Quick Changes to Boost Your Search Rankings

It used to be true that you could add some key phrases to the code of your site and immediately see some quick results. Oh, how long ago that was. If only it were so easy, then the search results would be nearly irrelevant. Search engines use a very complex array of information to rank sites and no one knows them all. So, sorry, there is no quick trick to bounce you to the number one spot in search rankings and keep you there. However, there are definitely some relatively easy things that you can do to help ensure your success in the search engines.

1. Have a useful site. If your site is no good, then you can expect to never show up in the higher rankings. Social media plays a part in your ranking success, so people have to find your site relevant, current and useful for anyone to start talking about it.
2. Choose key phrases that are relevant to the content on your site. If people search for a celebrity and find information about computer printers, then your site is not going to be taken seriously by the search engines or people in general. Relevant keywords and phrases give the search engine valuable information about what type of content is on your site. It also helps people searching for you to find you. Keyword research is extremely important, because it can tell you what people are typing in to find you who aren’t finding you.
3. Publicize your developments. You can have the most user friendly, perfectly configured site on the internet, provide current information that is useful to your demographic, but it won’t matter if no one knows about it. Current publicity is not only press releases, but a trickle-down of communicating with the people and the people communicating with each other. Social media is incredibly powerful. You are dependent on people’s recommendations, sharing of links and opinion of you on social networks. You have to regularly announce blog updates, product developments and sometimes even other site’s articles or products to be a part of the community interested in your business.
4. On-page optimization is very important because it helps you rank in a lot of different ways. Your page content has to be relevant to the key phrase that you are optimizing for. Search engines do not look at graphics or flash shows that interest viewers, they look at the text and the actual content. Search engines even look to see if the text around your key phrase is relevant or not. They want to see through the code of the site if the title tag, section headings and image attributes are all relevant to the desired key phrase. If they are, then you may rank for that keyword or phrase.
5. Keep it up for a long time. Search engines may crawl your site many times before it will rank. Sites under a year old may not rank, but how they conduct themselves in that year can affect rankings, after the fact.


You must consistently uphold your promise to the search engine that you are a quality site, you offer relevant information, keep up with the public interest and update regularly. Don’t stop once you reach your goals or you could find yourself starting over. Search Engine Optimization companies specialize in handling all of this activity and making changes as the search engines evolve.


About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

SEO for 2009

Search engines have really been leaning towards localizing their rankings and considering social media to make each user's experience a more personal one. This basically means that you may not see the same results as someone else for many searches, depending on your location. You can also depend on user feedback driven results in the rankings.

Something else to expect for 2009 is the emergence of other media such as mobile, video, podcasts and images. Is your site ready to rank?

SEO is a constantly evolving industry in which SEO professionals are forced to keep up with the marketing demands of the search engines. SEO’s are no longer simply optimizing a web page for a certain phrase. They are now moving into more specific areas such as videos, blogs, mobile media and images. This makes SEO companies valuable assets to those who utilize their services, ensuring that their web sites can keep up with the changing rank criteria.

These changes are turning SEO firms into web marketing providers. SEO companies are really trying to create a reputation for your site online. Building this reputation with actual users is going to help you come up higher in the universal rankings, and more importantly, come up more often with localized individuals that may actually benefit from visiting your site. These types of results not only give you high visibility, but also place you where you need to be to popularize your site for social media efforts.

Organic SEO firms have always been interested in building your online reputation, seeking long-term results and staying away from underhanded methods just to get a quick ranking boost. Now that the search engines have evolved, the organic method of SEO is really paying off. Search engines are giving results based on your outreach, your popularity and the quality of the information that you are providing.
Building your reputation as an expert in your field with all types of users can take some time. Mobile marketing, informative video, podcasts, imaging and social blogging are soon to be basic categories of SEO. Many of us have already been utilizing or venturing into these areas in anticipation of these changes. Companies that are in on the ground floor of such progressions are going to have a better stronghold on their field of competitors, making SEO a more important facet in your web marketing plan than ever before.

Real results can take time so getting started early is your best bet. Mobile and social media are becoming the norm in qualifying sites for rankings, and you need to be ready. Visibility in the social world of online media can really take a while, even years, and search engines weigh it heavily. Some search engines have even been created to only give socially motivated results, and they are becoming more and more popular. Make sure you are getting good representation in all these areas when choosing your search engine marketing company.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

How to Get Efficiently Indexed

When you start out with a search engine optimization company, you will need to adjust your web pages so that they can be properly indexed by the search engines. This includes a few key steps.
First, your SEO company will do some research and give you a list of competitive keywords. You will need to use these keywords in moderation throughout the text of your site, in the headers, in the page titles, and in the metatags.
Using your keywords in moderation ensures that you do not overdo it. Search engines may rank you lower because of keyword abuse and you could incur penalties if you are not careful. You want your keywords to make logical sense in relation to the context around them. You may even decide to narrow down your keywords by page.
For example, if you sell all types of lawn care equipment and you want to optimize your page about weed eaters for the keywords weedeater,weed wacker and lawn equipment. You could use text on that specific page of your site to draw people looking for these items directly to that page, instead of making them search for what they want from your homepage.
You also want your page headers to be labeled with page corresponding keywords. Use your most important keyword for a page as the h1 header. You can add additional keywords under the h2, h3 headers, and so on. All of these keywords should be related to each other and support the information provided on the page.
Page titles are also important for efficient indexing. Create a title that ideally includes your most important keyword or keywords. Do not overdo it; once again, use your keywords in moderation. The title should very accurately summarize the content of the page.
Metatags are a means for your website to allow search engines to easily identify your keywords. Do not ever use keywords that are unrelated to the information on your site or you could be quickly penalized by the search engines. Be specific, descriptive and brief in your metatag creation.
Combining these page design basics can help your search engine marketing company get your site quickly indexed and on your way to favorable placement on the SERPs.

Building Backlinks for SEO

When optimizing your site for Search Engine Optimization, you had better have Google in mind. Google is by far the most trusted and used Search Engine out there. We could go on for months about the algorithms that Google uses to rank your page, but usually it is best to start with the basics. Here we will talk about the importance of backlinks on your site.
Google is very good at detecting links that are irrelevant to your site content or that lead the clicker to a spam site. It is crucial that you go organic with your site building and your SEO efforts. You do not want to get into a manual audit by Google, or worse. Your links need to be natural and make sense. This is the bottom line when it comes to effective link building on your site.
Backlinks are considered to be one of the most important things to work on when optimizing a site. Backlinks are also known as inbound links. Inbound links or backlinks are simply links that lead people to your site. Google will see backlinks to your site and rate them. Google is able to determine if the links are relevant to your site. The number of links leading to your site can also be important, if you do not over do it.
Google wants to know if the links are relevant. Therefore, they will not only look at the link, but also analyze the content around the link. If the content is presented in a logical order, has no misspellings or grammatical errors, and is part of a discussion about something pertaining to your site, then Google will most likely see this as a quality link. Google also considers the quality of the site that has a link to your site on it. Get enough of these quality backlinks directing people to you, and you could be on your way to a highly ranking site.
You must be careful and never try to trick Google. Google will disregard non-quality links. This prevents people from simply creating web pages with inbound links to the site they want to optimize, or simply throwing a whole lot of links to their site all over the web. Google is very good at catching little tricky moves like this and they will not tolerate it. Try to trick Google and you will eventually get burned. Google will not hesitate to ban you from their searches and then you are a lot worse off than you originally were.
Google ranks higher for backlinks that are all naturally occurring on quality sites that are related to yours. Getting these links takes time. You have to be patient because Google is. If a lot of backlinks show up at once, they will simply be disregarded by Google. You have to have them slowly appear over time and they have to all be quality links.
The keywords used to link back to your site need to be varied so that it is not obvious that you are planting all of these links. The goal is to not "plant" all of the links yourself, but to provide readers with interesting content that will make them want to bookmark or forward the articles with the links to other people. This is where you get into the importance of social bookmarking, so we will stop here. Just remember that backlinking is the backbone of SEO and you need to keep it organic when getting your backlinks.