Original article from WebProNews (Wednesday, 30 June, 2004)

Google Page rank is based on back links. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be.

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website. You will still get credit if it’s not, but if it’s related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once.

You will be advertising for your website (bringing in targeted traffic) You will also be building your websites presence.

Your websites presence is very important to your survival. The more people see, or hear about your website the more credibility you will have and this increases your chances of having these visitors come back and possibly become leads.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine’s will also allow you to increase your back links. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

They are very easy to find, but can be somewhat difficult to obtain links from.

To find related websites, all you have to do is go to a search engine… say Google… and type in your subject. Maybe your website is based on ford mustangs.

You go to Google and type in ford mustangs, than you look around for pages that are somewhat related to your website. After you have done this (which should be very easy) you have to contact them in some way to get your link posted on their website. This can be the most difficult task because a lot of webmasters ignore e-mail’s from people requesting links because they don’t see the importance of it at the time. Some other reasons could be that they are rarely online, or they delete spam mail and sometimes delete their important emails in the process.

Important note: When looking for link partners don’t just link with websites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. Link with anyone and everyone you get a chance to. If you link to someone that has a page rank of zero, this will not hurt your page rank. It will only increase it because you are getting a link back to your website. Google doesn’t look at your back links page ranks to determine what yours is going to be. It simply looks at how many back links you have.

So if Google one day decided to link to a website that was just created and this website has a page rank of 0 and has a domain that goes something like this: mywebsite.geocities.com it’s page rank wouldn’t increase even though Google’s page rank is 10, it’s rank would still be zero because it would only have that one back link.

By Charles Nixon

Well it’s taken me three years and I’d still like to be number one but I have finally managed to get my web site into the top three of Google for the search term “web design plymouth”. Not bad for a freelance web designer competing against some big web design agencies.

All new businesses need to advertise; whether it’s posters, radio, television or the web. Without advertising potential customers will never know you exist and as a result your business could fail. Even business giants such as Coca Cola and McDonalds still need to advertise, the need to excel in the market place is no different for a global enterprise than a small business.

So, how can the internet help your business? The benefits of a web site speak for themselves. A web site is accessible 24 hours a day to a global market. It is very cheap advertising, hosting for your site costs as little as £40 a year. Compare this to print media such as brochures and flyers and you’ll soon notice a big difference in costs. It is a great way to show off and when designed efficiently can be a real asset to your company or business.

If your business doesn’t already have a web site then you need to get one. Even if your business is already successful, not being on the web could be losing you potential custom. If you decide not to have a web site you can still build a web presence by submitting your business to various free business listings such as Google Local Business Center or Freeindex. That way, someone searching for your business will at least be able to get your contact details or opening times.

If you already have a web site there are numerous things you can do to further promote your business online.

Fresh Content

A great way to get your business noticed online is new content. The more unique and relevant content you add to your site the more traffic you will get. You could create your own RSS feed or join web sites such as Digg, designed for people to share news articles and stories. The more quality content you create, the more visibility your site (and business) will get.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is primarily the job of the person who designed your site. When designing a site there are certain factors that need to be taken into account. Web sites are not just visual, they need to be coded correctly, certain accessibility standards need to be taken into account and the better your web site adheres to these standards the greater your chances are of being picked up by search engines.

Below is basic checklist to ensure your web site is coded correctly:

1. Make sure your meta tags are present and correct
2. Ensure all your pages validate (W3C)
3. Use title and alt tags where necessary (and correctly)
4. Use relevant keywords throughout your site
5. Do not use images for text; search engines will not be able to read them

The above is a very basic list; there are numerous factors to take into account with SEO. For further details check out the following:

Top 10 SEO tips – at the UK small business directory
SEO tips – from Submit Express UK

Ultimately, ensuring your web site is coded correctly will draw more traffic to your web site and if your web site has done its job, get you more business.

Google AdWords

If you want to really push your web site online then you’ll need to think about using Google AdWords. The processes described above are known as organic and they can only take your site so far. AdWords is not a free service, it works on the basis that you pay when people click your ads. The ads are fully customisable and appear alongside organic search results, however they are much more likely to appear higher up the search results and will be placed in a more prominent position.

If you want to be found on Google then AdWords will get you where you want to be much quicker than organic SEO, but you will have to pay for the privilege.

If you would like more information on Google AdWords then take a look at the following page.

I set up my own web site, Retro Edge Web Design in the later part of 2007, prior to that I spent a good couple of years learning the trade and finding out how best to go about setting up a small web design business in my local area. After researching other web design businesses I quickly realised the similarities between cowboy builders and cowboy web designers in that as anyone can pick up a paint brush and call themselves a painter and decorator so can anyone pick up Adobe Dreamweaver and call themselves a web designer.

Having always taken great pride in my work I wanted my portfolio and Retro Edge Web Design to reflect a high standard of work. The better the quality of work, the more business I would get… or so I hoped. Over the last few years I have dealt with various businesses that took the cheap option when it came to their web site. Perhaps it’s because their friends, uncles, mate down the pub can design sites and has promised to do it for a hundred quid or perhaps they fancy having a go at it themselves, after all “Dreamweaver isn’t too hard to use is it?” More often than not it unsurprisingly comes down to cost and the cheapest quote wins the gig. I always find this frustrating, as companies are prepared to spend £100′s if not £1000′s on poster and flyer advertising but when it comes to their web site they are prepared to leave it in the hands of a novice. I’m talking from personal experience of course, as this is not always the case but my own experiences have led me to take on more web sites that needed fixing than new projects, and it normally takes twice as long and costs twice as much to sort out.

I guess the problem is that on the surface web design appears very easy but there is a whole lot more to web design than simply adding text and images to a html page. What are the chances of these web site cowboys offering any sort of SEO, there isn’t much point in having a web site if nobody can find it and it certainly isn’t worth having a web site if it is coded incorrectly, in fact it could do more harm than good.

My advice is simple, if you need a web site, seek advice from a professional…if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly!

Original article by Matt Tuens ©2009 at SEO News

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing, as a distinct style, was born in the Internet era and has matured before our very eyes in a relatively short span of time. Although it is evolving and maturing still, and will continuously do so, we can define some of the tried and tested steps of content optimization to help unique pages place at or near the top of search engine rankings.

Some experts go on to say that the goal of SEO is two-fold, with the first objective to put out the appropriate "bait" for search engine spiders and the second to serve up useful information to people who want and need it. Debates about priorities continue among SEO professionals, but it is never a good idea to devalue the human factors in any success formula. The singular goal, then, would be to develop, position and refine content in such a way as to satisfy all visitors to the page and/or site, both human and bot alike.

Rethinking Search Engine Content Terms

"Content is king," goes the old saying – and not only is good content king, it is becoming more important with every passing day. But the term content is best taken in its broadest sense. Content is not simply the written copy placed in a document, assembled on a page, or aggregated at a site. It includes all this, of course, but content actually comprises titles, headings, tags, intra-site links and external links, as well.

All of these components need to work together and form an interconnected whole so that both search engines and humans find the right things, come to the right conclusions and, most importantly, make the right decisions. Good writing is always targeted to the audience, and you are writing for an audience of two readers, human and software. Remember these two components of the audience and find creative ways to reach both of them at the same time.

First Things First

Titles are critically important – they are usually the first thing read by both real and virtual visitors. A title is the "primary topical identifier" and, as such, has an invaluable function – again, a dual-purpose one. It must contain keyword targets at the individual word level while stoking interest in potential readers at the phrase level.

When a person performs a search, the title is both their first indication of your relevance to their needs and your first opportunity to compel them to click through. Search engines, more clinical and objective, give the title importance because they see it as an indicator of the page’s main idea.

Yet many pages on the Internet have no title at all, or share "Home" and "Untitled" with several million others. There is no excuse for this oversight. The ignorant cousin of these mistakes, making the company name by itself the title of every page, is just as bad. Keywords relevant to the page should be part of every page’s title.

Heading tags carry some importance too. Simply put, heading tags define the headings and subheadings of your article to both readers and spiders. By default they appear larger than normal text and are bolded. While not a magic ranking bullet, they are looked at with more importance than average text and are an opportunity to show spiders the themes of your content and what keywords you wish to rank for.

The H1 tag is the main heading of your article and carries the most importance, like a headline in a newspaper article. It should clearly convey the article’s topic to the reader and main keywords to the search engines. H2 tags are one level down in importance and structure. Use them to define subtopics under your main topic, and again use keywords where descriptive and useful. If you needed to break down your article to sub-sub-headings, you would use the H3 tags, and so forth.

For both human and robotic readers, it is vital to keep page content focused. The "one topic per page" rule is an unwritten one, certainly, and it’s followed by most professional content developers. This has less to do with the intelligence of the readers (either kind) than it does with several other considerations. For one thing, search engine "crawlers" have algorithms that tend to work best on one concept at a time, and most humans work best this way, too.

In addition, limiting the focus eases the task of placing keywords in the meta descriptions, page title, body copy, tags and links. Finally, dealing with more than one topic necessarily means using more verbiage, which dilutes the potency of a site-wide SEO program and may negatively impact ranking. Better to give these other topics their own content, strengthening your site’s overall informational authority.

SEO Copywriting Balance

Much ink has been spilled and many pixels propagated in discussing SEO techniques, analyzing strategies, teaching "web content" writing, and chasing changing algorithms. Mentioned less but encompassing everything is that SEO copywriting, like all SEO, is about balance.

While articles such as this one can be helpful, it is important to understand that SEO will always evolve, change, adapt and improve. Study and implement tested techniques, but remain flexible and nimble. Writing for search engines and people at the same time is tricky and challenging at best, and can be frustrating and time-consuming, too. Approach the challenges in a businesslike fashion.

SEO content writing at its best balances art with science, blending the craft of engaging the reader with the dispassionate analysis of keywords on a page. Follow best practices, but fill each article to the brim with information useful to your demographic.

In simultaneously targeting a subject, an audience, and an algorithm, a great deal of creativity must take place to get effective SEO results. And, of course, it all has to happen in an environment that encourages short attention spans and constantly tries to lure people elsewhere. It is a major challenge to craft article titles and copy so compelling as to make people stop and read – or, better yet, stop and then click where you want them to.

Basics, Opportunities, and Consistency

The basic approach to writing for such a dynamic, ever-changing environment is to get to the point quickly. The "USA Today" news style – which relies on short headlines, descriptive sub-headlines and a few concise paragraphs – is perhaps the best analogy for good SEO writing. The important points (keywords) should appear early and often, and within a short period of time the human readers should know what they are supposed to do, while the search engines should be able to tell what the page is about from a consistency between your page structure and your body copy.

In the eyes of the search engines, everything that it can possibly see counts. That is, using image alt-text not only helps blind readers and people using phone- or text-based browsers, it also gives you another opportunity to add more descriptive strength to the overall page for the search engines. Do not miss any opportunity to further empower and refine your content.

And always remember when writing for search engines – keep writing. Write write write. Search engine bots gorge on new information, and if you consistently update your site with fresh content they will come around more often. While this gives you more opportunities to display your value, more importantly it builds the foundation of information that obviates it.

There’s a lot to do, and it all needs to be done well. Use your numbers, metrics and analytics to point you in the right direction for creating more content. That’s some science. Your creativity and amount of useful information, on the other hand, will point site visitors and search engines in the right direction. That’s a touch of art. When both aspects of your SEO program are firing on all cylinders, you should soon be marching up the search engine rankings.

About The Author

Matt Tuens is a copywriter for Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization, Inc. Beanstalk offers expert SEO services, consulting, link building and SEO copywriting services. Visit online for more information.