By Charles Mburugu

No serious website can dare to ignore the significance of search engine rankings. Search engines provide more than 70% of the traffic for most websites. Therefore, if you rank high in search engines, you will receive more traffic.

However, getting and sustaining high rankings is not easy. It usually takes much hard word and effort to attain good search engine rankings. The following are three things you need to always keep in mind for better search engine rankings.

Content is king
Search engines love content. Without good and valuable content, you have little chance of success, no matter how great your website is or how much effort you have put into search engine optimization. It is important to have a lot of keyword rich content all through your site. Another great tip is to visit websites which are similar to yours. Read their articles and get ideas which you can make use of in your own site.

There are several reasons why content is vital for high search engine rankings. High search engine ranking will bring you a lot of traffic. However, to sustain the high traffic and retain a good number of return visitors, you need to have useful and well written content in your site. This volume of targeted traffic will be helpful in keeping your reciprocal links growing.

Effective web content also involves having catchy headlines which will encourage readers to visit pages on your site. Many site owners and webmasters usually forget the significance of good, captivating headlines.

Another helpful tip is to have some of your content published in other high traffic websites. This strategy has been effective in creating many links back to my blog which features webhostingpad coupons and register.com discounts.

Your website URL
If your website URL contains relevant keywords, it can have a great impact on your search engine rankings. However, this is not an easy task. It depends on several factors, such as the competitiveness of your main keyword. Less competitive keywords will have a greater impact on your rankings.

Another important factor to remember is that your website URL should be easy to remember. If you are about to register a new domain name or change an existing one, you need to think critically about your name.

Page title
Many webmasters and site owners choose their page titles very carelessly and casually. Your page title is very important for search engine ranking. Each of your pages should have a specific title which includes the keywords. Being specific reduces competition and enhances the chances of your page being found in search engines.

The more high ranking pages your website has, the better since it will generate much more traffic. It is a fact that websites with more pages usually receive more traffic than websites with fewer pages.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

How to Enhance Search Engine Rankings is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Philip Russell

Link building gets harder in every year. SEOs have to find a way to make their links work for their clients, and the type of links that will help your website are becoming harder and harder to achieve as Google finds different alternatives to their algorithms that they hope can help offset the totality of the weight of links (think Panda).

Many bold predictions were made in the beginning of the year in terms of where people thought link building would go in the year 2011. Not all of them came true. In fact, being an active link builder for the last year and a half, I found that the best results and money rely in one type of link building.

Forget the Link Directories

Unless you are willing to throw down some cash on some quality link directories, forget about them. Free link directories and “iffy” link directories will just prevent you from spending time on what you really should be doing with your day – which includes making your site more valuable by producing quality (the absolute best indirect way to build links) and taking care of all of your on-site SEO, which is often overlooked.

There is no better way to waste time than to spend countless hours filling out forms and submitting to free link directories. Their links hold very little weight, so little that even as many as 15 of them may not even guarantee that your website gets into the Google’s SERPs if your website is new and with zero links.

Forget SPAM tactics

You shouldn’t practice these methods and you shouldn’t keep “SEOs” that practice these methods employed. This includes spamming blogs with tremendous amounts of comments. Not only do many of these links provide little value in terms of “link juice” but they are considered extremely “black hat” and are very annoying (to say the least) to bloggers who want nothing to do with these types of comments.

Post Panda Issues

Ever since the major algorithm update of Panda, article marketing has taken a huge hit. This is because content farming was hit hard with the algorithm update as it was a major target for search engines as they provide little value to the search market.

This means that even if you submit 1,000-5,000 articles to sites like Ezine or Article Base (the amount that made article marketing worth it in the past) you still may receive little traffic from them, and the links are worth close to nothing. If article marketing wasn’t an effective way to build links or get traffic to your website pre-Panda, that fact was solidified after Panda rolled out.

Contextual Link Building is The Gold Mine

When it comes down to it, building links using white had methods (that some companies that provide link building services offer) is where you will see the most results in terms of the SERPs. In fact it is not uncommon to see a jump from say, the 11th page, to the 6th page, with around 25 contextual links with keyword targeted anchor text.

Guest posting is one of the best ways to build contextual links. They are much more effective for raising your position in the SERPs because the links they come with are the closest thing to natural looking links – at least in the eyes of Google.

They are also a more effective way of gaining traffic as opposed to article marketing as long as you are posting on blogs that relate to your website and are able to devise a good enough guest post that will allow you get people to be able to click through to your website.

One great trick for guest posting is to make sure that you are optimizing your post for long tail keywords and then post on quality topics. This will ensure that not only will your link provide a lot of juice for your website, but also that your article will arrive at the top position of the SERPs for whatever keyword you are optimizing for. It is a great way to get a link to your site to appear at the top of the SERPs for many different search results. You just want to make sure that those links are point to top tier quality and value!

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Link Building in 2011 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Michael Cash

Are you ready for your business to join the 21st Century? Before you answer this question, let me ask you another one: Are you ready to start a blog for your business? For many, the prospect of learning how to properly start, maintain, and optimize a blog for search engines is a monumental task that simply never gets done. But don’t let the enormity of the task stop you from doing it! You could be missing out on thousands of customers simply because your business has not joined the blogosphere. Setting up your business’s blog for search engine optimization (SEO) is the topic of this writing. The benefits of SEO far outweigh the labor it takes to set it up for your blog.

Basically, SEO is the foundation your blog needs to be ranked highly by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It contains two parts: On-Page and Off-Page SEO. On-Page SEO are the things that you control about your blog, such as content, domain name, and plug-ins. Off-Page SEO are things outside of your control, such as links to your site from other blogs. Since On-Page SEO is directly affected by what you do, we will focus on that here.

Here are the things you can do to optimize your blog for search engines:

1. Domain Name - The first part of establishing your blog is choosing a domain name for it. Your domain name should contain the following:
   • Keyword(s) that relate to your blog
   • Be short and catchy if possible
   • Have the name of the blog in it

While sometimes it is not possible to fulfill these criteria, hitting 2 of the 3 will help optimize your blog for search engines.

2. Use keywords in your titles – This is important for SEO, as users who are searching for certain blogs or blog content will be directed to your site from a search engine if you have searchable keywords in your blog titles. That being said, don’t put too many keywords into one title, as this may make the title sound unnatural.
3. Optimize the body – The body of your blog posts is often overlooked when it comes to SEO, but the first and last paragraphs of your article are very important. Whatever your chosen keyword is for that post, use it two times in the first paragraph and once in the last paragraph. In addition, try and place it within the middle paragraphs a couple of times to grab greater search engine attention. However, DO NOT repeat your keyword too many times in the article, or search engines (specifically Google) will label it as keyword spam and this will ruin any SEO the blog could have had.
4. Use links in your posts – Using links in your posts to link important words to previous blog posts will assist in SEO. Search engines consider blogs that utilize links more authoritative than those that don’t, and will rank your blog higher than others. But once again, don’t overdue the links, as readers find them distracting and search engines dislike an overabundance of them.
5. Always have unique, interesting content – Search engines like interesting, original content to give to their users. Simply copying and pasting articles from other sources will be recognized by a search engine and will not optimize your article at all. Moreover, your content should be informative and fresh to enable SEO for your blog.

Now that you have the tools to utilize the benefits of SEO, it’s time to start that blog!

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Blogging with Google in Mind is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Wayne Barker

What will the new year bring for your SEO?

So what is going to be big for SEO in 2011? In my opinion two of the biggest changes that have occurred this year were the changes to Google Places and the Google Page Previews. If you are unaware of what these are then I suggest you continue to read. If you are already familiar with the changes you need to make sure you are one step ahead of the crowd and get your thinking caps on.

The changes to Google Places

One day it was all fine and the next…Google made a massive change to the way they return the search results for location specific queries. It was a massive change and if you haven’t already it is time to start thinking about how you carry out your local SEO.

There were three major way in which the search results changed:

• The map for the old 7 or 10 pack jumped over to the right and started to scroll down the screen as you did (most of the time anyway – it looks like this may be dependent on screen resolution)
• If you had good organic SEO (and if it was locally good organic SEO that was a plus) we started to see blended results in the search engine results
• We started to see extra information in these blended results, this included addresses, photos, reviews and a link to your Google Places page

This was a huge leap for Google (and as normal panicky SEOs, well, panicked) but there are some steps that you should take if you have any localised search queries for your site. So for 2011 it is time to get local:

1. If you haven’t yet (if not, why not?) claim your Google Place page listing and get it verified via a quick phone call.
2. Optimise your Google Place page – you need to make sure it is 100% complete (include photo, video and the oft missed extra services section at the bottom)
3. Make sure your Places page has both a localised telephone number and address – you are not going to rank without them.
4. Make sure you have local signals in your organic SEO (the usual places – Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags, Headings, Copy)
5. Get your address and LOCAL telephone number in the footer of every page. If you have freephone or toll free numbers hide them in an image.
6. Make sure your Google Places pages have relevant categories – i.e. make sure that you choose two that Google recognises.
7. If you aren’t already get featured in local directories, try and get mentioned on the site of the local newspaper or government (and a link would be nice)
8. Actively seek out reviews from customer and point them towards the big review sites like yelp, tripadvisor or the ones that are relevant to your business.
9. Get on the sites that provide local data to Google.

Exhausted with the local stuff? It isn’t over yet! A lesser change that recently happened in Google that I feel is worthy of mention is the recent addition of the Google Page Preview. It could turn out to be another game changer for 2011.

Google Pages Preview

You may have noticed a little magnifying glass appearing next to the search results, you guys in the US saw this before us in old blighty (you always do!) Well hovering over the little magnifying glass will give you a nice big preview of the page before you even visit the site – which is great, or is it.

Screen shot of the new Google Page Preview feature.

If you think about it from an SEO point of view, now the searcher has an extra factor to consider before visiting your site. Before if you had your content right and the SEO right you could get onto the first page (maybe!). If you had a compelling Meta Description that backed up the content and the SEO then maybe you could further encourage people to click.

Now they get to see what the site looks like before they choose to click through to your site. We all love to say that beauty and aesthetics don’t influence our decisions that much but who are we kidding Design should not be a strong part of your SEO plan. Simple colours, appealing design – the box isn’t that big so you need to keep it simple to attract and pull searchers in. At the end of the day if a searcher isn’t convinced by the title and description of the search results the design could be a massive deal breaker.

It’s worth thinking hard about.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

What’s Going to be Big for SEO in 2011? is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

The meta tags for each page are extremely important as they tell search engines exactly what a page is about. The three that need to be created are the title, description and keywords tags. Make sure they are unique on every page, and remember not to try to optimise more than one page for a keyphrase or you risk confusing Google. This guide is a brief template to how to create meta tags in order to get your pages ranking successfully.

Title tag
This should be created in sentence case, there is a maximum length of 64 characters. The title tag should include the main keywords the page is being optimised for, separated either with commas or pipes. I usually personally prefer pipes.

The title tag should look like the example below – this company is optimising for the keywords TB charity, Tuberculosis Charity, TB charity UK, Tuberculosis Charity UK.

Example – TB Charity | Tuberculosis Charity, Based in LOCATION NAME, UK | COMPANY NAME

The format for the title tag is typically:

Main Keyword 1 | Secondary Keyword, Area Descriptor | Company Name

My belief is that your company name only needs to appear on the homepage – and that you shouldn’t waste space by including it on other titles within the site!

Description tag
This has a maximum length of around 170 characters. It’s written to entice visitors through, but mainly to use the keywords you are trying to rank for. See example below – this is for a brand category page within the website:

Example – UK based Aden and Anais Stockist offering muslin squares, wraps, security and swaddling blankets, towels and washcloths

The description should be crafted like this:

Description of main category – most important keywords first then a list of the main related products to this particular page

Keywords tag
Keywords are not as commonly included by many, as they are not as highly regarded as in previous years due to overuse by spammers. Having said that – it’s still good practice to include them.

This should be a list of the keywords you are trying to rank for, separated by commas. These are not as important as the two other tags above. Here’s an example:

Example – TB charity, TB charities, Tuberculosis Charity, Tuberculosis Charities, TB organisation, UK

Second example – Organic baby clothes, Organic babygros, organic babygrows, organic babywear, organic childrenswear, organic clothes for babies, organic new baby gifts

The keywords should be crafted like this:

Keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 etc

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Meta Tag Setups for Beginners is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Blogging on a regular basis can be great for your SEO efforts

Here are a few things to consider when writing blogs for your website.

• Start by picking keywords that make sense for your site. These are key words that have enough search traffic, but aren’t so competitive that you will never make a dent. Insert these key words into your blogs and write your content around them.
• Second, write unique content that will be of interest to your visitors. Writing about things that have nothing to do with your product or service won’t help. If you are considering using a third party to write content for you – be careful about the quality of the content by testing them before you post the content on your site.
• Be sure to link content within your site, as search engines like to see that you are linking to appropriate pages and content. For example, if you write a blog about a product or service you offer, be sure to anchor the key words to a link about your product or services.
• When you write blogs remember what structure search engines like to see. It’s good practice to include things like putting key words in your title or headings, inserting enough key words in the article, and having a key word in your first and last sentences. However, don’t be tempted to “stuff” your content – best practices are to have key word density of 2% – 5%. More might actually hurt your SEO value.
• Finally, be sure to use social media to help gain additional exposure and back-links. Tweeting to Digging your blogs will add more fuel to your SEO fire. Asking friends to help you spread the word never hurts.

Just remember that content is the best thing you can do to add SEO value to your website, and blogging is an easy way to accomplish this. For more SEO tips, visit our blog where you can find more free property marketing resources.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Tips on Using Blogging for SEO is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Here is the presentation that I put together for the Performance Marketing Expo SEO session originally scheduled for the first day of the event. Unfortunately, the entire slate of Monday sessions was canceled, so I am sharing this with you here on The Web Optimist. The target audience is beginners looking for easy, non-technical, best practice SEO tips. I’m transcribing the slides below with additional comments included.

Everyone loves a good tip, right?

Here are some simple, quick, common sense tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Most novices with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to implement these tips without any problem.

Ah, but what is SEO, you ask?

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

SEO is:

• A part of search engine marketing (SEM) with the purpose of building content that is readable and indexed by search engines

SEO is NOT:

• Content just for the search engines
• Using unethical, “black hat” techniques to rank better
• An exact science
• Something you have to be a total geek to do

One more thing to understand about SEO…

SEO is NOT Rocket Science

BUT, it can be complex and is an ongoing process that changes almost daily. 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 to drive more traffic, prospects and, hopefully, profit.

First: Turn Off Personalized Search

Content is (Still) King

Be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase. Be sure to include keywords in heading tags and in the first paragraph and throughout body copy.

This is referred to as spider food!

Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

Good Back Links

• If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link.
• Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
• Get links from good, authority sites. The “authority” will rub off on you.
• Avoid link farms and obvious paid links.

Keywords in Hyperlinks

This can’t be emphasized enough! Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrases. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

Link Format Consistency

Did you know that…

http://your-site.com

http://your-site.com/

http://your-site.com/index.html

http://www.your-site.com

http://www.your-site.com/

http://www.your-site.com/index.html

Use Absolute Links

Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

Title Tag

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. Unique text in this tag on each page is essential and the single most important thing you can do for rankings. If you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end unless it contains the page’s targeted keywords. Keep your title tag under about 70 characters.

Keyword Density

• There is no magic keyword density for a page. That’s so 1998! Make your text natural with your primary keyword phrase included two or three times on a page, ideally above the fold. That’s it.
• Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

Don’t be Obsessed with PageRank

PageRank, or that little green bar you see in the Google Toolbar, is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

Optimize Your Images

• Use captions with your images.
• Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page.
• Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
• Enable “Enhanced image search” in  Google Webmaster Tools. Images are a big part of the blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
• Use keywords for image file names.

Theme Consistency

Make sure the page Title tag, the HTML title attribute and the ALT attributes retain the scent or theme of the page.

Domain

• Select a keyword rich domain name (keyword.com) if possible. This makes every link to your domain a keyword anchor link, great for SEO.
• Changing ownership of a domain should not affect search engine rankings.
• There’s nothing wrong with .net, .org, .info and other extensions (search engines tend to give them equal weight), but you really want .com. People assume a domain (especially in the USA) ends in .com, so understand that if you get any other domain extension, you’ll probably lose at least some traffic to whoever owns the .com version.

Frames, Flash and AJAX

Unless the Flash you rely on wears red tights and is really, really fast, take care. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

I found this quote online and it perfectly fits my feelings about Flash.

Need Fresh Content? Get a Blog!

If your site content doesn’t change often or you have an all Flash site, you need a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog frequently with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers. And, you can link from your blog text to your main site content or to an all-Flash site.

Bonus Tip for Flash Sites

If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold. This at least gives the spiders something to read.

Call to Action

SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action on your page.  Use action phrases like Register, Free Gift, Shop Now, Deadline, Trial Offer, Upgrades and Order Now!

CEO Blogging

Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

Social Media

• Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
• Link to your social media profile pages. Make sure visitors can find your social site pages. Make your very first weighted link to your profile pages a link from your company site.
• Twitter is incredibly powerful for weighting in the search engine results pages, so use it! Just be sure to grab your name before someone else does (this applies to all social sites).

Go Viral

Inject viral components into your web site or blog

• Ratings & Reviews (User Generated Content)
• Sharing (E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Comments (More User Generated Content)
• Videos (Upload these to YouTube, etc.)
• Podcasts (Distribute these through iTunes, etc.)
• News (Press releases, news feeds, etc.)
• Free E-Books (Who doesn’t like free?)

All of these can help your content be found, linked to and rank better. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore. (In the presentation, a screen shot of search results featuring videos, product pages, blog posts and shopping results from my employer, FramesDirect.com, dominating the page is shown.)

Speaking of Podcasts & Videos…

Transcribe your podcasts and post the text on your blog. The search engines are working on crawling audio, but aren’t quite there yet, so post the textual content (referred to sometimes as “show notes”) where the spiders can crawl it easily.

Same goes for video. Include a transcription of your video content on the page for spidering purposes. By the way, you did know that YouTube.com is the second most used search engine in the world, didn’t you? Charge up your cameras and get to work!

Localize

Local search is getting hot! Create a local listing for all locations if you have more than one. Don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there! Start with local listings at Google (through Google Places or Google Maps), Yahoo! and Bing. Include photos, videos, links, web pages and coupons if available.

E-mail Marketing

If you aren’t doing e-mail marketing, consider it. Not only is it the most frequently used form of web marketing, if done right it can be extremely effective and can indirectly lead to social bookmarking and back links to your  site pages.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Powerpoint: SEO Tips Even Mom Would Love is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I’ve been slammed with work and preparing for my presentation at the upcoming Performance Marketing Expo, an affiliate marketing conference and exhibition at Miami Beach which runs September 27-29, 2010.

I will be doing my bit as SEO Manager of FramesDirect.com on Monday, September 27, at 1:30 p.m. in a Search Engine Optimization session. It will be based on my popular SEO Tips Even Mom Would Love post, but, of course, shortened to best practice basics for non-technical types.

Mercifully, I go on before Shari Thurow, who I often credit with my decision to move into SEO full-time and out of web design and part-time SEO a number of years ago after reading her book Search Engine Visibility. I absolutely devoured the book, thinking “Wow, I LOVE this stuff!” and knew SEO was what I was supposed to do.

Anyway, glad she’s following ME and not the other way around! Her presentations are always great!

And, no, I don’t run the affiliate program at FramesDirect.com, but I do work with our affiliate manager and frequently get questions from this blog from affiliates struggling with SEO.

Check out the agenda.

If you need a 20% off discount coupon for the conference, feel free to grab it here.

And keep you fingers crossed for me!

Later,

Richard V. Burckhardt, The Web Optimist

Performance Marketing Expo is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

I’m preparing to do a presentation as VP of Search for FramesDirect.com  for the Performance Marketing Expo in Miami this September and would like a local Palm Springs area test audience for “SEO Tips Even Mom Would Love” – a roughly 20-minute Powerpoint show.

Ideally, I’d like to do this for a business or organization group of at least ten people in a conference room. Yes, that’s the catch. You will need to provide the facility. A projector or large monitor that can be connected to a laptop will also be required.

And, of course, I am offering to do this free for the lucky group. I’ll take questions regarding the presentation and general SEO afterwards.

So, these are the requirements to qualify for the free workshop:

• You must be in the Palm Springs area
• Group of at least ten participants
• Conference room or other facility with either a projector or large monitor that can be connected to a laptop.

So, if your Palm Springs area business, organization, bureau or group wants a free primer on search engine optimization from The Web Optimist (me), drop me an e-mail or call me at 760-641-1501. At this time, only ONE free workshop will be made available, but you never know.

For more information about me, check out my SEO Speaker page where you will find links to even more info about yours truly.

Thanks,

Richard V. Burckhardt
The Web Optimist: SEO in The Desert

Free Palm Springs SEO Workshop for One Lucky Business is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Unique, keyword rich content is still the best spider food.

Understand that these are my personal top tips as an in house SEO. Another SEO would probably have a different list. You know how it goes, put two SEOs in a room and there's gonna be an argument! Heck, I even get arguments from my own SEO cronies!

Keep in mind that...

SEO is NOT Rocket Science

BUT, it is complex and an ongoing process that changes almost daily. 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 to drive more traffic, prospects and, hopefully, profit.

Absolute MUSTS for SEO:

1. Content is (Still) King - Be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase. Be sure to include keywords in heading tags and in the first paragraph and throughout body copy. This is referred to as spider food! Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

2. Good Back Links - If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link.
• Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
• Get links from good, authority sites. The "authority" will rub off on you.
• Avoid link farms and obvious paid links.
• Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for a site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

3. Link Format Consistency - Did you know that...

http://your-site.com

http://your-site.com/

http://your-site.com/index.html

http://www.your-site.com

http://www.your-site.com/

http://www.your-site.com/index.html

...are all technically SIX different URLs even though each will land the site visitor on the same Web page? Stick to one format, otherwise you are splitting your backlinks and link juice.

http://www.your-site.com/ = YES

http://www.your-site.com/index.html = NO

4. Use Absolute Links - Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it. What are absolute links?

Here's an example of an absolute link:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/blue-widgets.html">Examples of Blue Widgets</a>

Below is a relative link:

<a href="blue-widgets.html">Examples of Blue Widgets</a>

5. Title Tag - 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. Unique text in this tag on each page is essential and the single most important thing you can do for rankings. If you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end unless it contains the page's targeted keywords

6. Don’t be Obsessed with PageRank - PageRank, or that little green bar you see in the Google Toolbar, is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR. In fact, what you see in this toolbar is NOT what Google sees internally for daily rankings.

7. Optimize Your Images:
• Use captions with your images.
• Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page.
• Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
• Enable “Enhanced image search” in  Google Webmaster Central. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
• Use keywords for image file names.

8. Social Media - Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
• Link to your social media profile pages. Make sure visitors can find your social site pages. Make your very first weighted link to your profile pages a link from your company site.
• Twitter is incredibly powerful for weighting in the search engine results pages, so use it! Just be sure to grab your name before someone else does (this applies to all social sites).

9. Go Viral - Inject viral components into your web site or blog
• Ratings & Reviews (User Generated Content)
• Sharing (E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Comments (More User Generated Content)
• Videos (Upload these to YouTube, etc.)
• Podcasts (Distribute these through iTunes, etc.)
• News (Press releases, news feeds, etc.)
• Free E-Books (Who doesn't like free?)

All of these can help your content be found, linked to and rank better. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

10. Localize - Local search is getting hot! Create a local listing for all locations if you have more than one. Don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there! Start with local listings at Google (through Google Places or Google Maps), Yahoo! and Bing. Include photos, videos, links, web pages and coupons if available. It’s quick, easy, free and gives you one more opportunity to rank.

There you go. Again, these are my personal top 10 SEO tips. If you don't agree, well, eat dirt.

Just kidding. Feel free to comment.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist - SEO in The Desert.

Top 10 SEO Must Do Tips is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO