several months or even years, there is a high likelihood that the information presented is out of date or no longer relevant. If you consistently update your website with new, unique content, you will gain an advantage over other sites that update less frequently.

Links, Links, and More Links

It’s no secret that search engines look for links to your website when evaluating it’s importance.

Simply put, the more links you have coming into your website the better. There are other factors even more important than quantity however. The quality of the sites that link to you as well as the type of links that are found (one-way links, two-way links) and also important to search engines.

If you want your website to rank highly in search engine results, make sure you are consistently updating your website with new, unique content and are continually getting other quality websites to link to you. Slow and steady wins the race.

More than a numbers game, the type of links to your website are also important. A one-way link is when someone places a link to your site on their website without asking you to link to their site in return. One-way links are viewed as more “natural” and therefore more valuable in the eyes of the search engines.

While the process of gaining links to your website is time consuming, the results are definitely worth the effort.

How to begin building one-way links

Research is an important first step when building links. You first have to decide what search terms or phrases you want to rank highly for. There are various tools available to help you with this step such as Wordtracker’s keyword suggestion tool and Google’s AdWords keyword tool.

Once you have compiled your keyword list, you then should identify the authority sites in your niche or market. Do a simple Google search and evaluate the sites that rank highly for the same keywords you are targeting.

Spend some time visiting these sites. While evaluating each site, make note of the type of content they have as well as their contact information.

Next you should then begin contacting the owners of these sites by email.

Keep your email short and to the point. Introduce yourself and your website. Tell the site owner why you are contacting them and why they should link to you. Don’t use a form email. Write it yourself and ideally include some information that shows you actually viewed this person’s website. The message should be unique to your website and your personality.

The next step is to follow up with the site owners if you don’t here back from them after a few days.

Again, keep your email short and to the point. Webmasters get a lot of email. Show them you value their time by not wasting it with a long email. Reiterate how both your website visitors and theirs would benefit from a relationship. Ask them to please reply to your email, even if they are not interested. This way, you will know if they are actually reading your emails.

Another method you can use to contact website owners is to us the phone. In this age of email, we ofter forget we can contact people using the telephone. Obviously you need to have the person’s phone number in order to call them. If it’s not listed on the website, you can try checking the site’s whois record.

Some people don’t like to use the phone but that is precisely why they method is effective. You have to do that which others are unable or unwilling to do if you want to be successful. Give some thought to what you want to say to the site owner before you call them.

Building links to your website is not difficult. Though time consuming, link building is a critical piece of the puzzle for achieving high search engine rankings.

Black Hat Techniques

There are many techniques known as black hat techniques. They are not exactly illegal, but they are unethical because they rely on tricking site visitors or the search engines themselves. There are several good examples of black hat SEO techniques. One is the use of keyword spamming to make a site appear more relevant to a topic than it really is. Site owners who use keyword spamming produce content that is stuffed with keywords. The content usually makes no sense, but the owners use the keyword-stuffed drivel to trick the search engines into ranking them higher. Any technique that relies on trickery to achieve a higher search engine ranking should be avoided, or you risk damaging your reputation in the long run.

Plagiarized Content

Adding content to your site is one of the most important search engine optimization techniques. When you need to add hundreds of pages of content to your site, it may be tempting to copy articles from another Web site or rewrite the words of another author so that they qualify as unique content for your site. Plagiarism is stealing, plain and simple. Not only will you run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement, you can also be de-indexed by the search engines if anyone reports the content you are using as stolen. In addition, your reputation as a business owner can be severely compromised. If you are overwhelmed at the thought of writing a lot of content, or you just don’t have the writing skills necessary, hire a writer to produce the content for you. It will be more expensive than plagiarizing content to begin with, but it will save you a lot in embarrassment and legal fees.

False Claims in Content

Posting content on your site also gives you the additional responsibility of making sure that everything you post is accurate. If you post information that is untrue about someone, you may find yourself facing a lawsuit for libel. Stick to posting factual information on your site. If you want to post a negative remark about a business, be sure to back up your claims or note that you are simply stating your opinion, not solid facts. This can help you avoid lawsuits and help you keep your stellar reputation intact.

SEO Myth: SEO Amounts to Trickery

Many people might say that search engine optimizations amounts to nothing more than trickery. However, those people don’t understand what search engine optimization really is. Some black hat optimizers do use sneaky methods such as cloaking, keyword spamming, and using doorway pages for their sites, but those who are optimizing their sites ethically know that there is no trickery involved. In fact, ethical optimization actually improves sites for visitors. It makes each site more relevant to what visitors are looking for and offers more specific information. There’s no trickery involved in improving a site, even if it happens to result in increased sales and profits.

SEO Myth: SEO Does Not Improve Business

Every single company with an optimized site is not going to see an increase in sales volume or profits. Once SEO has been done, there are a host of other factors that can impact business including product and service quality, pricing, and customer service satisfaction. However, SEO can be combined with high quality products and excellent customer service to improve business even more. SEO can help you bring more targeted traffic to your site, which means the people visiting your online business will be more likely to have an interest in buying your products and services. If you have something worth purchasing and you have a good reputation, SEO can certainly improve your business.

SEO Myth: SEO is Too Expensive

Many people think that search engine optimization is too expensive. While some optimization services do cost thousands of dollars, this is a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of money you could be losing by not optimizing your site and ranking well in the search engines. In addition, there are several SEO techniques that anyone can use for free so that they can spend their dollars on more advanced services that are provided by a professional optimization firm. Using these techniques can help reduce some of the costs associated with search engine optimization.

If you want to improve your online business results without wasting time and money, familiarize yourself with some of these myths and find ways to work around them. You’ll find that search engine optimization is a valuable undertaking for almost any online business, as long as you’re willing to put the needed money and effort into optimizing your business site.