Being very active in the field of search engine optimization I often read some of the many SEO related articles that circulate the net cosmos. It is amazing how you soon realize that some optimizers like to fall into one camp or another when it comes down to what works best when optimizing a website.
To give you an example two articles I have read in the past offered different views as to what is the most important driving force behind a websites optimization. One of the authors firmly believed that content was king while the other stated that link popularity was the way to go.
With the latter author I was amazed at his outrageous claim that content no longer had a place in SEO. You only have to look at some top ranking sites to see that their keyword rich content has played an important part in the search position.
Despite this link popularity still very much plays an important role in SEO. What some people do not understand though is that it's not as easy as it used to be. Google is now stricter in the way it views links. Its most recent action was to penalize those sites that sell links. A link now needs to be relevant and from a reliable source. It is no good linking from an underwear site to a double glazing firm as Google will simply see that there is no relationship between the two. Google very much works around themes and likes to focus on sites that show they are authoritative in their topics. Most links to your site should be in some way related to what you are marketing.
If you want to be serious about marketing your website then you have to be prepared to put in the hours. Most of the popular methods used in optimizing a site have their place. The key is in taking advantage of all of them. If there is even an inkling that a certain method works then you should incorporate it into the grander scheme of your SEO campaign. That does not include black hat methods. Steer well clear of these otherwise you risk sinking before you even even learnt to swim.
Below is a quick list of various elements that when used together can really help boost your sites traffic.
-Keyword research
-Keyword domain name
-Keyword rich content
-Geo locating
-XML sitemaps
-Listings with important directories such as DMOZ
-Quality inbound links
-Blogs
-RSS feeds
-Social networking
-Forum postings
-writing articles (Like the one you are reading)
By continuing working in all these areas you can be sure that you are doing everything possible to reach those high rankings.
Regards
Ant Spinks
Source by Ant Spinks