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SEO: Five More Easy Pieces

Part 1 of this two-part series discusses on-site search engine optimization; this section focuses more on the off-site search engine optimization and how to get exposure that is SEO-friendly.

The following details explain how to get visitors to your site and convert them to sales . The following five rules also outline how to submit your Web site to the search engines and directories, how to use Google's PageRank, and how to use keyword spelling to your advantage.

1. Search Engine Submission

The best way to achieve high search engine rankings for new Web sites may not be what you expect. You should not submit your site directly to the search engines, as this process can take weeks or even months to get your site listed. Instead, you need to get listed on top ranking pages that are relevant to your Web sites' content. These high ranking pages are often optimized on a weekly or even daily basis. Every time the site is indexed, your link will appear and the search engines will automatically list your site in its index. It is as simple as that to get listed on top search engines in only a few days.

To do this, we need to search for Web sites that that are indexed by search engines and get them to link to us. This can be difficult to do -- unless you give the site some incentive to do so. The incentive you need to give them is to write some sort of article that is relevant to your line of business. At the bottom of the article you include your Web page URL (uniform resource locator) to get picked up by the search engines. You submit the article to popular article directories on the Web and you will be indexed by the search engines in a matter of days rather than months.

Here's a list of the most popular article directories you can submit your Web site to:

1. Go Articles
2. Ezine Articles
3. ArticleCity
4. Free Content
5. Amazines
6. Article Dashboard
7. Article Directory
8. Submit Your Article
9. MagPortal
10. Isnare
11. ACS Publications
12. Article Hangout
13. WebArticles
14. ArticleCube
15. Articles 4 Content
16. Article-Buzz
17. Free Articles Zone
18. New Articles Online
19. Article To Go
20. ArticleWorld
21. Impact Articles
22. Article Alley
23. DirectoryGold
24. Salon
25. ContentArticles
26. Software Marketing Resource Marketing Article Directory
27. Niche-Article-Directory
28. Jogena's
29. ACC News Directory Article Directory
30. Article Niche Directory
31. SuperPublisher
32. Web Host Industry Review
33. Article Marketer
34. Article Emporium
35. IdeaMarketers
36. Internet Home Business Articles
37. Site Reference

The other option is to perform a search of the most generic term that is related to your business. Click through these Web sites looking at the page ranks. Contact the Web site and by sending them an e-mail asking them to link to your site and in return for you linking back to their Web site. Always contact sites that are relevant to your line of work and always offer them something their visitors can benefit from once they add your link.

You can purchase a link in top PageRank sites through link builders. A few of the good Web sites that can do this for you are TextBrokers, Text Link Ads and LinkAdage.

Remember that you only need to purchase a link for one month, since it will take less than one month to get you indexed by the major search engines. Continuing to pay for the link after a month is a waste of your money. Basically, you are paying a one-time fee to instantly get indexed in the major search engines.

2. Off-Page Optimization

This is just as important, if not more important than on page optimization. To do this, we need to study the linking strategies of the top 10 Web sites for your keyword. We want to copy their model, but do things slightly better to achieve the top rankings. First, open up a spreadsheet in Excel and list the following columns: linking Web site, anchor text, PageRank, link popularity page title and number of outbound links. Then we search your keyword on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and fill in the information for the top 10 Web sites.

To discover the linking Web sites, go to Google and type in the Web sites URL "link:www.thewebsite.com." Then count the number of sites that are listed to get the link popularity.

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Anchor text is whatever follows the .com or .org of a Web site URL.

PageRank is the rank Google gives to Web sites. Download the tool here.

Page title is the title of the page that appears on the top left of the screen. If the title does not contain the keywords, then the site is not well optimized and easy to surpass in rankings.

Number of outbound links is the number of links located on the Web page linking to the site you're checking.

Once all this information has been collected, you can see what needs to be done to your site to beat the top ranking sites.

3. Search Engines and Capitalization

Capitalizing different letters in keywords brings up different results in search engines. Search engines are case-sensitive, so it is important how you use capitalization. Listing every variation of a word results in the search engines thinking that you are spam and deleting your URL. This gets worse with singular and plural words.

The solution is to stick with lowercase listings rather than trying different variations. Most people search in all lowercase, and this has the most relevant listings. Not using every other variation means you lose out on about 18 percent of traffic. This is not worth the risk of being banned from the search engines.

Lowercase searching has dominated all the search engines ranging from 85 percent to 90 percent of the total terms used. Now most search engines are not case sensitive anymore.

4. Search Engine Spamming

Spamming does not take well with current search engines, as they have discovered ways to fight keyword stuffing and other search engine tricks. Search engines can detect your spam and will act accordingly by penalizing or banning you from their listings.

Search engine spamming is attempting to achieve top ranks for extremely popular keywords. You can attempt to fight that battle against other sites, but you ought to be ready to fight a long and hard battle defending your ranking. All that wasted effort can be better spent for finding other ways for Internet marketing .

There is no need for search engine spamming if your Web site has been optimized correctly using the above methods. The risks are not worth the temporary rewards. Search engine spam should be considered the same as e-mail spam. Nobody likes or wants spam. We want spammers removed from the Internet, so why would customers want to work with you, a spammer?

5. Professional SEOs

Hiring a professional search engine optimizer is a great idea if your business relies on Internet sales. Search engine optimization is something that is time consuming and requires lots of research.

Most businesses do not have time to optimize their Web sites. They have better things to take care of, like making sure their products are selling and keeping good customer relations. Companies like SEO Optimizers, SEOPerformance and Apex Reach make sure everything is in line at your site and fix any problems that may be holding you back from reaching the top ranks. If you really want to be at the top of any searches you need professionals to come in and help solve the problem.

SEO: Five Easy Pieces