I got into search engine optimization back in 1998. Of course back then SEO was a lot simpler than today. All the tricks like keyword spamming and invisible key phrases worked like a charm. Better still, little tricks like these were acceptable. Not anymore.

In fact, most old-school tricks don’t work today and many can get your pages banned. This is great news for you. Over the next few minutes I’ll show you how to make Google absolutely LOVE your web pages and help you jump to the top!

This is all you need to know… Search engines today place 90% or more of their ranking priorities on content and links. Keywords are still important, but more so in the text of your pages than in any sort of META tags.

Simple, right? It really is. The first step is to find the best keywords and place them just right in your web page text. Next you need to get great inbound links. And finally, you need to monitor your progress closely (and that of your competition.)

Part 1: How to Find the Best Keywords
Google gets more searches than any other search engine so let’s peek into their database. Check out https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in any keyword or phrase you can think of that you believe your target audience is looking for. Not only will it give you tons of data on that and related keywords, it will also provide “Additional Keywords to Consider”, which is a section at the bottom of the page.

BIG TIP: Try to use specific keyword phrases whenever possible. Let’s say you have a web-page dealing with floral delivery. Instead of just the word “flowers”, which has 233,000,000 competing pages on Google, try “send flowers”, which has 1/10th the number of competing pages. Better still, think like people speak (I.E./ I’m sending flowers to my mom.) As it turns out, a lot more people are searching for “sending flowers” than are searching “send flowers” and - here’s the best part - “sending flowers” has less than 1% of the competing web-pages as the search term we started with, “flowers”. Now that’s impressive! You have an advantage over about 99.5% of your competitors with just that single tip.

Now take the top three or four keywords (and keyword phrases) and list them in order from best to second best and so on.

Part 2: How to Develop the Best Possible Content
Content is king! If you take nothing else away from this article, make sure you take this. Producing search engine friendly, optimized real-person content is key to your success. Today’s search engines can read a page just like a human would. And thanks to natural text algorithms, they can easily tell if you are writing your pages for real people or just trying to get better ranking. With this tip, you can do both!

First, call a good friend and describe exactly what you want to tell your web visitors. Now write it down, word for word, as close as you can remember it. If you can record it, that’s even better.

Now go back through your text and fit your top keyword as close to the beginning of the first sentence as possible. Now place your number two keyword someplace else toward the beginning of your first paragraph. If possible, try to get your third keyword into the end of your first paragraph or the beginning of the second paragraph.

Repeat this concept using only one of your keywords for each of the next three paragraphs. Try to make it fit naturally toward the beginning sentence or two of each paragraph.

Now do the reverse for the very last paragraph. Put your least important keyword at the top of the paragraph and end with your most important. This shows consistency.

Finally, try not to repeat any keyword more than three or four times per page. Make it flow naturally.

Part 3: How to Get Great Links and Monitor Your Site
Having quality inbound links can account for more than 75% of your search engine optimization success. Getting these links is the crucial step that will get you over the top. Next you need to monitor your progress and your site’s status (how search engines really see it). This will tell you not just where you are - but where you are likely to be. In the old days, we used to do all link work and monitoring by hand - and it took a long time (I averaged about 16 hours per week - per site!) My advice to you is to find a good SEO tool and let it do the work for you. If you get the right product, it’s the best money you’ll ever spend.

I used WebPosition Pro for a couple years but switched to SEO Elite because it has automated linking, which I find to be the most time-consuming aspect of SEO. Both are excellent products for tracking and reporting however.

Number 1 Pick: SEO Elite
Cost = $167 (lifetime free upgrades and no annual fees)
My Results: 121 top 5 rankings on Google in three weeks - Mostly 1’s and 2’s.
Top Features: Finds best link partners; Automates link process; Provides great Site Monitoring
Comments: I bought SEO Elite in 2005 and have used every upgrade - never spending another dime. I retired my other three programs after using this for just three months.

Number 2 Pick: WebPosition
Cost = $389 WebPosition Pro or $149 Standard (plus $99 per year subscription fees for either)
My Results: 44 top 5 rankings in Google in eight weeks - Mostly 3’s and 4’s.
Top Features: Site Monitoring; Great reporting; Site Critic
Comments: I stopped using WebPosition because there were no automated linking capabilities. I did however really like the reporting.

Now you’re ready. Good luck!

By Michael Small
Michael Small is the founder of free SEO (search engine optimization) site SEOpartner.com and author of numerous search engine optimization books and whitepapers including the SEO Notebook.

As most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com in 1995. Today High Rankings has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the US. Jill’s company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing its knowledge with the industry at large through the High Rankings Advisor newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her in-house seminars.

In her presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what SEO isn’t. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:

PPC Myths:

• PPC ads will help organic rankings
• PPC ads will hurt organic rankings 

Tag Myths:

• you must have a keyword-rich domain
• you must have keyword-rich page URLs
• heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
• you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use keywords that are included in your page content. Jill says that it’s actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.
• using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:

• page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it’s stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
• that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
• that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous.
• that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
• that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don’t generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.
• duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original). 

Design Myths:

• your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
• your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
• you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
• certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:

• that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
• that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
• that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
• you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:

• that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
• that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won’t change your site rank.
• that you need to update your site frequently.
• frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
• that you need multiple sites. This won’t help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
• that you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995! 

SEO Company Myths:

• that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
• that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
• that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
• that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re lying!
• that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again, they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.
• that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is “making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines”. She made the point that search engines need to:

- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results

So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don’t know you. So you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search engines want is good content. If you’re not getting good traffic from your pages, they’re broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best keywords and phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:

1) General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.
2) Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.
Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:

- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don’t make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)
- meta description tags

Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased targeted traffic to your site and more conversions. Use your web stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO is working.

As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is dead, Jill doesn’t think that the big engines will switch to exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links) will always be important.

By Kalena Jordan
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Social marketing is a relatively new, often misunderstood form of online marketing that is reaping huge rewards for website owners who incorporate it into their marketing plans. I work with clients and customers who, while being very new to social marketing, are seeing results in the following areas:

1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords.

2. More rankings of additional keywords or “long tail” keyword phrases.

3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own accord.

4. More link popularity from social media sites.

5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction.

6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.)

7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month.

8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products.

The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction.

They assume established social marketers gained their “social authority” in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.

And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows.

What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in one more conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social site.

A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an “all or nothing” situation. Eventually you will have established yourself on the major social media sites you need to be on. And you will have a schedule that allows you to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely powerful marketing method to the mix.

10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign
1. Schedule a bit of time each day to do some new things. Don’t just say you are going to do them. Write the time into your day and follow through.

2. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com, Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Don’t submit anything to these sites until you have filled out your profile completely and submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.

In fact, BE a real presence and don’t try to push your own content onto the networks you belong to. It should feel and be natural and you will know what “natural is on each network by participating, commenting, voting and getting a general sense of what members think is good and bad content. Watch their comments and votes and you will know how to proceed with your own site’s content from there.

3. If you don’t have a blog, you must install one immediately. This is not an option. It is an absolute necessity on today’s web. I recommend Wordpress which can be downloaded and installed by you or your webmaster. Wordpress download

Option #2: Check with your web host to see if they have Fantastico available to you and, if so, that it installs the latest version of Wordpress. If so you are very lucky because the software can be installed by you very easily in just a few steps with Fantastico.

4. Once you have your blog set up, join the following networks. (These are blog communities that will help you generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (they also have a widget to install)

5. Join groups, make friends, and interact with other bloggers on these networks. Especially the people who would be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic who write about similar things or have an audience similar to yours who’d benefit by knowing you. You can even start your own group, promote it in the network, and send “shouts” to the group when you have announcements or need attention to a new post.

6. Once you have established yourself on all the sites above, meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows you’ve been active and involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your particular market niche. There are a lot of new “vertical” social sites popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their membership is far warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks above.

Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in Step 2 above.

7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with your market.

8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.

9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are trying on a social network isn’t working, you need to know that in order to save time and move on to something more fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that are really pulling in good traffic for you.

10. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

Social marketing, once you’ve established some authority, will replace some things you are currently doing to promote your site. Many people completely drop their paid advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic, natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from social marketing.

Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you simply started doing something each day.

There’s a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not all of it can be found on free blogs.

By Jack Humphrey
Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book at AuthorityBlackBook.com and the creator of a powerful social marketing community at SocialPowerLinking.com .