Search Engine Optimization - What really matters?

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There are only two things that matter in SEO: writing great content for your users, and building links into that content. Everything else is a distraction.

This advice comes from Dan Crow, the Product Manager for Google Crawl Systems, who speaks regularly at SEO conferences. Forget everything else, he says, just focus on two things: great content and great links.

Check out the article. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of preparing your site to be easily found on the internet. It is an ongoing process that changes to meet evolving developments. 

But ever-changing algorithms seem to confound the regular user who can't seem to stay ahead of whatever new wave technique is in vogue this week. It can seem like a constantly moving target designed to prevent you from learning their secrets.

It is true that Google and other search engines are constantly tweaking their techniques. But these techniques are not as hard to grasp if you understand that they are more like evolution than bait-and-switch.

For example, a decade ago, keywords were the theme. Web masters used techniques such as repeating keywords in white type on a page where it would be seen by the search engine but not visible to the visitor. The repetition would cause a page to rank higher than another with less repetitious key words.

This was a "cheat" and easily detected by search engines engineers, who quickly corrected their algorithms to prevent this. Today, search engines actually penalize these and other techniques which gives rogue sites an unfair advantage in search engine listings.

These old-fashioned techniques are largely a thing of the past, although you probably have a message in your inbox now that promises amazing results for only $59.95.

What works today?
The key to effective SEO is straightforward methodical practices that you can implement today. The methods are simple, straightforward, but require some work on your part to improve your rankings.

SEO experts use the term "organic" to describe the natural ranking of your pages in a search hierarchy.

How can you improve your Google position? Improving your standings is an on-going, evolving disciplines that requires some study and work. But you can dramatically improve your position in Google with a few moves.

Here are four things you can do right away?
 

1. Get other Web sites to link to yours.
2. Speed up the loading speed for your pages.
3. Learn how to use landing pages.
4. Separate content from presentation (i.e., CSS)

Now, before you complain because I said "right away" and these look like they could take some time, let me say that, yes, there is work involved here. But a little work could go a long way toward helping others find you on the Web.
Speed up page loading
The second and third bullets are related and should be done anyway.

So, start now to shinnying up your pages and templatize them. This will help you separate style from content, which helps with optimization, but it will also enable pages to load faster. And that helps overall "stickiness" on your Web site.

The third bullet, about landing pages, is another key to increasing inbound traffic. Its generally thought to be good to have more pages on a site that discuss a single topic (instead of having a melange of disparate content on a single page). That said, landing pages can
 

If content is the king and usability is the queen, relevance is the prince!

30 Advanced techniques for optimizing your Web site

Yoast's post on Twitter analytics

I like to think of my collection of web pages indexed by the search engines as my virtual sales force. Each unique, indexed page at a unique URL is like a virtual “salesperson.” The more virtual salespeople working for you, the better. Unfortunately most of these salespeople are freeloaders, sitting around doing nothing for you—not attracting a single search engine visitor. Increase your indexed pages while at the same time decreasing your freeloaders. Employing spider-friendly URLs decreases the percentage of freeloaders.

See also Splogs

The SEO checklist The way to improve your organic rankings is to produce good content in your pages.

Here is a list of good elements of content.

Do you have compelling headlines on every page that nails the page's purpose?
Are the headlines marked up with an h1 tag?
Are you using landing pages effectively?
Are your pages quick to load and optimized for most browsers?
Do you have your phone number and e-mail listed in the footer of every page so that you are easy to contact?
Is it easy to contact Support resources on your site?
Do you have a physical address listed for your Web site that substantiates you as a legitimate bricks and mortar business?
Is your content relevant to your site?
Have you included case studies and testimonials that use actual customer names?
Do you have a "contact us" form that makes it easy to reach you?
Do you have an About Us section that lists your principle officers and gives information about your affiliations and reputation?
Do you have a schedule for regularly updating content?
Do you use landing pages to draw your visitors into the site and help them find what they are looking for?
Are your Web site rankings improving over time?
Are visitors spending more time on your target pages?
Are you clear on your objectives for your Web site and how this relates to building your business?
Does your Web offering clearly solve your target customers' problem?
Is your site standards-compliant (and therefore look basically the same in all browsers)?
Do you have an up-to-date site map that fully reveals the navigation of your site?
Does you Web site allow you to interact with your customers in real time (or very quickly)? Do you have a low bounce rate for key pages (that is, are visitors NOT quickly clicking away because your page is irrelevant to them)?
Do your pages enable visitor feedback?
Can visitors easily contact you through phone, Twitter, chat, or e-mail?

SEO Tools for improving your position

Bill Hartzer is a SEO expert and a good writer. in very plain talk, he reduces SEO goobledegook down to what's important and actionable. He writes a blog and consulting (and breeds Labradors).