Below are really basic steps. But you need to begin reading all the blogs, web sites, forums etc as SEO changes often and it is much more detaile then below. There are no short cuts for an seo person

There is no such thing as a permanent “fix” to magically send you to the top of the rankings for good. But here are some of the basics to look for when optimizing your site for the first time.

On-Page Factors

1. Title Tag
This one is very important. Among the first things the spiders will crawl on your page is the Title Tag at the very top of your HTML code. This is what you see in the blue bar at the top of your browser when you land on a page. Using unique text in this tag on each page is absolutely essential. I have seen huge sites with thousands of pages all using the same content in the Title Tag of each page, frequently the name of the company as the only text. Not only will you NOT rank for anything but what is in that tag for your entire site (Do you want every page on your site to rank for nothing but your company name? I don’t think so.), but you run the risk of most of your pages winding up in Google’s Supplemental Index, probably never to be seen again. You must have a unique Title Tag related to the unique subject matter of each page throughout your website (10 to 15 words, 80 characters maximum).

2. Internal Navigation
There was a time when the search engine crawlers choked on javascript links and database driven web pages that looked something like, but they are better at reading them these days. However, you still need to make your links as digestible to the spiders as you can. As much as possible, you should make your links through plain text and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Javascript and image map links should be avoided as well as session IDs and variables in dynamic pages. Avoid using frames like the plague! These can all still give spiders a fit. Also, use a sitemap with text links to not only help visitors find what they are looking for, but to direct the spiders to all of your internal pages.

It is a must that you include a static html site map and xml site maps. be sure to also have a robots.txt page

3. Make Your Site Unique
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but that’s a big no-no on the web. Do not copy someone else. Make your site as unique as possible with information that no one else has. In other words, don’t steal content off of someone else’s site. Not only can that be copyright infringement, but it can put you and the site you copied from in hot water with the search engines for duplicate content (see Duplicate Content below). Creating a buzz about something unique is great link bait. Which leads us to:

4. Content
Content is King. Content is spider food. The search engines are looking for the foremost authority on a keyword or phrase. Make sure your site has plenty of keyword rich content high on the page that is useful to the visitor as well as digestible to the spiders. Make use of H1, H2 and H3 headlines that contain your keywords. Make sure your prose is natural and easy to read.

Don’t go overboard and make every other word on the page the keyword you want to rank the page for. Stuffing the page with keywords is considered a form of spam.

Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (”our Palm Springs showroom” not “our showroom”) to help you get found in local searches.

Having terrific content will not only be great for your visitors and spiders, but it’s wonderful link bait, too (see Links below). A blog is a great way to create fresh, new content (for the spiders and for visitors) and attract inbound links.

Also, use Flash animation and images sparingly. Spiders can read text, not Flash nor pictures. A sure way to kill any chance of ranking well is to create a site that is all Flash or mostly images.

5. Duplicate Content
Let’s say you have a site that sells a thousand different types of widgets and the pages are all built from the same template with the same text and the only difference is the model of widget on the page. What could happen is that the search engines will not see enough difference in the pages to consider them unique and will rank what it considers the best single page and dump the rest, in the case of Google, into Supplemental Index limbo.

Make sure all of your pages have unique Title Tags, Meta Tags (see below) and text, in this case probably in the form of product description text.

And, if you are writing articles for distribution to the various article sites for mass distribution (a great way to get back links), be sure to publish the article on your own site first and give the spiders a chance to crawl it. That identifies you as the originator of the content. Then push the article out for distribution across the web, making sure you have a link back to your site in the article content.

6. Code Bloat
Between you, your web designer and web programmer, it’s real easy to wind up with a page that is full of internal code that not only impedes spiders, but causes your pages to load at a snail’s pace. Be very careful with this. Too much code will send both the spiders and the visitors away and can knock the meat of your pages down to the bottom. It’s best to have your spider-friendly content as high in your code as possible, so when you can, place javascript (if you absolutely MUST use it) and CSS in external files that can be called with a single line of code from each page.

For instance, one site I worked with had so much javascript going on that the first 200 lines of code after the Title and Meta Tags were javascript, knocking the rest of the content down and making the page load size huge. I was able to move the javascript into external files, each simply called by a single line of code. This made every page on the site smaller in size and brought the spider-friendly content up higher in the code by 199 lines.

For example, you could put your all 100 lines of your CSS on each and every one of your 300 site pages or you could call your CSS from an external file called style.css with one single line of code on each page like:

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll need to ask your web developer or learn a bit about HTML.

7. Tweak and Test
Make one change at a time and evaluate. Changing too many things at once can confuse things to the point where you don’t know which change you made did what. For instance, let’s say you changed your content on a page as well as the linking structure and Meta Tags at the same time and the page dropped in the rankings a few days later. How would you know which to point to as the problem?

Try one tweak at a time and give the search engines time to digest it before moving on to the next.

8. Meta Tags
The only Meta Tag that carries any weight at all as far as SEO is the description and title tags, and it doesn’t have the influence it once had. Still, it’s a good idea to make it keyword rich and include what you want to show up in the SERPS (search engine result pages) as your description. Yes, this is what frequently comes up describing your site in the results, so be sure it says what you want it to say.

And, it is believed that having a unique TITLE and Meta description tag on each page will help keep pages out of Google’s Supplemental Index.

The keyword tag has very little influence on rankings anymore, practically none, but it can’t hurt to include it. Just don’t stuff if with a thousand words. Ten or so should be enough for any page.

Off-Page Factors

9. Links
If Content is King, then Links are Queen. Search engines look at links pointing to your site as verification that you are an important authority site. It’s not just the quantity of links but the quality that counts. You can have thousands of links pointing to you, but if they are all from link farms or spammy sites, they won’t do you any good. Try to get back links from quality sites. If you have good content, a lot of links will come your way naturally, but if you want to speed things up, you’ll need to actively pursue those links. One way is to contact theme related, non-competitive authority sites and request a link. The acid test for a potential link is if there is a natural, logical reason for that site to link to you. If not, then you don’t want the link.

And, you want the links back to your site to use your keyword text in them. This is extremely important. If the keyword you are targeting is “widget” then you want the link back to your widget page to use that text and not “click here” or something like that.

Another way to use your content to get back links is by submitting articles to other sites for publication (A blog and RSS feed are great for this). Just be sure the content includes links to your site.

Submitting to trusted directories is also a good place to start. Most of the best require a fee for a listing, but they can be a great first step in your link building campaign.

There’s no simple, easy one-step way to gain links. It’s really about networking and relationships and your useful content is the key.

10. Competition
Keep track of your competition by searching for your primary keywords and study what they are doing. Don’t copy them, but you can analyze what they are doing right and you are doing wrong. See who is linking to them and investigate getting your own link. If you are a new site, you’ll be playing catch up for a while, but have faith. That guy in the #1 spot had to start from scratch at some point, too.

11. Analysis & Statistics
Sounds boring, but all of your hard work is worthless if you don’t know how you are doing. Chances are your hosting company will have some sort of web statistics feature where you can check basics such as unique visitors, where your traffic is coming from (referrals), page not found errors, etc. One mistake newbies make is to consider “hits” as the number of visitors they are getting. In actuality, “hits” are useless information. Hits are simply server pulls. As an example, if you have ten images on a page each time the page is loaded each image results in a server pull or “hit.” What you really want to look at is the number of “unique visitors” to your site, not hits, as an indication of your traffic.

If you are an e-commerce site, you’ll also want a way to track conversions, which will require something more than your basic hosting stats. Google offers free web analytics that could be adequate for many site owners, but there are also commercial applications available that offer greater functionality.

Whatever you do, don’t leave the site on autopilot. Check your stats frequently. You’d be surprised at the little things you’ll see that will help you bring in more traffic.

12. History
There is evidence that the search engines actually look at your domain history in their ranking algorithms (How long the domain has been up, how many years you’ve renewed for, if you’ve changed IP addresses frequently, etc.). The more stable you are the more they consider you a trusted site.

If you’re in it for the long haul, renew your domain for several years at a time (not just annually) and get a dedicated IP address and keep it. The best situation is to have a dedicated web server, but not all of us can afford that. The next best thing is to pay for a dedicated IP address with your host so that you are no longer sharing the hosted IP block. It usually doesn’t cost that much. Not only will the search engines see you as stable, you don’t run the risk of the IP being banned if one of your shared hosting neighbors is naughty.

Don’t bounce from host to host because that screams SPAMMER to the search engines. Find a good hosting company and stay there.

1) Target the right keywords. Target the wrong keyword phrases and your online business is destined to fail.

2) Don’t use keywords or phrases that are too broad. The competition is too fierce, and research has shown that though you will get more traffic through general phrases, that traffic doesn’t convert to sales. All of the traffic in the world will do you no good if it doesn’t convert to sales!

3) Optimize your page content. Target each Web page to a different and highly focused keyword phrase. In other words, your main page should be optimized for one keyword phrase. Are the keywords used relative to the site’s overall content? Do you use too many keywords, or too few?

We have a huge database of SEO articles, proven small business marketing strategies at:

Happy reading!

Serge

SEO Consultant

Ultimately, you are better off hosting your own blog if you want to keep your site for the long haul. Even if you obtained good rankings, there is no guarantee that your blog won’t be shut down by the powers that be in the event that you have violated one of there obscure guidelines. This happened to me when hosting a blog on WordPress. Even worse, it was a blog that made over $1,000 per month on auto-pilot so it really hurt. I re-hosted the blog, but lost all of the indexed pages, and the 200+ daily visitors that came from the search engines.

There are plenty of good place to promote blogs such as but just having it on your own server will give you more stability.

Anthony

We recently featured several articles on PPC and SEO tips and tactics. One in particular featured 5 expert tips on how to maximize Google AdWords campaigns. Check it out here…

Good luck. -The Dimano Marketing Team

I belive there is no real difference because if you have an external blog where everybody links to or whether everybody links directly to your internal blog page it will be the same in result, important is to get links pointing to the blog page whether it is internal or external. An internal blog does not really build your website in the sense that I feel you are referring to this. Every page of your website is seen as a unique document hence it does not really help your domain to have many pagerank0 internal pages. Hence it is not the quality of these internal links it is the quality.

If you want to discuss this and other topics related to seo, sem and webdesign feel free to join my forum We can then again discuss this issue in depth.

Hope to see you there soon

The fastest way to get a high pagerank is to build up your backlinks. If you have a pagerank of 2 or 3 and you get some sites to link to you that have pageranks of 6 or 7 your site will jump the next time you site is ranked. Also, you need to keyword load your site for what you want to rank high. If you have a high pagerank but the search engines don’t see a common keyword or phrase on you site then they won’t know what to rank you for.

pleeker is correct. The above fellows did not understand the question correctly. You should ALWAYS host your own blog on the same host as your site. Many people have their site (with godaddy for example) then have a second domain for their blog (like blogspot.com). Thats shooting yourself in the foot. Now you’re trying to get exposure for both websites and taking twice as long and twice the amount of work.
Keep your blog on your sites hosts.

Keith

On Top Results, Inc.

Yes all the above answers are right on you need to look at getting natural links and links from sites that are of high authority and complimentary content to yours. Have you tried Social Media? Here is a great article courtesy of

How to “Socialize” Your Way to
Improved Search Engine Placement
Looking for new ways to get improved search engine placement for your web site? Then maybe you should spend a little more time socializing online!

I’m talking about getting more active on social media web sites like MySpace, Flickr, and Digg.

Sure, these sites might be the online hangouts where people like to goof off during their “down time” at work…

But they’re also extremely popular web sites with high Google PageRank numbers — and if you can get links on these sites to point to your site, it might get driven to the top of the search engine results page for your keywords!

In a recent newsletter, I talked about how creating a keyword-rich article and distributing it on the Web can improve your ranking in the free search engines.

It’s an easy way to get relevant sites linking back to you, and it doesn’t cost you a dime!

Well, posting content on the social media sites is another great way to achieve these same goals. It’s just that the type of sites — and the type of content you post on them — are different.

And the best part about this strategy is that it involves hanging out at fun sites you’d probably enjoy spending time at, anyway!

But before I show you how to “socialize” your way to improved search engine placement, let’s take a closer look at exactly what social media web sites are.

Discover how these popular online hangouts
can lead to improved search engine placement!

These days, social media sites are HUGE! In fact, they make up five of the top 10 fastest-growing Web brands on the Internet, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

And this explosive growth isn’t likely to end anytime soon.

So if people are hanging out on these sites in ever-expanding numbers, don’t you want to be there too? Just like in the offline world, “location, location, location” is the key to success!

Now, there’s been a pretty big buzz around the phrase “social media” lately. But what exactly does it mean?

Social media sites are simply online gathering places where people share interesting, entertaining, informative, or just plain goofy content with each other.

This content can take many different forms. It can be…

Personal information in the form of blogs

Useful articles about anything and everything

Photos or video clips that people might get a kick out of watching

Collections of bookmarks to favorite online articles or web sites that people can check out for themselves

Members of these communities can comment on each other’s contributions, engage in discussions, and find other people who are interested in the same things they are.

Hanging out and participating at these sites can be a great way to make new online friends or business contacts.

It’s also an effective strategy you can use to drive more traffic to your business site — not only from the social media sites themselves, but also from the improved search engine placement you’ll get from having more high-PageRank links pointing to your web site!

Social media sites can be organized into a few main categories:

Social networking sites: These sites are basically online communities that connect people through networks of friends.

MySpace is the Internet’s most-visited social networking community. On their profile pages, MySpace users can describe their interests, upload pictures, post blog-style entries, and list the other MySpace users who have become their friends.

They can even post audio and video clips to share with other people!

Independent musicians and bands were the first group to take advantage of the interactive nature of MySpace to get their product out there. They found they could attract devoted followings by posting audio clips of their latest songs and updating fans on their concert schedules.

This has been a big hit with teenagers and twentysomethings, who come to the site to learn more about the bands who are poised to be the next “big thing.”

But MySpace isn’t just for the teen scene anymore! Even professionals like financial planners and lawyers have started networking and community-building on MySpace.

The fact is, people in pretty much any field can gain more exposure by creating a MySpace page. And the great thing is, it’s free!

So set up an account for yourself, start networking and adding other people in your industry to your “friends” list, and make your name and web site visible on these wildly popular sites.

And don’t forget to link to your business site in your profile!

If you’re interested in exploring other popular social networking sites, some of the top ones include: Friendster, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Social bookmarking sites: At social bookmarking sites, people save links to their favorite web sites or articles — just like you do with the “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” function in your own personal web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox).

When you save your favorite links at a bookmarking site like del.icio.us, they become public and can be viewed by other members of the site.

You can also “tag” your links with descriptive keywords, so people have a better idea of what kind of content your links are pointing to.

(To learn what we mean by tagging, click here to check out the blog post I wrote on it a few months ago.)

Tagging your bookmarks is useful in another important way: When people use the site’s internal search engine to look for bookmarks on a particular topic, any ones that are tagged with keywords related to that topic will appear in the search results.

The more an article or a web site gets bookmarked by members of these sites, the higher it ranks in the search results.

So if you include an appropriately tagged link to your own site (or to an article you’ve written) in your bookmarks list, and a lot of other members add it to their bookmarks as well, your link will be seen by a lot more people searching for your keywords.

And if your link becomes really popular, it might even end up on the bookmark site’s homepage — which will generate a TON of traffic and incoming links to your web site!

Okay, so that’s the “Holy Grail” of using bookmarking sites as a traffic-generating strategy… and the chances of it happening are actually quite slim…

But even just ONE link from a top bookmarking site like Digg, del.icio.us, Netscape, Reddit, or Furl will boost your site’s value in the eyes of the search engines.

So why not spend the few minutes it takes to create an account on these sites and give it a shot?

After you set up an account, list a few of your favorite sites as bookmarks, making sure to also include links to YOUR web site or articles. And don’t forget to make them public, so others can view your favorites as well.

Media-sharing sites: Have you ever checked out the latest videos at YouTube, or the most popular pictures at Flickr?

These web sites have been taking the Internet by storm, with everyone rushing to upload their favorite cat videos, or photos from their vacation, or latest business conference pictures.
But you can also find things like real estate “virtual tour” videos being uploaded and viewed.

So if you’re a real estate agent, a great way to increase your market visibility would be to get an account, upload a video tour of a listing, and then tag it with appropriate keywords.

Anyone who’s searching for video info on real estate in your area will probably come across your video tour — and learn about you in the process!

Online video and photo-sharing sites have been growing by leaps and bounds, and they also show no signs of slowing up.

The top video sites include YouTube and Google Video, while the most popular photo-sharing web sites are Flickr and Fotolog.

Wiki sites: A wiki is a type of web site that lets ALL its users update the site’s content.

Every visitor to a wiki web site can add to, delete, or edit the site’s content, creating a sort of living web page full of fresh perspectives and up-to-the-minute information from multiple users.

Take Wikipedia.org (the Web’s biggest and best-known wiki): It’s an online encyclopedia that allows users to update its database of entries on everything from historical figures, to technical terms, to world events.

So by creating an account at Wikipedia, you can start making changes to existing articles, or add completely new articles related to your industry or area of expertise and grow your reputation as an expert in your field!

Plus, you can look for suitable opportunities to include links to your own web site or articles in the entries you edit.

For example, at the end of every Wikipedia article is a section called “External links.” If you write an entry on a term related to your product or industry, and your web site can help people learn more about this topic, you can include a link back to your site!

One thing, though: Since other users can also edit your entry — as well as the links you’ve included — the link to your web site must be relevant, or else it will likely be removed by another member of the community.

How to attract the most eyeballs by posting
attention-grabbing content on social media sites

Take a moment to think about what people do when they’re sitting in front of their computer at work and want to take a quick mental break…

If they’re one of the millions of people who like hanging out at bookmarking sites, maybe they’ll pop over to Digg to see what the daily top bookmarks are.

Now… which headline do you think they’ll be more likely to click on?

“Chirac Urges World Powers Not to Refer Iran to Security Council”

– or –

“How to Roast Coffee at Home With a Popcorn Popper”
My bet is on the latter, because it sounds like a fun way to waste a couple of minutes and learn an unusual skill — and besides, what office worker doesn’t love coffee?

Now imagine if you ran a small coffee-roasting business — just think about the kind of exposure an article like this could get you, if it were featured on Digg’s homepage.

The trick to creating fun social media content that spreads through the Internet like wildfire (going “viral,” as it’s called) is to write entertaining articles, that are short, compelling, and eye-catching.

First, write a headline that grabs readers’ attention and tells them exactly how your article is going to help or entertain them. Then keep your piece short, easy to scan, and fun to read.

In fact, lists are often some of the most popular articles on social bookmarking sites. People who visit these sites are usually looking to waste a few minutes online, and they don’t want to read a bunch of heavy text.

That’s why lists are so great! They’re easy to format and quick to read, and don’t waste any time getting to the punchline.

Media-sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube obviously need different content because they’re dealing with video and images. But the same principle of creating short, snappy, and entertaining content still applies.

Many of the most popular videos on YouTube, for example, are short compilations of funny video clips — like you see on the TV show America’s Funniest Home Videos.

But content that’s entertaining AND solves people’s problems can also be effective. “How-to” videos that teach people a specific skill are extremely popular in certain markets.

Now I’m sure many of you are thinking, “How am I supposed to create an entertaining article or video when I sell a boring product like widgets?”

The truth is, there are thousands of ways to create entertaining content for these sites — if you use your imagination.

Here are some examples and ideas to get you started:

Compile an entertaining or informative list related to your industry: One of the most popular September stories on the tech-oriented Digg is titled “112 Windows Run Commands.”

The article is simply a list of shortcuts that will help Microsoft Windows users save a lot of time — and people obviously liked the article, because it’s already received 2,363 “diggs,” or votes, from Digg users!

And just think about how many of these people emailed the article to their friends!

If you ran a web site that sold computer software, can you imagine what kind of traffic your site would have received if you had created and submitted this article yourself?

Take existing content in your newsletter or blog and repackage it for social media sites: You probably already have valuable content on hand that you’ve written for your site’s newsletter or blog.

Simply tweak this existing content to make it short and scannable, and re-use it on the social media sites!

Spend some time thinking up a snappy headline, because that’s the biggest factor in getting people to click on your article. And don’t forget to tag it with popular and appropriate keywords.

Create a funny compilation video: Let’s say you sell a relatively specialized product, like baby shoes. One thing you could do would be to run a contest on your web site where the person who submits the funniest baby video wins a free pair of shoes.

After you’ve chosen a winner, simply string all of the best entries into a single video.

Then upload your video to YouTube or Google Video with the tags “funny” and “baby” — and don’t forget to include information about your web site.

In fact, I just did a search at YouTube for the term “funny babies” and the first video in the search results page has been viewed 67,143 times in the last nine months — and the clip is only 10 seconds long!

If 67,000 people had viewed your baby video in the last nine months — with the URL to your business site clearly displayed at the end — I can guarantee you’d be seeing a LOT more traffic.

Remember: These don’t have to be lengthy professional videos — something filmed with a digital camera or even a cell phone works great!

Post an interactive product demonstration: Flickr could be a great place for you to put up an interactive demonstration of your latest product.

Just upload some images that show exactly how your product works or what it can be used for — along with some descriptive text — and let visitors post comments and questions about your demo.

That way, you can use Flickr to promote your product AND receive honest feedback from potential or current users.

Promote offline events you’ve attended: You could also use Flickr to promote offline events you’ve attended.

Simply putting up pictures of the people you met at the latest industry conference you attended can be a great way to develop a community of like-minded professionals.

If you tag these pictures with the name of the event, it will be easy for other attendees to find your shots.

You can even tell participants during the event where to go online to see the pictures, once it’s all over — that way, you’re sure to get some hits as soon as the pictures are posted!

And don’t forget to include a link back to your web site or product page at the bottom of every photo you upload, as each of these will count as another incoming link that will help with improved search engine placement.

The “dos” and “don’ts” of participating at social media sites

WARNING: There’s ONE IMPORTANT THING you have to remember when using social media sites to get improved search engine placement for your site!

And that’s the fact that these are SOCIAL sites — people don’t visit them expecting to be hit with a bunch of marketing messages. So if you want to get links at these sites to point to your own site, you have to do it SUBTLY.

Think about it… If you were at a party and somebody started handing out business cards and immediately launched into a sales pitch for his product, you’d try to get away, right?

Well it’s the same thing on a social web site. That kind of behaviour is considered highly unethical and inappropriate by members of these communities.

On Digg, for example, links will often get voted down as spam if they’re submitted by the person who owns the site they point to.

And on del.icio.us, if all of your favorite links point ONLY to your web site, you’ll lose all your credibility, and no other users will add your links to their own list of bookmarks.

So make sure that you’re participating honestly and being low-key about your business. Be sure you share other relevant and entertaining links with the community, in addition to your own products and articles.

Otherwise all your hard work creating content for these sites will have been a waste of time.

Here are the main things you should be doing on social media sites:

Do create a profile with a link back to your web site

Do tag your articles with relevant keywords

Do participate in the discussions to build your credibility

Do contribute to the growth and value of these sites by creating and submitting content that is entertaining and solves problems

Do get a good grasp of what’s receiving attention on that specific site before submitting content

Do invite your friends to go online and vote for your links — within reason, of course!

Do give your articles intriguing headlines that will get people to read further

Do be yourself — these communities don’t reward fakers

Here are a few things you shouldn’t be doing on social media sites:

Don’t spam sites with links only to your own articles, or bookmarks pointing only to your site

Don’t go overboard when encouraging friends to vote for your links — organized “gangs” of voters often get discovered and “booed off” these sites

Don’t submit boring or irrelevant content — this will only hurt your reputation

Don’t be there just to promote yourself — nobody wants to be friends with people who are only out for themselves!

By following these rules, you’ll become part of the online community, and people will begin to value your opinion and see you as a credible source of information.

This will allow you to become more powerful in the community, and your links and articles will carry more weight than the anonymous contributions of a new member.

Final thoughts

The key to getting the most out of these social web sites is to start small. Check out a few of the different sites. Then choose one or two that you enjoy hanging out at, and get a feel for the communities.

By spending time at these sites, you’ll discover what type of information is popular, get tons of ideas for new articles, and find out exactly what’s on the minds of regular Internet users.

Eventually, start creating some valuable and interesting content of your own, and submit it to these sites… then sit back and see what happens!

By participating honestly and sharing some interesting links, videos, or articles — as well as providing links to your own web site — you might find that a lot of other people will start linking to your articles and your business site.

The worst that can happen is you’ll have some fun, meet some interesting people, and learn a few things.

If you do things right, play by the rules, and create some fun and interesting content, you’ll be able to grow the number of relevant links pointing to your site — and that just might lead to your ultimate goal of improved search engine placement!

Hi,

What you want to do is research your keywords. So for example if your keyword is dog hunting then you could go to google.com and type in dog hunting. Take the address of the first website you see there and copy it starting with the Then take the address and go to yahoo.com and type in link:www.whatever.com. What this will do is show all of the places that that #1 website for dog hunting has placed a link. You can do the same. For a much better explanation of this visit

Shy,

There are a number of ways to get backlinks to your site, many are free and only require time and work to get.

Avoid anyone who tells you there are tricks to getting good links! —Just remember the reason behind getting the links, it’s because it tells the search engines that you’re web pages are well liked by other webmasters - it’s not because they want to see how tricky you can be!

Here’s a few ideas off the top of my head:

1) Article syndication - this is where you submit articles that you have written to article directories, these directories will post your articles to their site and make them available to other webmasters who are looking for content for there own websites.

2) Contact webmasters from other sites within your niche and offer to give them a unique article for them to post on their site, in exchange for links to your site. You then write an article (or have one ghost-written), about something within your niche, with one or two links to your site embedded within the article text.

3) submit your site to low cost directories, some are free and only require link back, but provide decent pr.

If you have a few dollars to spend, see this article that I wrote, it’s called
“11 High PR backlinks for About $80!”:

Good Luck,

Dave