I've done a little SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, on my website lately, and found this article to be very informative about ways you can optimize your website and why it's so important. We simply cannot neglect our websites, and this article tells you how you can make yours stand out from the rest.

Copyright © Neil Street

It's a fact. The search engines don't really care about most
websites. If the search engines could talk (perish the thought)
they'd tell you that for most keywords, only the first page or
two of results are really worthwhile. The relevancy drops off
very quickly, and the remaining several million websites stored
in their indexes are irrelevant, and invisible. If this sounds
like the problem your website is facing, read on.

In order to rank well, you have to do certain basic things. You
can't expect to get to the top of the pile without any effort.
To get your website near the top, you're going to have to break
a sweat. The ten rules that follow aren't the only rules in the
SEO game. But they are good ones. Use them all, diligently, and
your site will start moving up the charts within a couple of
months.

1. Stay organized. Develop good planning habits and
record-keeping and stick to them.

2. Start with a good website. If your site is boring,
uninformative, and unoriginal, why would the major search
engines want to send visitors there? They wouldn't. So build
great content.

3. Directory submissions are nothing to get hung up on. Just do
it and move on. Directories are a small piece of the puzzle, not
a whole campaign. You can find suggestions for good directories
at www.directorylist.org, www.isedb.com, and
www.searchengineguide.com.

4. Write regularly and promote your articles online. This is
the guts of your search engine optimization work. To get found
on the internet, you have to get your name known in your niche.
You also have to get links back to your site, so you can rise in
the search engine rankings. By publishing good quality articles
via some specialized article distribution sites, you can
accomplish both. You can also use article-writing to help you
acquire links to important inside pages on your site. (Known as
"deep-linking.") Some reliable article distribution sites to
check out include www.goarticles.com, www.articlealley.com,
www.isnare.com, www.ezinearticles.com, and
www.authorconnection.com.

5. Become a trusted community member. Search marketing is all
about community and neighborhoods. If you don't join in, you
won't get recognized. You can start by posting to forums in
your field. Real posts, not just link-dropping. Social
networking also belongs under this heading. You can join
MySpace, and start spreading the word about your business, your
hobby, your work, whatever it might be.

6. Start a blog and host it on your website's domain. Learn
about tags at www.technorati.com, and add them to each post.
Start a "blogroll" of blogs you like. Do something useful with
your blog (annoucements, reviews, advice, so on) then ask for
links from trusted sites to help you keep blogging.

7. Do organized link searching. Pick your targets, such as
"trade asssociations in the antiques business," and go to those
sites. Ask for links. Look at links on those sites, and follow
them. And so on, until you reach the end of a particular line.
The trick here is to keep it organized and keep good records.
(I use Excel).

8. If organized link hunts are good, disorganized link hunting
is just as good. Huh? Disorganized link hunting occurs when you
track the competition to see who is linking to them. Then you go
after the same links. That's why it's disorganized - you are
just hunting around wherever your nose leads you. For in-depth
tracking, consider the tracking service from
www.googlealert.com. They are not a part of Google, but they track Google, and they are Google-approved.

9. Study your web statistics. For successful SEO, you must
track who is coming to your site, how they are finding you, and
how they navigate your site. Good stats packages can be found at
www.google.com/analytics, as well as www.websidestory.com, and
www.webtrends.com, to name a few.

10. Stay on top of the news, and be alert for random
opportunity. This is often overlooked. When things happen in
your industry - a new product, a show, a controversy - be ready
to write about it. If you don't, someone else will, and they
will get all the links. If news breaks, talk about it in
forums, on your website, and in your blog.

Sound like a lot of hard work? It is! The rewards go to those
who put in the effort, not to those who want to "get rich
quick" with a few tricks. Use all these 10 rules, and your
website will become one of the few sites that the search
engines really care about.

About The Author: Neil Street is co-publisher of Small Business
Online, at http://www.smallbusinessonline.net. This article is excerpted from his original work on this topic, at
http://www.smallbusinessonline.net/omo.htm. He can be reached at neil@smallbusinessonline.net

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