Even so, you’ll still find a few web designers, programmers and unscrupulous SEO “professionals” who’ll insist that, in order to optimize your site for the search engines, all you need to do is fill your keyword and description meta tags with all your relevant keywords (and then some) – and keep an eye on your PageRank.

If you’re new to this search engine optimization business, you probably have no idea what a meta tag or PageRank is. Here are a couple of definitions, just for you:

Meta Tag: These are tags placed in the head of your HTML pages that give the visitor’s browser, or the search engine spider, information about the page. Two mid-90s search engines, Infoseek (now defunct) and AltaVista (now owned by Yahoo!), first popularized the keywords tag, which they used to determine what each page on a website was about.

However, by 1997, search engines realized that spammers were misusing the tag to make pages rank for terms that were completely irrelevant to the page’s content. Search engines completely stopped giving so much weight to the keyword meta tag information by 2002.

That said, the description tag is still important. It does not affect how your page is ranked, or what keyword phrases your page will appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for, but the meta description tag is displayed under your page’s title in some of the SERPs.

We'll cover page rank in the next article. In the meantime, stop on by the new Volition website and get a jump with your own personalized site review.

Submitting your site to a search engine is a process in which you go to the search engine’s website and fill out a form, telling the search engine what the address is to your website and what keywords are relevant to it.

Sounds simple, fast and harmless, right? That’s exactly what proponents of submitting will tell you.

“Submitting doesn’t hurt anything.”

“It’s best to make sure you’re covering all your bases.”

Unfortunately, some new website owners, desperate for traffic and motivated by spammy services that promise to submit the new site to thousands of search engines, or hundreds of directories, buy into this idea and find themselves separated from hundreds of dollars with no real return on investment.

Why?

The Truth about Search Engines

First, there are only four search engines. Any other site that calls itself a search engine these days simply returns results from one of the big four – Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing. Submitting your site to any other “search engine” is a waste of time.

Second, search engines use programs called robots or spiders to crawl the web. This means that the spiders follow links from one web page to another and from one website to another. And when the spider encounters new content, a new page or a new site, it indexes the information. In other words, it sends the new content and its location back to the search engine.

Then, when someone searches a keyword phrase on the search engine’s site or in their browser toolbar, the visitor is given a list of relevant results on the search engine results page (SERP).

Once your website is known to be trustworthy and has aged a bit, your pages will appear in the SERPs for relevant keyword phrases. This happens even if you never submit your site to a search engine. And submitting will not speed up the process.

Impact on Your Business

So what does this mean for you, the small business owner who just wants to earn a living?

This means:

1. Don’t waste your time or money submitting your site to search engines.
2. Focus your efforts on developing quality content for your site and for other people’s sites. Call it search engine food.
3. Work on developing relationships with the owners of high ranking websites in your industry or relevant industries. A website owner who knows, likes and trusts you is more likely to link to you in the content of his website.
4. Make sure you’re meeting your customers’ needs first.
5. Never do anything for SEO purposes alone.

Keep these five guidelines in mind when making changes or additions to your site or building your new site.

Stay tuned for next week's SEO article. Or, stop by the new website of Volition and get your own personalized site review and SEO quote.

Setting up a new site to go along with your shiny new domain name can be just as quick and easy with some of the site builder tools and blog tools out there. And Viola! There’s a shiny new WordPress site ready to go.

It’s so easy to do, and there are so many reasons that make setting up a new domain name sound good. But from an SEO perspective, is it really the smart thing to do?

When You Should Use a New Domain Name ws Sub-Domain

Sometimes it does make sense to use a new domain name or to setup a sub-domain. (For those who don’t know, a sub-domain is a part of a larger domain and the subdomain name is added before the top-level domain with a period, e.g. subdomain.topleveldomain.com.)

If you’re selling a single product, such as an e-book, and you have an army of affiliates that will want to send their customers to a single domain and sales letter page that has nothing but the product to purchase on it, then multiple domains may be a good idea.

Or, if you’re company provides information on multiple, unrelated topics, you may want to setup a website for each topic. For example, if you have an online store and a place where you talk about and support the brand you sell, would benefit from separate domain names (like a store.topleveldomain.com and a support.topleveldomain.com).

Using a sub-domain makes sense if you’re setting up a monstrous website like About.com with multiple content categories that need to be completely separate from one another – but still under the same domain name. Sub-domains are also useful if your company offers several completely different products. For example, Google uses sub-domains in this manner: maps.google.com, news.google.com, mail.google.com.

When You Should NOT Use Multiple Domain Names or Sub-Domains

That said; you need to make sure your customers or visitors can navigate your site easily and that you consider the impact of a separate domain or sub-domain on your SEO efforts before you start building.

The first question you need to ask yourself before you start building is why you need more than one domain name or sub-domain.

If your reasoning is so that you can take over the search engine results pages (SERPs) with several websites, go back to the drawing board.

This is a bad idea from an SEO standpoint because the search engines frown upon the practice of having multiple sites with essentially the same content. Anytime you’re attempting to deceive the search engines, you’re walking on thin ice with your site’s credibility in the eyes of the search engines.

That’s just the SEO perspective. Unless you have an army of website updaters and content writers, keeping each of your sites fresh and meeting the needs of your visitors is going to be nearly impossible.

It’s best to keep similar content, or content that targets the same market, on one site and in one sub-domain. Think long and hard about what impact you’ll have and what your motives are before you branch out.

Stay tuned for next week's SEO article. Or, stop by the new website of Volition and get a jump with your own personalized site review.

Hiring a company you found out about through a spammy (ie; questionable) manner

The very first tip off that this might be a bad idea? If they had to market their OWN company and risk their OWN business reputation to get clients, how do you think they will market YOUR website? Yeah, prepare to be blacklisted from the search engines for spamming, or worse.

Finding your way through the labyrinth of conflicting search engine optimization information can be confusing and frustrating, no matter how much experience you have. So when you suddenly receive an email in your inbox promising guaranteed results… you’re tempted.

Don’t give in.

First, these emails almost always offer a scam – a way of manipulating the search engine results that either doesn’t work, or can get you blacklisted from the search engines even if the method does work.

Definition of Blacklisted: Denial of access. Getting your website either banned or boycotted in the search engines. Shut out.

For example, the company may promise to submit your site to 1,000 search engines or 500 directories. Sounds good, right?

Scam: Submitting your site to thousands of search engines

The trouble is that there are only four true search engines in existence: Google, Yahoo, ASK and BING (formerly MSN/Live). Every other search site you use pulls their results from the four mentioned above. So, if your site appears in one of the four, it will appear in the search engine results pages, known as SERPs, on any other search engine site.

Scam: Submitting your site to dozens of directories

As for the 500 directories – do your homework. The only directories that are going to do you any good are those that are related to your industry and are doing decently well themselves. So if you’re selling handcrafted wooden toys, a wedding directory is not going to help you any. However, a directory of American made toys would be perfect. Or a directory of natural, non-toxic toys may drive actual customers to your site.

You may think that having your site listed in unrelated directories will help your site, after all, what’s one more link going to hurt, right?

The trouble with that thinking is, if you have three high-quality sites linking to you and all other links are spammy, unrelated directories, those links will actually reflect poorly on your site. It’s better to focus on receiving high-quality links from sites that rank well in the search engines and have actual visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

Scam: Promising the moon

Unscrupulous SEO companies also tend to promise you #1 ranking in a particular search engine for certain keywords. The problem is that the SEO companies cannot control the results that appear in the search engines. What they do to make it appear that you’re getting results is use black hat methods to artificially affect your rankings. This is temporary, at best, because the techniques they use violate search engine terms of service, putting you at risk for getting your website banned from the search engines.

Techniques that are a violation of search engine TOS include:

• Keyword stuffing
• Hidden text and links
• Doorway and cloaked pages
• Link farming
• Blog comment spam

Avoid these techniques, and any SEO scam a company sends you in a spam email and you’ll have more resources to spend on techniques that actually work.

Finally, keep this in mind: Emails that try to sell you something, that are sent in bulk from a company you don’t have any kind of relationship with, is spam and it’s against the law. The last company you want fiddling around with your online pride and joy is one that is willing to break the law to get your attention.

In spite of what the spam says, when you’re optimizing your website steady and slow is the way to go. NEVER do business with a company or person who spams you.

So, who should you hire for your SEO needs then? Stay tuned for next week's article about how to find a reliable organic search engine optimization company. Or, take a look at the new face of Volition and consider us for your SEO needs.

Back-links are hyperlinks placed on another website which link to your site. The most powerful back-links are one-way, meaning that another website has links pointing to your site, but you don't have a reciprocal link pointing back to theirs. The search engines often see these kinds of links as the most valuable because the website doing the linking is not getting anything in return, so they must be linking to you because they really think the site is valuable.

Using forums is a great way to get high quality one-way back-links to your site. These links can generate direct traffic to your site, as people browsing the forum click your links in addition to raising your search engine ranking.

But you have to be careful when using forums in this way. Do it wrong and you will be branded a spammer and most likely get your forum account closed. Remember that your reputation online is no less important than your reputation offline, so you definitely don't want to be labeled a spammer. But when done correctly, forums can be a very powerful tool in your traffic generation arsenal.

Step 1: Find relevant forums
The key word here is 'relevant'. You want to be sure to find forums related to your niche - the topic of your website or of your business. The easiest way to do this is to go to Google and type in your topic along with the the word 'forum'. Let's say you own a store that sells collectables. You might type this into Google:

coin collecting forum

There are two reasons you want to find forums related to your niche. First, the search engines will usually give more weight to links pointing to your site if they come from sites centered around the same area of expertise as your site. Secondly, you'll get much more direct traffic from a forum where the members are interested in your niche. It's the best of both worlds.

Step 2: Pick the best forums and join them
Now that you have found some forums you need to check them out and choose which ones to join.

Most forums will allow you to view the content without having to join, it's only when you want to start posting that you have to register. If you land on a forum that won't let you view unless you join, forget it and move on.

When looking for a forum to join you want to find ones that are popular, so look for those with a decent number of members. You also need to make sure those members are active. Go into one of the more popular forums categories and scan down the list of threads to see when the last posting was made. This information is usually in the right hand column of the forum threads table. If you see a lot of posts made in the last 24 hours, you've found a forum with lots of active members.

With the content changing this often, the search engines should be all over that forum, which means that your links will get picked up quickly. Search engines tend to love sites with lots of frequently updated, relevant content. This is the type of forum you want to join.

Now there is just one more step before joining. You need to make sure this forum allows you to have a 'signature'. Jump into one of the more popular threads on the forum. Scroll down and look at the posts to see if anyone has a signature showing at the bottom of their post. There will usually be a horizontal line after the body of the post and some text and/or links underneath it. Often people just have a quote or witty saying, but sometimes they will have links as well. Not everyone will have a signature, but try to find some members who do. Signatures are crucial, because this is where you are going to put the links to your site.

When you find a forum that meets the criteria, follow the steps to register and confirm your membership. If you find just three or four forums that's plenty to start with.

Step 3: Setting up your signature
After you login to the forum you should see a link to your user profile or user control panel. Often this will be called 'User CP' or 'User Profile'. In the user profile area you can edit things like your avatar, your bio and preferences. Look for a link that says something like 'Edit signature' and click that. You'll see a text field where you can type in the text you want to appear beneath all your posts. This is where you'll put in a hyperlink to your website.

Forums use a special kind of code to allow members to format their posts. It's called BBCode and it's quite simple to use once you get the hang of it. Copy the examples below and change the URL and text to your URL and some catchy keyword-rich text. Paste the code into you signature box and save it.

Link to your website or blog with this code:

Learn how to start [url=http://www.mycoinblog.com/]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.

You can see in the code above where you need to edit the domain to be your website's domain. In this example, 'Coin Collecting' will be the anchor text for the link. This is where you want to put your keywords. Almost all forums will allow you to have a link in your signature.

If you want to make your signature bold, just add the bold tags around it like this:

[b]Learn how to start [url=http://www.mycoinblog.com/]Coin Collecting[/url] the easy way.[/b]

Most forums will allow you to bold the text in your signature. If you add the bold code and your signature still doesn't come out in bold then you know the bold formatting is not allowed.

Some forums will also allow you to change the color of the text, although the anchor text will come out as the default link color, usually blue. Here's how you change the text color:

One final tip for creating your signature. Less is more. You don't have to use up all available lines in your signature. Make it short, sweet and to the point. If your signature is too over-the-top, it may make you look like a spammer and you'll be treated that way. We don't want that.

Keep your signature simple and useful, and if you post great content and people are interested they will click on your link.

Step 4: Participate!
The first three steps were all preparation. Now you get to start creating back-links to your site! It's simple, just participate in the forum. Post good content, ask questions. Try to help people out by answering questions. Think of what you would say or do in real life. Be nice, be helpful.

Every post you make will give you a back-link to your site. The higher the quality of your post, the more powerful your backlink will be, at least in Google. Because Google looks at the text surrounding a link to determine the relevancy of a link having good content in your posts is much more valuable than having a post that says something like, "great post, I agree". If you simply participate in the forum and try to be friendly and helpful chances are your content will take care of itself.

That's it. Have fun. And remember, you can change your signature any time you want. You might changing the text a bit from time to time to find out what generates the most clicks through to your site.

If you liked this article, we have a whole set, starting with SEO Strategies To Raise Your Small Business Website's Search Ranking. That article will introduce the strategies and we'll be posting new articles with more details about each strategic move.

The way a search engine ranks your site, and the methods it uses to compare one site to another is a closely held secret in the industry. Experts have been trying to decipher this mysterious algorithm for years and even though certain aspects of it are constantly updated and adjusted, some basic criteria are core to the way a site is ranked. Knowing what the basic ranking criteria are is essential to improving your ranking, the number of people who visit your site and ultimately the extra revenue that is generated for your small business.

We have decided to share with you the basics of our own SEO strategies. We'll even do our best to give you enough information that you can do it yourself if so inclined. Of course, we'll be happy to do it for you as well, just give us a call or contact us through this website.

One of the main considerations most search engines have for a particular site is the concept of keywords. How many times a keyword is used on a site, and where on the site it appears is important to the search engine in it's ranking of the site. Very little you can do to improve the ranking on the site will have as big an impact as this simple fact.

When you are setting up the site initially, think carefully about the name you choose and be sure to include the keyword in the site address (domain name). Use the keyword you have designated for that page in the title tag (the H1 tag, in fact) and if you can in an outgoing link somewhere on the page.

For those of you who are building your own site, you should know that Google doesn't pay any attention to the HTML meta-keywords tag anymore, they will sift through your text and decide the best keywords on their own. However, building your site around good keywords still makes sense, just don't think the meta-keywords tag is a silver bullet.

You must be sure to have your site indexed or "crawled" by search engines you care about on a regular basis. This can happen naturally, or you can make it happen by submitting your site to the search engines directly. This will cause them to index your site faster.

Because the search engines care about sites that update their content regularly, and will rank them higher, be sure not to force this indexing too often. If you do update your content, it is a good idea to re-submit after the update and your should see an improvement in your ranking. Also, if you update regularly, the search engine will notice this and will normally index your site more frequently as well. This index frequency is another key factor in your search ranking, so is a great idea to keep your site fresh.

Another major factor in search engine rankings is the number and quality of links that exist to your site. Having a lot of these links, especially from other sites that are ranked high is very important. The more good-quality links you can establish the better. A good quality link means it should be from a site that has a decent page rank (5 or above) and should be on a page that is somehow related to what you do. Ideally the text of the link will include one or more of the keywords you picked for your site.

There are a lot of techniques for getting these links established for your site and some work better than others. One easy way is to submit your site to website directories. Another great place to get these links started is by visiting and posting comments on a group of blogs that write about the keyword you are trying to target. Usually if you post on these blogs, you can add a link back to your site and have it counted in your favour. You could easily post on several blogs a day and establish an impressive collection of links as a result.

A word of warning  - no spam blog comments! If you don't have a comment that is directly related to the conversation and is helpful, you are not doing your site any good and your online reputation suffers. Don't do this yourself and don't let anyone else spam comments on your behalf.

You could start a blog yourself on the keyword of interest and pepper this with links back to your site as well. This would help with your ranking, but could be a little less effective since all of the links originate from a single site. It is better to have these links back to your site start from a lot of different sites.

You can submit on-topic articles you have written yourself to other blogs or article directories. Usually the Auther's Resource Box will allow you to add a link to your website on each copy of the article that is published as well, so that's publicity + another good link.

All of these techniques are fairly easy to implement and will have a very positive impact on your search rankings quickly. Some of these are more effective than others and take a little time to work. But as any small business person worth their salt knows, success worth having doesn't come overnight.