When it comes to search engine optimization of a Website, we should make sure we optimize our site for all the search engines and not just one. Google is most popular search engine at the moment followed by Bing and others, and from last few months traffic coming from Bing search is increasing. Seems like Google algo changes which created lots of negative buzz, made Microsoft worked hard on their search engine and they have been integrating many things in their search engine like Social signals and deep Facebook integration.
Now, this post is not about bing search but it’s about Bing Webmaster tools which will help Websites owners and Bloggers to get their site on Bing search index and get more traffic from it.
I will keep this guide simple and up to the point to get your site indexed in Bing Search and in upcoming tutorials, I will explain other things that you can do with this free Webmaster tool.

How to Submit your site to Bing Webmaster tools:

If you are complete new to this, Bing webmaster tool is a free service by Microsoft for webmasters to submit their site and get a complete SEO report and information related to their site. In-fact, there are many features which are not even available on Google Webmaster tools and there is no reasons you should not submit your Website to Bing Webmaster tool.
Like any other Webmaster tools, you need to create a Free account or you can use your existing Windows live ID to login to your Webmaster account. Here is the link to get started. Once you are signed up and created your account, first step is to add your Website and verify.
Once you have submitted your Website, you need to add details related to site and ownership like sitemap link, Website owner details and so on. If you have not created your blog sitemap yet, you can easily create using Google XML sitemap plugin and add your sitemap link in the Site info page. Providing your sitemap link will help Bing bots to deep crawl and index more pages on your site.
Another interesting thing is, you can set Email communication preference and how often you would like to receive email for your site health issues. Since my Website is my full-time business too, I set it as daily alert so that I get notified regarding any site issues.
Once you have filled out all the details, click on Save and you will be redirected to Bing Webmaster tool dashboard, where you will see a message next to your site saying  ” Site ownership has not been verified, Verify now“. Click on Verify now and use any of the method to verify your site. I find the adding meta tag to be easiest one, but you can pick any of the three verification process:

• File upload
• Adding Meta tag in Header
• CNAME record to DNS

If you are using Thesis WordPress theme (Why use Thesis), simply go to Thesis site options and under Additional scripts copy paste the meta tag, clear your cache and click on Verify and within minutes your site will be verified. If you are using WordPress SEO by yoast, you can quickly add content part from meta tag verification and add it into WordPress SEO dashboard settings.

Site Verified on Bing and What next?

So far, we have submitted our site to bing Webmaster tools and done with the verification. Next step is to configure few settings which will help up to get an extra edge.
I have created separate sitemap for Images and videos and I must admit Bing bots are smart enough to pick all sitemaps from an existing site. You can generate your Image and video sitemap using Image sitemap and video sitemap plugins and under Dashboard > Configure my site> Sitemap you can add new sitemap to Bing.
If you have submitted a complete new site and it may take time for bing bots to crawl and index your site completely, you can manually add few links in here. Bing have put a limit of 50 URL’s submission per month and daily cap is 10. You should also check our earlier guide on how to make bots to crawl your site faster.
If your site pages are indexed with URL parameters like replytocom in Bing search, you can simply add this Parameter here and ask bing to ignore all such links. I hope if Bing populates few URL parameter by default like Google Webmaster tools does. When I checked my indexed pages in Bing search, I realized I have few pages with attachment_id parameter indexed, now you all know what I did to get rid of such links from Bing.
This is another interesting feature by BWT, as they allow you to control when Bing bots should crawl your site more. So, you can set the most busy time of your blog and bing bots will select the time to crawl your site more when your site is less busy. This is useful for high traffic sites and sites with limited hosting bandwidth.
So somehow, bots started indexing your wp-content, tags or categories folder. Or you decided to remove all tags and categories or any other directory from Bing search, this section will help you to do the same. You can stop indexing of any page or directory on your site using Block URL section. This manual URL removal applies for 90 days and you will get an Email notification 8 days prior to completion of 90 days, and you can decide to keep the out of index or let it index in Bing.
This is useful for many people like me who offers Free WordPress setup, as I can quickly add my client site using my Bing webmaster tools account and give him admin access later. Also, if you manage your blog with a team or with a partner, you can quickly give access to your site webmaster tool using users section. There are three roles which you can given:

• Read only
• Read and modification
• Administrator access

There are many more things which we can do with Bing tool to improve our search engine visibility in Bing search, but to keep this tutorial short and informative, I will end it now and will cover next part in upcoming post. For now, if you have not yet explored bing webmaster tools or submitted site to Bing, it’s the right time to go ahead and do the submission. If you are stuck anywhere or have any questions, feel free to ask via comments.
Copyright of shoutmeloud.com

Generating traffic to your website is imperative if you intend to make money online. This is usually the main challenge for a new web business. In this article I will cover 7 simple steps to get started in generating targeted traffic to your website:

1. Ensure that you have high quality content:
The first thing that you need to do is to have good quality content. In the World Wide Web, content is king!!!
The only way to have a flow of targeted traffic visiting you website daily is by having relevant content. Search engines love good strong content.
Commit the time and effort to create strong engaging content. Make this a high priority; this is important to your successful website.

2. Social Network Marketing:
This is by far the best way in my opinion to generate targeted traffic to your website, if done right of course. Social Networks are growing like wild fire and have a thriving market for every niche. There are many social networks and more still to come, get involved immediately.

3. Go for affiliates:
Affiliate programs mean that you will hire individuals to promote your website or products. In exchange, you will have to pay them a certain percentage of your profits, their commissions. There are many ways to pay your affiliates and you can choose any way that suits you. This is great way to delegate and leverage the marketing of your website.

4. Submitting to directories:
In order to make your website more visible, submit it to popular directories like Open Directory Project, Zeal and others. You can also submit to directories which have themes so that their topics are relevant to your website. You can also go for small directories which can get hold of a lot of in bound links for you.

5. Go for a bit of video marketing:
Make a video promoting your website and then post it on any of the popular video websites. Post it on YouTube, Break.com or even on various social networking sites. Try to make an interesting video which will be appreciated by your target audience. If they like your video, they will circulate it and that would be a great kind of publicity for your website. Make it a point to include the URL of your website in that video.

6. Create free reports, articles and blog post:
Create enticing reports, blog posts and articles with relevant content to your business. A great way to promote your website is to add a link of your website frequently to these. Once you write the report, give it away for free to different website owners, article directories, blog sites, etc. Once these go viral you can ensure that you will get a great deal of traffic.

7. Posting free ads:
Post advertisements in places where you are sure to get traffic. Craigslist is a great place to post a free ad; forums are also great for this. Be creative let your ads stand out, use images, colors, etc.

Any website owner would be distressed to see their ranking on the search engines drop overnight. A first reaction might be an urgent call to ask the designer what went wrong. The revolution in business development, internet marketing strategy, new clients and keeping with time constraints are some of the challenges that SEO copes with as well as constant change. So it is indeed important to know about some of the ongoing activities happening on the internet that directly affects SEO ranking.
Google Preview
On November 11, 2010 Google launched a new feature in online search, the Google instant preview. This is the ability to have a glimpse of the web page design on the Google SERP's. Located next to the title in any search result is a "magnifying glass" icon that can be clicked on and a preview of the website pops up.
In terms of SEO, Google preview means there is now a visual representation of individual web design that can impress users through any search results preview. A poorly designed index web page perceived by a user will most likely not be clicked on to be viewed. Changes such as this to a leading search engine becomes a continuous challenge to web designers to catch the user's attention with a simple lay-out scheme.
Best Trends
With differing opinions regarding users searching capability and the best web design SEO practices, it still is possible to ensure that a website ranks high on SERP's. Following are the three best trends that can be applied to increase SEO rankings in these changing times.

• Social Media Optimization (SMO) - SMO is an internet marketing strategy using social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and many others. Using various SMO to communicate products to social media users can greatly help achieved goals to optimize a business website. SMO offers added features like: RSS feeds; sharing buttons; polling tools; functionality for incorporating videos, presentations and images; user ratings and other promotional activities like blogging; comments; ability to participate in discussion groups; and posting personal status updates, all of which can be advantageous for any business internet presence.
• Real Time Search - This is one of the innovative features added to Google search that began in December 2009. Through this feature, finding the most relevant result is easier since dynamic results are being delivered from many different sources including real-time information. This changed algorithms and Google's gained power over its competitors to offer SEO benefits by: utilizing the latest topical and breaking news to improve SEO; getting feedback to improve business performance; and scan for great ideas on trending topics to start business marketing campaigns.

• Load Time - As had been predicted, one of the changes that leading search engines implemented and rapidly affected website SEO rankings was the page load time. If any page on a website takes too long to load, a decline in ranking should be expected. Note what Google recommends: that pages should load within 3 seconds or less; it accomplished, high-ranking can be continually enjoyed on this leading search engine. 

By Chris M Hunter 

Several SEO methods can be used in tandem with your image to attract as many visitors to your site as possible.

The File Name should contain Keywords
The first, and an often overlooked step, is to ensure that you have used the keyword for the image inside what you have named the file. This is similar to having made sure that the keyword is in your URL; as having the keywords in the names of these files assists search engines in determining relevancy to searches. Use this method with all images, especially those that are more than just simple decoration. It will help your image appear more often in the results by content search, and in a higher place on the results list. Google suggests that website hosts gather the images into a single folder on the website as opposed to having them strewn about the pages.

Select Relevant Images
The most important thing about your image is that it be relevant to the content of your page. Whether explaining something specific, or serving as a layout enhancement; relevancy to your content is the most important aspect of an image. When an image has been optimized for a search engine, cohesiveness is the key factor that produces results. Having an image on the page that does not tie in with the site is something to consciously avoid. Presenting attractive and relevant images can critically impact your potential customer base via the content. Images attract, and maintain the attention of your visitors, and should serve as an enhancement to the content provided to keep a person engaged. As tempting as it is to have large flashy images, avoid this pitfall. Avoid having a large quantity of images on the site. This can clog the load time of the site, and some visitors will click out of a web-page that doesn't load quickly.

Use Alt Text or Text Tags
Images on the page need to have a title as well as an alternative text tag, ALT Text, to describe it. While the qualities of the image should be able to be extracted from the content of the page, having these two pieces of information can serve a reverse purpose. Studies show casual surfers are drawn to the images of a page when first reaching it. Having an informative title coupled with quality descriptive text can make those who are just surfing interested enough to read the rest of the page. If the image is a navigational tool that connects to another page, it is important to have the descriptive text reflect the content of the other page ensuring browsers that the link will lead to the content they want to view.

Anchor Text
Having the complete information of an image attached to the image, known as anchor text, helps with the automation aspect of a search engine as it allows for a quicker indexing of the image in their database. Having a SEO image is beneficial as the image will show up in a search engine when only the only search criterion is the keyword.
By Eric T Callahan 

By Angeline Plesek

In your journey to become an internet business master, one of the most important things to learn is how to use web analytics. Analytics data is useful for optimizing your content, specifically in keyword ranking, landing page development, visitor retention, social engagement, and more. But in order to use analytics data, you must first understand analytics data. Each week I will add a way to use Analytics to benefit your websites; this week is keyword ranking. Here is a rundown of what metrics to use for keyword ranking and search engine optimization using Google Analytics.
Keyword Ranking Part I
Google Analytics is extremely helpful for this type of work and has not only provided traffic source data but also information specifically tailored to search engine optimization. In the traffic sources menu, you can see the number of visits that came from the organic traffic medium, which means that visitors used a search engine which displayed organic (non-ad impression) search results that included a page on your website. If you have a lot of visits using the organic search medium, it could indicate that your website's pages are ranking for some search query (usually in the top 3 pages). You can view the keywords that were being searched to identify exactly which terms you may be ranked for or should be optimizing to rank for.
Once you are ranking for some keywords, Google Analytics can also display information for the number of impressions that your site has within search results. An impression, in this situation, is simply the presence of your site's url within any search result display. For some keywords your site may be ranking multiple times (but with different pages at each ranking position) and more than one keyword can be ranked to the same page(s). Analytics also shows the number of clicks on those impressions, the average position within search rankings (numeric value), and the click through rate (CTR), which is the percentage of clicks out of all impressions. Low CTR's could indicate that you should improve the quality of the meta description of your site's pages. The meta description is the short trail of information that appears directly below the title of your listing in search results.
To sum up, these are the specific metrics that you should be looking at when performing an analysis for keyword ranking:

• Medium - the means through which visitors were sent to your site; this is not the technology used with the internet browser. Examples include organic, referral, and email.


• Keyword - what keyword phrase were searched when traffic was sent organically Queries - what search query was entered when your site appeared in search results


• Impressions - the number of times a page from your site appeared in search results


• Average Position - the average search position that a page from your site is ranking for a given keyword; this is a numeric value which is created by averaging the ranking of your site over the course of the time period you are viewing data for.


• CTR - this is the click-through-rate of your impressions; it is given as a percentage, and is calculated by this equation: (Clicks/Impressions) 100

1. Age. Search engines care how old your site is. The age of the site is an indication of how established your business is. If you have been around awhile, the search engines see you as a more viable business than one that just started up a couple of weeks ago. It's a trust issue. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about how old your site is. However, if you're thinking of scrapping your old domain and building a new site on a new domain, you might reconsider. There are valid reasons for scrapping an old domain in favor of a new one, but if you have a decent domain name and history, be sure you re-direct the pages of the old site to the new URL to keep some of the age history.

2. URL structure. If your URLs make sense to a person reading them, they'll make sense to a search engine's spider and will help your rankings. Use readable keywords of value in your URL and skip all the random characters that don't make sense to anybody. For example, MyBusiness.com/shoes makes more sense and will help your search rankings more than MyBusiness.com/1047/WTF/1234

3. Content is King. Search engine spiders index web pages for the text that's contained within them. The more relevant content on your site, the more opportunity it has to be indexed.

To be returned as a result to a particular search, the content on your pages must contain the text that was used in the search. DON'T, however write content trying to please the search engines without consideration for the humans that will read it. It would do you no good to have the first position on the Search Engine Results Page if everyone who comes to your site immediately leaves because the content doesn't make sense. And you wouldn't stay #1 long anyway.

Search engine spiders can also tell if you have been "stuffing" your content with your keywords to try to influence them to index you higher. Double-stuffed Oreos might be a nice treat, but not on a web page. You can optimize any given page for one or two keyword phrases. Don't try to get every keyword on every page. It won't make sense to your visitors and it won't help you with the search engines.

Make sure your keyword phrases are included in the most important parts of your site like headings and internal links. Have logical meta data that makes sense to users who will read your titles and descriptions. Also be sure to have Alternate Text with your keywords for your images. Search Engine spiders can't "read" images, but they can read captions and "alt text" and these will add strength to your keywords.

Don't include a lot of content that the search engines can't index. The worst offender of this is Flash. Flash can create beautiful, engaging content that moves and is just, well cool. However, the search engines can't read and index it so it doesn't help you from a search engine optimization standpoint. Use Flash sparingly as long as it's delivering a relevant, engaging experience for your visitors. Entire sites built in Flash may look cool, but they won't be indexed by the search engines so you won't get organic traffic.

4. Content Age. While Google likes to see a site that's been around a while (see #1 above) it doesn't want to see the exact same content on those pages for all that time. From a search engine's perspective, a site that hasn't been updated in a while likely has outdated information or may even be out of business. These are not good things for a search engine to return in a search engine result to visitors. Updating content on a regular basis is critical to keeping your site on the radar with the search engines.

5. Site performance. Google is indexing what people do when they're on your site. If they leave immediately, known as a "Bounce", Google will understand that your site is not relevant for that keyword phrase and will not return the page as a result. Your site performance is telling Google that you're not relevant for those keywords. Remember, Google has to return the most relevant results or they'll become the MySpace of search (no offense MySpace). This is why (#3) above is so important. Your content has to engage your visitor. Write for the visitor and include items that will get, and keep, them engaged with your site. When a visitor finds your site, you need to engage them with your content and move them along a path that answers their questions to get them to the goal of your website, which can be to purchase a product, visit your store or contact you in some way.

6. Internal Links. Pages on your site need to be linked to each other in a relevant way. The goal is to lead your visitors on a journey to a specific goal you have defined. Your link structure should reflect that. Links from your keyword phrases of value to more information on that subject are indications to the search engines that those keywords are important. You don't want a whole lot of "click here" links or you'll be indexed for "click here" instead of "great shoes". Besides, you don't want to compete with Adobe (just for fun, type "click here" in Google and see who's site is optimized for that term).

7. External Links. The search engines see links to your site from other sites as an indication of your popularity or relevance. In general, the more links to your site, the better. But there are a couple of important considerations. The site linking to you should have a reason to link to you. If you sell women's shoes and your brother-in-law is a contractor, there's no real reason for his site to link to yours. More importantly, consider the value that the search engine places on the site that links to you. If Google doesn't think very highly of the site that links to you, it's not going to give you many "points" for that link. Alternatively, if Google ranks the site that links to you very highly, it will pass on some of that authority, or "link juice" to your site. You want to have as many links to your site from sites that the search engines value as you can possibly get. Think of it as a popularity contest. Just like in high school, the more of the popular people that say they like you, the more popular you become.

8. Trust. It all comes down to trust. Do visitors trust you and do the search engines trust you. Unfortunately, over the years there have been many attempts to "game" the search engines. Now they're wary. The search engines are looking for reasons to trust you. And your human visitors are the same way. They've been fooled before and they want to know they can trust you. Anything that you can put on your site to inspire confidence and trust is likely a good thing. Simple things like your address and phone number inspire trust. Testimonials from satisfied clients inspire trust. Third party emblems from trusted brands inspire trust. Consider who your target audience trusts and how you can incorporate that into your site.

9. Speed. Google loves speed. They love it so much that they include the speed with which they return their results to you right at the top of the page next to the number of results they have delivered. If your site loads slowly, not only are you going to disappoint visitors to your site, you're going to rank lower than another site with a faster page load time (all other things being equal of course). Simplify your site and get those speed hogging elements off it or downsized to load faster.

10. Local Search. In the past year, Google has tried to increase the relevancy of its search results by giving the local guy a shot. Of course, big brands with millions of dollars in their marketing war chest have had an advantage in the search game. Think of it like television advertising. The brands with the big bucks can advertise on national network television during the Superbowl while the mom-and-pops have trouble even affording basic cable advertising. In the interest of searchers, Google has tried to level the playing field by placing a much bigger emphasis on local search. This gives the local business a chance to compete with his larger national competitor.

Geo-Targeting. So what does this mean to you? Optimize your site and all your web properties with geo-targeted search terms. If the service area for your business is Long Island and people would search for your business with the term Long Island (for example, "Best Long Island NY Shoe Store") make sure that search term is in the content on your page.

Places and Local. Also, make sure you "claim" all your local pages and directory listings. You've likely seen the first listings on a local search engine results page that that shows the business name, their Google Places page, their website and a map listing. Make sure you "claim" this page and optimize it for your keywords of value. Add photos and videos to it. Google's version is called Google Places, but Bing and Yahoo have their own local pages.

Local Web Properties. And then there are the directories. Search for your business name in any search engine. You'll hopefully find there are a number of results that are not your website. Go to these sites, verify the information is correct and claim these listings. If the information is not correct, correct it.

Accuracy is Critical. Ensure that all of your "web properties" have your name, address and phone number EXACTLY the same, down to the format of your address. "St." in one listing and "Street" in another is going to confuse the search engines and not give you the credibility you deserve.

Well, I promised I was only going to give you 10 so I'll stop here. There are a number of other things you can do to help your search engine rankings, but these are the top 10 most common to all businesses, as I see it. Now you're likely asking so what does that mean to me? What can I do about it?

By James F Ruppel

Many small business owners struggle with getting their website ranked - you are not alone. Small business owners needs quality websites, and often they are not sure what it takes to get it noticed by customers. The SEO tips below should help you with these problems.
Tip 1:
Never design your website without SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your reasoning for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash website after it is built won't do it. Spiders can crawl text but not Flash or images.
Tip 2:
Got a new website you want spidered? Submitting your website to Google's search engines take weeks. The quickest way to get your website spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
Tip 3:
When defining the keywords for your page, try to only target a maximum of three per page and make sure that the keywords you are using actually exist in your web page at the beginning paragraph, middle of the body and ending paragraph of the page.
Tip 4:
It's very important to get listed in other online business directories? Listings of your business in directories such as Local.com, Yellowpages.com, your local city's chamber of commerce, or directories affiliated with your business can help boost your page's ranking.
Tip 5:
There many of plugins for WordPress, a handful of favorites that can make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing your site. These SEO plugins take the work out of optimization and allow you to focus on other strategies, like content! WordPress's All-in-One SEO Pack or HeadSpace2 SEO.
Tip 6:
Try different strategies: The goals of an SEO campaign is to convert a lead. A successful campaign can be attained when integrated with other campaigns. Think about attracting visitors that are at an early stage of buying. Think about strategies to get them to sign up for your newsletter.
Tip 7:
Optimizing your pages, such as keywords, heading tags, and internal links can help search engines better recognize the content of these pages and how they're structured. Many of these optimizations aid users' navigation and usability of the site. You have total control over page optimization, it greatly depends on you to make it happen
Tip 8:
Use bold text. Use the tags around some of your keywords throughout your page. Don't use them everywhere
Tip 9:
Have several articles related to your website's Keywords. Make sure you use a different keyword search term for them. For instance, one article might use the keywords "Healthy foods for Babies," while another might use the term "Babies Healthy Foods."
By Scott Bueller 

There are a plethora of articles and advice about link building, but the ones I have read don't really tell you how to do it. Or rather they tell you how you need to get backlinks from other sites to your own, and say that you need to scatter your URL around the Internet on sites that are relevant to your niche, and so eventually climb the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS). What these article and advice don't tell you is how you actually make a link, and neither do they suggest that cross-referencing (building links to your different articles and posts all with their individual address) within your site is also good for your site's Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so that the site climbs the search engine's (e.g. Google's) index pages.
When you are typing your article in the box provided or have copy-pasted it into your site, you will see two links in a chain. You click on this icon and will be given a box which may have the "http:// " part of the address already given, but may not, in which case you have to type this in along with the "www. and address and identity" of the article you want to link to. This information can be found in the long, elongated box at the top of your screen, but be careful, if you are typing the address manually that you have copied all of it. To ensure that you have done so, click on this box and it will turn blue, then click again and run through the box to the end of the address. Believe it or not, some people only type in the address part that they can see and so do not have a link that works in their post. Always test the link to make sure that it works.
When you cross-reference in this way you are ensuring that traffic stays longer on your site. People will click on the links to find the extra information on stand-alone posts or articles, and in theory at least, the longer someone stays in you site, the more chances there are of your making a sale. The bounce rate (the length of time your visitors spend on your site) will be low as they stay rather than just look at one article or product and exit rapidly.
Of course, to cross-reference and have links to other parts of your site, you need to have plenty of original, engaging content. This means that you have to work at building up your site to take advantages of the opportunities having a domain affords you. This is why you cannot expect a site to climb in the SERPS immediately, it takes time and effort. If you are really new to online marketing some advice from a reputable SEO professional would be of immense value to you and your new site.
Every time you add content to your site, make sure that there are references that can be made into links with other pages in your site and go back to the post you are referring traffic to and add a link to your new post. If you leave this part of the work until later, you may have a huge amount of work to update in three months, and if you leave it longer, you will be faced with a daunting task, so do it when you add new posts with backlinks to others.

It's Still About Text
With sites like Flickr, Facebook and YouTube it's easy to assume that video and images are overtaking the humble written word. It's important to realize that the Internet is still very much driven by text. Video, photos and social media are important yes, however text is the backbone, it's how the Internet works. Therefore it makes sense when getting started with search engine optimization to focus on text, which.
Starting With Research
A "Keyword" is the name given to the words and phrases that people type into search engines. The first thing new SEO practitioners need to think about is what keywords would people use to find your products and services?
Let's assume you sell widgets. What keywords would you like your site to appear for? Would you like your site to appear in the search results for "Blue widgets", "Widgets in Australia" or what about "How to use widgets".
It's one thing to understand the keywords, it's another to understand the traffic volumes for those keywords. If no one is search for "Blue widgets" there is little point in optimising your site for that keyword. So how do you know the traffic for any given keywords? Lucky, Google have the solution. Do a search for "Google keyword tool" and spend some time getting familiar with this tool.
Here's a pro tip: See what results you get when you use the "Exact Match" setting.
Are You Competitive?
How powerful is your site based on the competition? How would you know?
When you search for the keywords look at the first 5 spots? Are they big sites, with lots of content? Do they have hundreds or thousands of pages of content?
An indicator of a strong or important site is the number links that point to the site from other sites on the Internet. How can you tell? This is where you need to look at using some more tools. Do a search for "backlink analysis" and you see a number of free and paid tools that will help you understand the competition.
Choose a tool and find out how many links your competitors have. Next, break use a spreadsheet to track your site's authority, linking root domains, and pages indexed and see how your website stacks up against your competition.
Start With On-Page SEO
While links are important getting your website sorted out and optimised is the most critical thing you can do to boost your rank in search engines. Every page of your website is unique. This means the title tag (title of you page) should be written specifically for every page of your website. Here's an example title tag: Widgets | How To Use Blue Widgets. Make sure your page is relevant for the "How to use blue widgets". Make sure all your images are tagged and that your page contains links to sources relevant for the content.

Google Places is a great listing for local businesses and getting to the first indexed page is of huge benefit to any business as it will bring in more customers and clients. When you apply for a page in these Google Places, you should make sure that you provide as much information as possible about your business, which means filling in all the optional text fields. You should also upload pictures and videos of your business as the more information you have on your pages, it would appear that the higher you will be ranked in the Place index.

Google Places is rather like a Yellow Pages directory where people look to find products and services that they need and which are specific to a local area. Because of the growth of mobile marketing, the number of mobile devices and an ever-increasing desire on the part of the consumer for a more personalized customer interaction with a business and advertiser, the more important Google Places becomes for a local business owner.

A growing number of searches now concentrate on finding local businesses and services, so your business needs to be in those Google Places so that you have as much Internet exposure to your potential client or customer-base as possible. Because Places listings are increasingly finding their way onto the first pages of a Google search, your business needs to be prominent in order for it to beat the competition.

Looking at businesses that have been highly ranked on Places pages, you can't help but notice that they have been reviewed by customers. The more and better the reviews, it appears that the higher the business is ranked. This has not been stated by Google, but is simply the information for which there is clear evidence in the Places rankings.

As a local business owner you have a client/customer base and you need to ask these people to review your products, business or services. You could have flyers made and give these out at the cash register, requesting satisfied customers to write a review for you.

However the business of getting a review can be problematic, as by their very nature, not all reviews are positive. This then brings online reputation management into play and gives small businesses a need to hire a good SEO company to see that the business has a good online reputation. Any unfounded negative reviews can be negated, refuted or removed from the Net eventually by a professional SEO person who knows how to do these things.

In 2010 local businesses could choose to ignore Google places, but it would be folly to neglect to use them now. As more searches online are to find local providers of whatever the customer/client wants, it is important for local businesses to have a profile on the Places pages so that prospective customers know where to find what they are looking for. A profile which includes visual images be they photos or videos, will have a higher place on the index pages for that category of service or sales. More than ever before a small local business needs help and advice on how to rise in the index rankings and so achieve a high visibility in the Places pages and by extension in Google's Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS). God SEO companies are also waking up to this new business opportunity for them and now have a good idea of what is required to get highly places on the Places index. However because Google does not say explicitly what makes for a top position on these index pages, SEO companies can only make recommendations based on their own research and that of others. No company can promise you a first page position. Bear this in mind when you see ads for Places SEO. You don't want to be a victim of a fly-by-night SEO company.
By Lynne Evans

The first thing you should know is that finally Google has opened its social network site Google+ to businesses. It currently has around 40 million users, and while this is no threat in the short term to Facebook which has around 800 million active users, it's a social media platform that cannot be ignored.

Clearly the two big players in the social network world are Google+ and Facebook; not to have a presence on both is simply not good SEO sense. If you want your brand or site or company to have maximum publicity online, then you should be a part of these online social networks.
Facebook has its Like button which allows people or fans to express their opinion about certain products or sites and when they press the button, all their friends are informed that they have given something the thumbs up. This may not result in sales, but if only one sale comes from sixty-six Likes, that's better than no sale at all. Incidentally I didn't just pull that figure out of a hat; it was taken from a recent MerchantCircle survey published in August 2011 which surveyed small local businesses.
You should by now have embedded a Facebook Like button along with a Google+1 button onto the pages of your website, as the Google+1 button will, one presumes in the future be an indication to the search engine of your page's popularity and so will affect your position in the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPS).
Having a Twitter account which you Tweet to regularly cannot harm your position in SERPS either, in fact the more social media sites you have a presence on, the better for your business and ultimately for your rankings in the SERPS.
Some people in online marketing forget the value of Wikipedia as a social media. It ranks highly in Google's SERPS, even though it might not be the most authoritative site on any one particular topic. If you can contribute to it and get your site linked to pages within it you have got yourself a highly rated backlink.
However there is no getting away from the fact that Facebook and Google are the major league players in social networking and so in online marketing; ignore them at your peril. Google+ Circles allows businesses to categorize their fans into clusters according to age groups and gender etc., so that allows businesses to target specific groups with advertisements. There is no denying that the trend in marketing is for businesses to communicate with consumers and both Facebook and Google+ allow for this to some extent. Both sites are in the business of providing their users with so much information that they will have no need to leave the sites. This means that if your business does not have a presence in these social network sites, it will be losing out to competitors who do have a visible presence in their pages.

For the longest time, keywords have ruled the SEO game. They aren't the only means to success in the Internet marketing business, but they are still the cornerstone of success. Learning to take advantage of keywords like a pro greatly improves your chances of your website ranking high and getting that much-coveted traffic.
SEO techniques abound, but the most important is what you do with your text content. Where and how you use keywords on your site's content can make or break the game for you.

• Work for keywords that have potential. By potential, I mean either earning or traffic potential, or both, whichever you want. Some niches and consequently, their niches, get a lot of traffic, but don't make much money. Other keywords get less traffic, but have better prices (that is, advertisers pay more for them). Beware of keywords that get little traffic AND have a low price set on them. You should avoid those. If you target keywords for money, look for words that have high advertiser competition. Use Google's AdWords Keyword Tool to research your niche.
• Use keyword families that are related to one another. Targeting an isolated keyword is impractical. People don't always use the same exact keyword to look up the same topic. A phrase such as "SEO keywords" may be searched as "keywords and SEO" or "keyword optimization" and countless other variations. Incorporate various renditions your keywords for better coverage.
• Write keywords in a natural style. When you use keywords excessively, you are making spam. Search engines hate spam, and so do readers. Do not overuse keywords. This doesn't mean you need to make an exact count of each word as it occurs. Just write content the way you talk about the topic-- naturally.
• Place keywords where they count. That is, in your titles, meta tags, headings, each paragraph of an article (the higher up, the better), and links to your other articles. Without proper labeling of your content, a search engine would have no way of knowing what it is about. So practice good keyword placement.
• Link to your keyword-targeted articles. You can link to your articles from within the same website. That is called internal linking. Many Internet marketers also engage in active link-building campaigns. You can write guest articles for other websites or blogs, and link back to your website. You can also link to your site in your profiles in forums, email signatures, social profiles and more.

By J Li 

Search engine optimization strategie are a shovel, but what is rare is a radically different approach to the classification as well. The other, by their very nature (eg, Google) is looking for fresh content and high quality. I see tons of marketing and a chat days scraping and automotive and blogs for the use of tactics to optimize these "fake site" may hit a place in the ranks temporarily, it will inevitably be short-lived. Real intelligence search engine comes to questions like:

How do I create content that people benefit from link?

What is a radically different approach that leads to a topic that buzz around the net for people interested? Outlook has the power.

What can I publish my blog for most of the free people who would put a $ 10 e-book?

What are people searching for my niche or a main subject and how do I implement the response and the rank for the keywords?

While good SEO is to make the basics a bit and link building technique, it is also the intelligence, imagination and pure creativity. I ranked better in search engines by contacting SEO from a perspective radically different in many cases. Ask yourself these 4 key questions is a surefire way to generate massive quality to rank well in search engines.