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When it comes to optimizing a website or blog so that it gets a lot of attention from Google and the other search engines, there are a lot of things to think about.  Some of these things are really obvious, and others are obscure but nonetheless very helpful for good search engine rankings.

Here are ten tips that will help move your site up the charts:

Bold your keywords Use the bold tags around some of your target keywords on each page of the site. You do not need to use them every single time, but do use them consistently. There is a theory that bold keywords get more attention from search engines, and they also draw the visitor’s view directly, so it’s a good idea to use them for emphasis.

Link deeply.   Getting links to your site is great, but getting links coming in to a bunch of different pages on your site is 100% better. It tells the search engines that you have a lot of valuable content on your website, and it’s not all on the home page.  When all of your incoming links go to your home page, it looks as if they’re automatically generated or that your site is shallow. In order to get deep links, you should put relevant, worthwhile content on your internal pages. Articles, services, and online tools will draw people to your site, and have them link back to it from their websites.

SEO directory sites.  In the United Kingdom and in Canada, there are lots of directories for company websites based in those specific countries. If you can secure a business address in one of those companies, you can also be included on the SEO directory.

Social bookmarking.  If visitors like your page and want to be able to return to it easily, clicking on a social bookmarking link not only helps them do that, it also helps with your search engine rankings.  You’ll want to take advantage of a widget that you can add to your page or blog so it’s easy for visitors to bookmark you.  These are some of the most popular social bookmarking sites:  Digg, StumbleUPon, Reddit, Squidoo, Blinklist, and Blogmarks.net.  There are literally hundreds more.

Newsletters and articles for ezines.  Ezine publishers sometimes archive their ezines, and the links to your site might remain active and feeding your site traffic for many years.

Text links should always be first in the source code for any pages on your website. Sometimes websites will have image links in the navigation bar, but there should always be text links first as the search engines will only follow the first link they hit on for each page.   Also make sure that those text links are relevant and valuable to your site.

Multiplicity.  If you have one website, why not two?  If you have a number of different topics that could each fill up an entire site on its own, it might make sense for you to have more than one domain.  Wouldn’t it be great to come up first AND second on a search for your particular product or service?  Plus, you can list both of your sites on the directories for more traffic.

Exchanges.  No, not the tired and pretty much worthless link exchanges, but rather exchanging articles with another site. You can publish an article on your site that is relevant and worthwhile to your readers, with a link back to the other site.  They will also post your article on their site with links back to you.  Fresh content for both sites, and high quality links for both sites- a win/win situation for you both!

Title your links.  This helps readers to know where you are sending them, and also is figured into the page relevancy by some search engines.

Overdoing the anchor text is not a good thing, because it looks like it’s automated. You should change it up; use the company name, what your product is, sometimes your URL.  The key is to keep it changing consistently.  Your anchor text should be something descriptive of your site, or your company name or website address.

Use a site map if your site is big; link to it from every single page on the site. Search engine robots can then find all of your pages quickly and easily for indexing. Even smaller sites need a miniature site map, the navigation bar, for search engine reasons.

For more information on optimizing your site, check out your seo marketing checklist.

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If you have a website, you need it to rank high in the search engines.  If your site ranks high with Google and Yahoo it means you have lots of traffic coming to your site, and more sales or advertising revenue.

Think first of the phrase you want to rank well for; if there are only a few other sites using that phrase, it is relatively simple getting good placement with the search engines.  The trick is to be sure the exact phrase you want to rank for is in the <title></title> tag and in at least one other area on that page.   Not everyone catches on to this simple tip, and in fact many times when looking at someone’s page the keyword phrase is not included anywhere.  Be sure to include your phrase on your page, and also make sure it’s not included in a graphic of any kind- such as a logo.  Google does not read graphics and doesn’t know what words are contained in any graphics included.  Be sure to change the <title> tags on your page as well; you don’t want it just to say “Home” unless “Home” is your keyword phrase.

For more competitive phrases, you’re going to have to do considerably more work.  Here are some things that will help raise your rankings:

• Write a distinct <Title></Title> tag for every page, precisely describing that page.  Your title should be relatively short and definitely not more than eight to ten words.
• Add content, and pages, regularly. Shoot for two new pages a week to keep the content fresh. One page each week is okay, two is great, any less than that are you are not helping yourself.
• New pages should be compelling, unique, and a source of reliable information. If you want your site to rank high for alcoholic beverage recipes, then make it the absolute best resource for drink recipes out there on the web.
• Be sure to make your pages available through normal <A HREF> links.  Don’t use Flash links or JavaScript only
• Link to good quality sites which have content that is relevant to the readers of your site.  Ask, nicely, for a reciprocal link, but don’t demand it.
• Make your website design as user-friendly as possible. It should look good, give great information, and not have any annoying little ticks.
• Stop trying to trick the search engines into ranking you high.  If you build informative, high quality pages for visitors the rankings will naturally rise and stay that way.  Focus on quality and bringing the readers of your page excellent, compelling content.  Ultimately, your rankings and the money will follow.  Your site will not rank well if you don’t spend the time it takes to build a quality site; tricks might work temporarily but will not last.  Make sure that your site is better than all of your competition and eventually it will rank number one.  Google’s secret algorithm, which defines how sites are ranked, is a rapidly moving target.  Some tricksters think they can get shallow and shabby sites to rank high, and often they can on a short-term basis.  Google quickly figures these games out and weeds out the bad sites from the top rankings- after all; it’s their reputation on the line.

What constitutes a “quality” page to a search engine?  The same kind of things we look for: relevance to what we are looking for and the page is an authority on its topic.   If you do a search for types of bananas and get results for pages that sell jewelry—how happy will you be?  Likewise, if you do find a page about types of bananas, but the content doesn’t really tell you much- how useful is it?  Useful information is imperative!  Hopefully, your banana page will also be part of a larger site with lots of information about related items- maybe other fruits in this example.  It also is helpful if the page has been around for some time, loads quickly, and is free of broken links and cheap keywords.

Another article that might be of interest: Search Engine Optimization: The Weakest Link for Most Web Sites

1. You can use a directory submitter for easier uploading. This still means that you do the work but one outstanding benefit is that you get to choose which directories you submit to and you can take your time analysing them. The best software I have seen for this has been Directory Submitter. The free version is pretty good but it has some restrictions in place so that you’ll eventually think about upgrading to the paid version. Either way, they are both good. You can even have a choice of site titles and description with the paid version. If you think this suits your needs, have a look at Directory Submitter.

2. You can choose just the free human edited directories and avoid the automatic directories. Many highly regarded SEOs and even spokes people for the search engines prefer to use and recommend only the human edited directories because they are known to be more particular about original content and reject ’spammy’ style sites. I have generated a list for you to peruse and use at your leisure on this page about human edited directories.

3. If you would like a firm to handle your submissions but you feel reluctant to trust anyone, I have had a great experience with one submission service I can recommend. They aren’t the cheapest on the block but they are far from the most expensive. For just a little more than most other submission services, they will submit a mix of descriptions and titles on your behalf once you have compiled them to your satisfaction. Communication has been excellent and they also submit on a delayed basis. I’m sure I don’t have to explain the benefits of those last two point. My experience with them has been nothing short of excellent to date. Make contact and send them an email with your query – Dan seems only to happy to help unlike some other services I’ve tried. They are called Vilesilencer. If you want something that’s less expensive but has a little less personalization, you should look at Directory Maximizer, it has the best paid directory service I have seen to date; mainly because they have truly negotiated some attractive bargains you won’t get by yourself. I have used both these services to satisfaction and both are run by real people who reply to your queries.

Several forum discussions include a topic on how to register with DMOZ and ways it can improve the site’s rank. Most SEO (search engine optimizers) promote registration with DMOZ to boost search engine results in the website’s favor. Submitting to DMOZ will not decide whether or not your website lives or dies in the public eye, but it could definitely help obtain a few more hits than without use. Submitting DMOZ proves more help than harm in either outcome of prospective business.

Users engage two main ways to list their site in the DMOZ directory. One method involves finding the category with the most relation to your website. Personally, this method proves the hardest route to promoting your website through DMOZ. Users often choose the wrong category to associate with their personal website. A mistake of this caliber delays directory insertion for several months.

Another method involves hunting down your town and city in a region-oriented database. This application process for submitting your site to DMOZ starts with finding your region and by all means seems less troublesome than the former method described.

Registering your website with DMOZ requires filling out a bit of information regarding the site’s contents. You need to be objective when describing details contained in your website, as if someone else were writing about it. Do not promote your site by using adjectives, such as great, superior, enthusiastic, or number-one. DMOZ directs movement of Internet interest groups, not actual sales promoting. DMOZ editors become frustrated each time they have to rewrite a site description to leave out promotional ‘fluff’. Entries needing minimal to no revisions get their websites promoted at a much faster rate.

Patience provides necessary virtues in almost any time consuming project or activity, submitting to DMOZ could take a while depending on workloads allocated to the editors.

They sometimes seem to have a ‘klunky’ and failing submission page at the time of writing this article. If you are truly keen you’ll just have to keep returning until it’s working. Officials at DMOZ expected to be back on track and registering new websites again, sometime in 2007.

The wait to be listed can be frustrating but no-one can punish you for doing your best with submitting to this site. Be patient with it’s bureaucratic behaviour and once you’ve carefully selected the most appropriate category in your eyes – simply put it behind you and move on to your next task.
This article was published here by Ray Baker who runs and operates SEO Web Site Development

Make a plan for building your network of links. Spend some time researching potential directories. Take a look at their strengths and weaknesses, prices, and directions for submissions. Look up their policies on html tags and keyword use, and find out what their main markets are.

The Do’s

Do submit for the purpose of gaining more traffic.

DO read the terms of service of the directories and make sure you are using the correct category. Your link will be useless if you submit it to the wrong group.

DO double check your documents for spelling, grammar, and accuracy.

And DO work with a local directory. Your site will only get lost in the sea of large, national, messy directories otherwise. Local or regional sites can also be good for public relations and can offer you a specific niche.

The Do Not’s

Do NOT submit to directories for the purpose of gaining page rank, you will be sorry if you do!

Do NOT use reciprocal links. Reciprocal linking is an arrangement by two or more site owners to link to each other’s site. This may seem like a great idea, but it can actually hurt your Google weighting. If you do this at all, make sure you only use reciprocal links to well-established directories.

Do NOT submit the exact same link description to each directory. Modify the description each time, taking care to keep it natural sounding and with supporting keywords but not stuffed.

Pricing choices: Paid or free directories?

There is really no reason not to submit to all the free directories you can find. While this might not do much to help your SEO and website traffic, you lose nothing by trying. But stay away from link farms that list thousands of links. Associating yourself with such sites will do you damage in the search engine algorithms, as you risk being tagged as a spam site.

With paid sites, you get what you pay for. Choose your directories wisely. How good is the reputation of the prospective directory websites? Are they well respected and well visited in their respective categories? A few minutes spent with Google or another search engine will tell you how the various websites rank. Check their traffic, Pagerank and history with Alexa or Compete.com

If the directory offers to pass Pagerank to your site, stay away!

Will the directory allow static links?

This is also something you can find out by using Google. Take a look at how well their directories are organized and see if your website will be easy to find in their categorization. The fewer links per page contained in the directory, the better the situation for you. Stay away from directories that list more than 20 links per page. This is especially true of large, nationwide directories; your link will be lost in the sea of links and you are likely to gain little, if any, benefit from using the directory. Here’s another valuable article on how to choose the right directories.

Make sure you are submitting your link to the correct category. While you’re at it, check out the competition in this category. If there are hundreds of sites listed in the category which best describes your page, see if there is another category that is not too different but less populated. Or, check to see if the directory will feature your sponsored link for an extra fee. This will push your link up to the top of the page where various search engines and surfing web visitors are more likely to see it. You will do well to submit to niche directories related to the theme of your site rather than a generalized directory.

Check the number of links offered by your target directories. This will let you know how well the directory optimizes its search engine efficiency. Typing link:www.directory.com in Google will allow you to do this.

In summary, submitting to directories is a fine way to increase linkage and therefore make your website appeal to search engines. Doing some research will definitely be worth your time. This will allow you to save money, avoid poor or disreputable sites, and effectively increase the number of pages linking to your site.