There are no hidden secrets on how to rank high with the major search engines. All that is needed is a basic understanding of how search engines work and a bit of know how. Perhaps the biggest contributing factor to a successful web site is incoming links or Back Links. Without links, your website will more than likely go unnoticed. So how should you accumulate these links? Below are a few basic methods to accumulate quality back links.

Before You Get Started
You MUST understand how search engines work. Over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to optimize your site for search engines. You could have the greatest deals in the entire world, but if no one knows about them then your efforts are wasted. Do a search on Google for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You will find tons of great information on how to create a website that is both user friendly and search engine friendly. There are also countless numbers of companies and freelancers out there who offer SEO services. Just be cautious of their offers and do your research first. Remember, NO ONE can guarantee top placement in major search engines, no matter what they say.

Where Should Back Links Come From?
1. Articles are a fantastic source of links and additional traffic to your site. There are countless sites online that want your articles. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. When you write articles and submit them online, you are able to leave a link to your own site and sometimes even anchor text. I know what you’re saying, “I can’t write about anything.” I use to feel the same way. But the truth of the matter is, anyone can write. You just have to find a topic that interests you. You can write about anything from dogs, to computers, to personal training, to web hosting - heck you can even write about writing. The bottom line is, articles are a valuable source of “relevant” back links to your site.

2. Submit to directories. There are literally hundreds of “free” and “paid” directories online. With 3 hours of painless work, you can have your site submitted to hundreds of great directories. There are many quality lists of directories that are regularly updated. One of my favourites is Best-Web-Directories.com which is always updated and maintained.

3. Develop link exchanges with relevant sites. The major search engines such as Google see incoming links from relevant sites, and give them more rank compared to a link from an unrelated site. For example, if you have a website about pet care products, your link strategy should target pet related sites. Again, with a bit of hard work and determination, you can develop a great number of “relevant” back links.

4. Forums are a great source for additional traffic and links. Many forums allow their users to display signatures in their posts. These signatures can consist of both text and links. When you post a new message on that forum, your website’s link will be displayed for everyone to see. This not only helps build valuable back links, but will bring additional traffic to your website.

5. Join a link co-op. Co-ops such as the one found at DigitalPoint.com are an amazing source of valuable back links and free advertisement. What is a co-op network? A Co-op network is a network of site owners/webmasters that offers ad space to the network. In return, the ads they define are displayed across the entire network. The best part of ad networks such as the one found at digital point, is, they are free. Having your site in a co-op can literally mean thousands of back links for your site.

6. Buying ezine ads is a paid method of advertising, but it works, because it is the most targeted of these approaches. Write a concise ad for your business and link to either a lead-capture page or directly to your auto responder. Then, begin contacting ezines to place your ad. (Do a search for “ezine directories??? and you will find enough lists to keep you busy.) When you contact an ezine, look for rates for both classified ads and solo ads. The advantage to a solo ad is that your ad goes out by itself in a separate email, but they can be more expensive. Because these ads are targeted (you should NOT advertise in an unrelated ezine), you will definitely see traffic, but you will need to track your results to see which ezines bring you the most and best traffic.

7. Ad Swaps can be an excellent source of advertising. Start by writing some killer copy (to coin a phrase…there are many free articles and e-books written on the subject). Simply use your favourite search engine and type in…”how to write ad copy”. I Googled this phrase while writing this article and got 12,400,000 results. WOW! Once you have your ad written, search out ezines that are in the same category as your business or service. Again, use your favourite web search. Build yourself a list of ezines and then email them, asking if they accept ad swaps. Include your ad in your correspondence so they can see what you are offering. Another way to find ezines is to do a web search for “ezine directories”. Look up ezines in your category of business or service. Most listings will tell you if they accept ad swaps and the parameters of the ad such as how many lines and how many characters per line. Don’t forget to place your website url in your ad.

If you want to have a successful site, whether-it-be a hobby or for business, you have to understand how search engines work. Part of that understanding is, knowing about link development. Maybe in the early 90’s the idea of “if you build it they will come” might have been true. But, in the year 2005, the internet is a far more competitive and complex place. To be successful today, you have to work at it. Without a quality source of back links the search engines will all but ignore your site.

By Richard D. Moore

Which SEO hat do you wear? Is it white or black? Or perhaps it’s a subtle shade of grey. Well, wherever you are on this spectrum, if you are like 99% of the SEO-fixated webmasters out there, you are doing all you can to get visitors to your site. Where you used to optimize your keywords meta tags, you now worry about anchor text and XML site maps.

So, you finesse your site, schmooze the algorithm du jour and begin to climb the slippery search engine rankings pole. But this is where you have to leave your SEO tricks behind and start thinking conversion.

Whoa there! Conversion? That’s all about making sales on shopping sites. My site’s a forum! I don’t sell anything. What has conversion got to do with me?

Everything, my friend. Everything�.

SERP Conversion
You want visitors to come your site, right? That’s why you climb greasy SERP pole, after all. (And why you lay awake at night wondering when the next Florida, Hilltop or Bourbon algorithm earthquake is going to hit.) But what does it matter if you reach the peak, but no one clicks through to your site anyway?

The fact is that you have to convert prospective visitors even before they arrive. You have to pique their interest, tweak their curiosity and make sure they click your link and not the other guy’s. And all you have to use are words. No technical tricks will help you now - your only tools are plain ol’ words.

The SERPs will show words from two of three places. Two of these you can control and one you can’t:

1. Your ‘title’ tag.

2. Your Meta description tag.

3. A directory description. (For example, Google is known to use DMOZ descriptions, and Yahoo uses their directory descriptions.)

Now, there’s not much you can do about how Yahoo or DMOZ editors describe your site, so don’t worry about number 3. But do what you can do: Place your value propositions clearly in 1 and 2, and use them to lure searchers into your website.

So you have to convert people before they even get to your site. But that’s not all�. You want them to stay, right?

Flash Conversion
No, this has nothing to do with being blinded by bright lights on the road to Damascus. Nor am I telling you to go and make a 100% animated website.

This “flash” is that split second, that tiny window of opportunity that opens up when a searcher arrives at your site and decides whether they have actually found what they are looking for� or not.

Typically, you’ll have a couple of seconds to persuade the new visitor to stay and hang out. That’s all you get. It’s the ultimate in speed-dating. So, how do you wow your “date”? Do you show him a page of scraped “content” interspersed with AdSense ads? Not if you want this to be a lasting relationship.

Follow these tips and be sure to impress your “date”:
1. Have a clear theme
Ranking high for “blue widgets”? Then be sure your visible title, copy and images are clearly focused on them.

2. Have a clean design
Imagine you are taking a first date to a movie. Do you pick her up wearing your pyjamas in a dirty, trash-filled car? Or do you clean the car; wash your face and dress to impress? Of course you want to impress her, so you make sure you look (and smell) good.

It’s the same with your site: Clean design, a nice text size and pages that don’t scroll from here to eternity are going to float your first-time visitor-date’s boat.

3. Write clearly and focus on your “date”
Waffle on about yourself and your date will get bored. She wants you to be interested in her. And in terms of your site, that means giving her what she wants to know as quickly and succinctly as possible. This comes down to your ability to write and communicate. So, if you are like Steve Martin in “Roxanne”, make sure you get a someone else (a copywriter) to compose the lines to wow your “date” for you.

OK, so let’s say you have successfully wooed your first-time visitor date. He’s here and he has decided to stick around. You’re going steady, getting to know each other a little more. That’s all you want, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t! You want to pop the question, of course!

Final Conversion
You’ve made all this effort and spent money on getting your “date” this far, so you want to get the most out of your investment, right? You want to hear those sweet words, “I do”:

I do want to click your AdSense ads. I do want to become a forum member. I do want to buy that cool digital thingy.

So how do you turn a whirlwind romance into a successful proposal? Try these ideas for size:

Have clear navigation
You want to make your date dizzy with excitement, not frustration! Make sure you have clear, consistent, well-labelled navigation and make your visitor-date’s time with you a pleasure, and not a reason to reach for the Advil.

Have a clear proposition
What do you want your visitor to do? Buy something? Sign up for something? Join something? Whatever the point of your site is, it does have a point, right? So don’t beat about the bush, and don’t hold back waiting for the right moment: Make your “proposal”, and make it clear and direct.

Happily Ever After�
You thought that was the end of the story? Wait a minute, it’s not over yet! I thought you were in this for a long-term relationship, not a one night stand?

I know, you were thinking that having made all that effort while you were dating, you could ease off now that you’re “married”. But don’t you know that the real rewards start here?

So what are the secrets of a long, blissful relationship with your visitors?

1. Feed them!
You convinced him to come and visit once. But how often will he come back if all you give him are the same old leftovers? Cook him up something juicy and delicious, and have him salivating for more:

Enliven your content with new, relevant pages and, not only will you set the search engine robots drooling, but you will also find you have a hoard of visitors coming back for seconds. And in this age of fast-(visitor)-food creation tools called blogs, there’s really no excuse anymore.

2. Shower them with gifts
Everyone likes a gift - and not just on birthdays, anniversaries and at Christmas:

Money talks, and if you are selling anything through your site, then discounts and other offers to previous visitors and customers will draw them back like magnets. Throw in tempting freebies as well and you will have a potent marketing mix.

3. Send them “love” letters
Anyone who has been in a long-distance relationship (like my wife and I were for a year and a half), knows that if you can’t be together, the next best thing is a letter or email. For your website, this means an interesting ezine that is light on sales pitch and rich in information.

4. Start a family!
Not literally! But you can create a “family” atmosphere by adding a forum where your visitors can interact with each other - not just with you and your site. People are social animals, so use a forum to keep them coming back.

OK, so perhaps I overstated it a little in my title. SEO is not dead, so don’t forget about it quite yet. Just remember that it will only get you so far: If you want to actually achieve anything with your site, then you need to focus on conversion like a laser.

By Stephen Munday

Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for search engine optimization work and wondered what goes into the pricing? What makes one site need more work than another? Why do some sites increase rankings faster than others? Why do some sites get more traffic from their top page ranking than yours? There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react differently to different marketing treatments. What are these different factors that go into your web site’s ranking? Below is a list of the most important aspects:

1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization - Your web site can have many different attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well or not so well. Your site’s PageRank for example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, it’s going to take a lot longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic you’re after. A web site that has been around for a while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis will be able to reach top positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.

2. The Keywords You Are Targeting - Some keywords are less competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, you’ll see at the top of the results how many web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword phrase “web design” has approximately 303 million web pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in quotations, “courtney heard”, you will see that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results.

It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the keywords “courtney heard” than it is for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately how many searches are performed for a given keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and the longer the optimization will take.

3. The Size of Your Target Market - If your site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional market. It also depends on what sort of market you’re targeting. If your site sells a product that only a small group of people will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized easier than if the product or service appealed to the global population. For instance, the keyword phrase “real estate” will require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than “real estate Canada” and even “real estate Vancouver”.

4. Competitor Sites’ SEO Campaigns - You might find that once your optimization campaign is under way, your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many things, but the one we’ll look at is your competitors’ sites SEO campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and final point…

5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign - Your own link development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign isn’t approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and adjust your efforts accordingly. As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your top page placement will come.

By Courtney Heard