SEO Secrets to Success

Ideally a SEO Professional’s goal is to increase their client’s rankings in the top search results. Have greater visibility in leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Knowledge is always key. Many SEO Professionals attended the Internet Retailer Web Design “09” Conference in Miami Beach, FL to gain some better insights on how to achieve those goals. SEO experts Stephan Spencer and Marion Sharkey offered some vital tips to reach those top rankings. Spencer and Sharkey provided a review of both strengths and weaknesses of websites of those in attendance during a session titled “Top Design Tips to Boost SEO Rankings.” Here are some of the key points mentioned:

-Every page should feature a title that includes few keywords the client ultimately wants to rank high on. Limiting the title to three keywords is best.

-The header on each page should have a H1 tag that contains the keyword, for instance a given brand or product. Your H1 tag should have in sync with the focus keyword of the page.

-Be sure to title each page. The keywords the Client prefers to rank high in should appear at the top of the page in the browser frame.

-If your industry is designer shoes then it would be best to list the names of top brand names of designer shoes. So as customers search for these items they find you in their search. Listing them in the title tag will improve your client’s rankings.

During the session there were some common errors mentioned to avoid. Avoid using an extended block of text containing keywords towards the bottom of the home page. Often this is done to have the site’s search terms appear more relevant to search engines. Apparently such actions causes search engines to consider this as “keyword stuffing” and will generally end in a penalty. So it's clear that just by practicing these key tips SEO Professionals will be well on their way to success.

Beware the emails requesting a link exchange

Here is one along with my response: (scroll to the bottom for my reply, i have edited their email request for easier reading, you get the point of what they are asking...

This is something to consider when receiving these email link exchange request.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daisy [mailto:links (at) realestatewebsitesmarketing.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2009 11:10 AM
To: XXXXXX
Subject: House Repair Related Link Exchange Request

Dear owner of http://www.precisionatlanta.com/,

I'm the webmaster of http://kimberlypainting.net/cumming-painting.htm.
We came across your site on the Internet and feel that it would fit perfectly into our collection of quality industry related partners at http://kimberlypainting.net/cumming-painting.htm.

The Google PR of this site is currently 2.

We've already placed a link to your site on the page http://www.kimberlypainting.net/links-guter-repair10.html , We'd appreciate it if you place a link back to our site using the following HTML code (just copy and paste it into your links page):

(blah blah blah...)
Best regards,
Daisy
Webmaster, KimberlyPainting.net

Note: This is not spam -- this is a one-time link exchange request. To ensure that you will not receive any more emails from us in the future, please reply to this email with ‘not interested’ in the subject line. Thank you.
-----------------------------------

My Response:

Daisy,

I would be interested except for the fact that the page you put our link on is not even indexed by Google, nor is the main links page http://www.kimberlypainting.net/links.html and there is no way for any spiders to even find those pages.

You do not even link your main "links page" anywhere on the site for Google or any other Search Engine to index. The link you have placed is invisible and worthless - if you want me to link back to you on a page that will never be indexed by Google I suppose I could do that but that would just be wasting both of our time wouldn't it?

------------------------

I love the email disclaimer that its not spam, I guess everyone's definition of spam is different. From what I can recall spam is an unsoliceted email with a sales pitch in it. Now, I myswelf have sent unsolicted emails to websites asking if they want to exchange links, but its never a form letter and its never one of the "I already placed your link here, here is the HTML code for my link" - but nevertheless, it is technically spam, oh well. Daisy seems to think spam means your on a mailing list. Whatever

The point is these bulk link exchange programs are pretty much worthless, 10 good solid links are worth 100 of these crappy link exchanges where you end up on a page with 50 or 100 otherlinks and its on one of 50 link pages... its spam garbage - work on building quality links, not junk links.

Some SEO Predictions for 2009

Happy New Year to all! With a New Year we often wonder what the year will actually bring. When it comes to SEO trends and practices it would be great to get a prediction of what to expect in 2009.

Well William Flaiz discuses on Search Engine Watch what some of his predictions for 2009.
http://searchenginewatch.com/3632258 We welcome anyone else to share their SEO predictions for 2009.