There is a lot you can do to optimize your Web site for search engines from the code level. Where you can also affect things, and this is beyond the work of the developer/designer, is in the actual content. Understanding how to tag the content, and where to place it in the HTML, is critical. Here is a basic outline of SEO best practices.
Understand the Search Engines and Search Engine Spiders

So how does your site get into a search engine? A search engine obtains your URL either by you submitting your site directly to the search engine or by others linking to your site. Then, at a time of its choosing, a search engine sends out its spider (or “bot”) to visit your site.

Once there, the spider starts reading all the text in the body of the page, including markup elements, all links to other pages and to external sites, plus elements from the page head including some meta tags (depending on the search engine) and the title tag.

It then copies this information back to its central database for indexing at a later date which can be up to two or three months later.

The spider then follows the links on the page, repeating the same process. Spiders are, for lack of a better term, dumb. They can only follow the most basic HTML code. If you’ve encased a link in a fancy JavaScript that the spider won’t understand, the spider will simply ignore both the JavaScript and the link. The same thing applies to forms; spiders can’t fill out forms and click “submit.”

To get an understanding of what a spider sees, try accessing your site with a Lynx browser from a Unix server. Lynx is non-graphical, does not support JavaScripts, and will display only text and regular a href tags. This is what the spider can see and therefore index. Does your page work without graphics or JavaScript? If no, then the spidering won’t work either and you’d better head back the drawing board.

Once the SE has all your content in its database, it runs an algorithm (a mathematical formula) against the content. These algorithms are unique to each SE and are constantly changing, but, in essence, all the search engines are looking for the important words on your page (based on word density—how often a word or phrase is used in relation to the total amount of text) and they assign a value to these words based on the code surrounding the words.

In addition to content, the search engine looks for what other sites, or pages on the same site, are linking to that page. The more links to a given page, the more important that page is. Getting other sites to link to your site is very important, but not part of optimizing your site and will be covered in a future column. From a site optimization standpoint, make sure you link to your important pages from more than just the index page (e.g., create a primary navigation that appears on all pages.)
Tip 1

The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code prevents a spider from being able to index it. This means avoiding pages which are 100% graphics and no text, such as pages that contain all images, or are Flash-only. Furthermore, if the first thing a user encounters is a log-in page, before being able to see the site’s content, then that’s what a spider will see and it won’t go any further, either.

If you’re planning to build a Web site entirely in Flash, DON’T. If you have no choice, then read my previous column, Search Engine Optimization and Non-HTML Sites.
Tip 2

To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. There are many good ones on the market at various prices. If you’re looking for something that’s free, I’d suggest Search Engine Spider Simulator.
Tip 3

Each Web site should have a file called robots.txt. This file tells the spiders what directories they should not spider. Make sure this file is present and that it gives the appropriate permissions to the spiders. This includes access to content and to CSS.

For more information on the robot.txt file, see: Guide to the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
Page Structure

Once you’ve built an SE-friendly Web site, you then need to be sure each page is also SE-friendly. As I said earlier, good HTML structure is the foundation for building an SEO Web page. There are two primary areas of a Web page. The area contained between the tags and that which is contained between the tags. What information you place in these areas has a huge impact on how a page is indexed and, to a certain degree, what will appear in the SE results page.

When designing your page, or placing content on your page, remember that spiders read like people. They go from left to right and from top to bottom (though this may be different for other languages.) They also feel that the most important information is located at the top of the page. If it’s important, why would you place it at the bottom? When reading specific tags (title, h1, h2, etc.) search engines value words to the left more highly than words to the right.
The Title Tag

Let’s start at one of the first elements in a Web page—the title tag (). This is one of the, if not the, most important elements for SEO on the entire page. All too often, the information contained in this tag is either left blank, has a default value (e.g. “insert title here”), or is simply the company name.

Why is this tag so important? First of all, it is used by every major search engine as a key indicator of the page’s content, and, second, it used by the search engine as the first line in the SERPs.

Give this tag the consideration it deserves.
Tip 4

Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the title. A page about high-performance running shoes from manufacturer XYZ shouldn’t have the title “XYZ”—it should have a title something like “High-performance Running Shoes.” If the brand is important, then add it to the end of the line like this: “High Performance Running Shoes – XYZ.”
The Meta Tags

Over the years, various meta tags have come in and gone out of favor with search engines. One of those which has lost its value is the “keywords” meta tag. Most search engines say they don’t look at it anymore but if you have time to create one, go ahead and do so. It doesn’t hurt.

The only meta tag that all search engines presently acknowledge is the “description” meta tag. Once again, this tag should be unique to each page and match the content on the page itself.

The proper format for the description meta tag is, for example:

.

Tip 5

Write a unique description for each page. If you use the same meta tag across all pages, the search engine will pick up on this and potentially ignore the content of the meta tag or possibly the entire page.
JavaScript

We’re all familiar with loading the top of the HTML page with all sorts of JavaScript functions that are necessary for various page features. This includes, but is not limited to: mouse-overs, form validators, cookie checkers, etc. To search engine spiders, this is clutter, and, while they ignore it, they still need to wade through all that code to find the real content of the page. Many spiders have timeouts or maximum character counts associated with them—if they have to wade through too much junk, they’ll abandon their spidering and move on to another site. So avoid making your pages too top heavy by placing too much code between the tags.
Tip 6

Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You’ll be creating an SE-friendly page while also making your markup cleaner and your Web site management easier.
The Page Body

This is the part of the Web page that your visitors will be seeing and yes, you can make pages both eye-pleasing and, at the same time, well-optimized for search engines.
Page Headings and Other Word Graphics

For stylistic reasons, many of us have chosen to display page headings as graphics. By turning to our favorite graphical editor, to create unique and creative headings, we’ve removed important words from our Web pages.

Your Web site users may not really care that it took you four hours to create a groovy page heading that says “Yellow Widgets.” They just want to know that they’re on a page about Yellow Widgets.

From the perspective of a search engine spider, the graphic about yellow widgets is just a graphic and spiders won’t read them. One option is to fill in the “alt” attribute in the “img” tag with the actual words. However, search engines give very little value, if any, to “alt” content these days. This attribute is still a requirement for accessibility, but it won’t do much toward getting your page ranked well in a search engine.

The same thing applies to all those great key words on your site that form your site navigation menu. Perhaps, you’ve created graphics of the words for a mouseover effect, but, once again, they’re graphics and a spider couldn’t care less about them.

Instead of spending all that time creating graphics of words, use real text. They are words, after all. If you must use graphics, consider a form of CSS image replacement; the spider should still be able to access the text of your heading.
Tip 7—Page Titles

Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few Web sites actually use them. Their original intention was to be the visible title of the page (long before Web browsers actually supported graphics), with the primary title using h1 and subsections of the page encased in h2 tags, and so forth. In the early days of Web design, we had little to no control of these elements and they simply appeared as big black text on your page. This all changed with the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS.)

Take time to define your header tags in your CSS and use the header tag for the titles and secondary titles of your content.

Sample:

Page Title

Subsection

To avoid spamming search engines, a Web page should have only one h1 tag. They can have as many h2 tags as necessary.
Tip 8—Mouseovers

Instead of spending all that time creating mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS.

If, for specific reasons, you can’t use CSS (perhaps you must support really old browsers), then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tables

Graphic designers love using tables to slice and dice a graphical design to use on the Web. Unfortunately, these designers never really understood that the Web is the Web and not a printed page and that designs should be easy to code into Web pages.

The problem with tables is that all the slicing and dicing can create Web pages containing tables embedded four or more deep to accommodate the design—and all the good content ends up inside the inner-most embedded tables.

From a technical perspective, search engine spiders can read tables, and even embedded tables, but once a design gets to be more than about three tables deep, most spiders run into problems. Either it’s simply too much code for them to keep track of, or the search engine thinks you placed that content deep in the page because it’s not important, and so the engine gives it little or no value.
Tip 9

Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three.

Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position. This makes for a much cleaner design and has the bonus of being easier to manage.
Using Bold and Strong

If there is an important phrase in your content, be sure to tag it appropriately. This is good for the user experience—and since you’re telling your users that the words are important, the search engines are likely to think the same way.
Tip 10

Use either or to mark up important words on your page. While most people use bold (), according to the W3C the correct markup is “strong” for important words.

This article will discuss some of the tools and techniques of the trade!

You start with what you think your customers would type in – if they were in the market for your product. Normally these are 2-3 word phrases. Most people who are ready to buy have refined their search by using at least 2 words in their search. One word phrases (in general) tend to be too vague and competitive. They seldom bring the results that the customer is interested in either. To that end, it may bring a lot of traffic, but it is very expensive and not very focused traffic.

Unfortunately, you may not choose the keywords that many others do. If your selection is keywords people seldom type in, then you are not likely to get many visitors – even if you are number one for that keyword. If your keywords are very competitive and you are not an SEO expert, then you are not likely to get the top position. You ideally want achievable goals. You want to optimize for keywords that you have a chance of getting a good ranking in. And you want these keywords to be the ones that bring paying customers to your website. It’s all about the right balance.

FREE TOOLS TO BOOKMARK:

1) The keyword selection tool from Digital Point. After typing in your idea of a good keyword, it shows various alternatives and how often it was requested in WordTracker and in Overture in one day. This is great information! It tells you what keywords are used more than others. If you chose a flop, you could easily pick a better one.
2) The Google Adwords keyword selection tool is another great freebee. When using this, I normally select the keyword popularity option. This will show the keyword you selected, various synonyms, and their relative popularity and competitiveness.

COLLECTING DATA

In a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper, write the following columns:

* Keyword Phrase
* WordTracker Search
* Google Search Volume
* Google Competition
* # Google Results
* Avg # backlinks (top 3)

The Keyword Phrase is the phrase you are investigating. It may be the one you initially chose, or it may be one of the automated suggestions from one of these tools. If you think it would be a good one to use, write it down.

WordTracker Search: Write down the number of searches that WordTracker has in a given day. This is not Google or Yahoo searches, but the proportions should be pretty similar. Bigger numbers is better.

Now use the Google keyword selection tool for that keyword.

Google Search Volume: Write down a numeric representation of the graph shown (0-10) for your keyword. Bigger volume is better. This should complement the WordTracker numbers. Big numbers in both is a good sign. Normally when I start, I sort the list of suggested keywords by search volume. This keeps me from looking at keywords that are hardly being used by my customers.

Google Competition: This is AdWords competition, but this is also reflective of the competitiveness of the market for that keyword phrase. The smaller the competition the easier it will be for you to optimize for this keyword. If this number is high, then lots of people are trying to be positioned for this keyword – and spending money on it. Those that look like a 7-10 in this category will likely take more effort. People are spending money for these keywords – and likely on both SEO techniques and AdWords.

If you are wanting an “easy keyword” to be found on, sort them by the Google AdWords competition. Look for keyword phrases that have no competition, but have some significant searches.

Now open a new browser at http://www.Google.com and do a Google search for your keyword phrase.

# Google Results: Write down the number of pages Google has returned for that keyword phrase. This is in the top-right of the page. Lower numbers are better. If there are less pages available for a given keyword, you fare a better chance at having good position.

Avg # backlinks: This is the average number of backlinks for the top position. For each of the top three type in link:http://www.yourcompetion.com to see how many other webpages they have linked to them. Write down the average number of backlinks the top 3 have. If they have a lot of webpages linked to them, then you have a lot of work to do – in a link-building campaing. This can be time consuming and expensive.

FILTERING THE LIST TO 3 KEYWORDS

Now you try for “achievable goals”. You want to choose 3 keywords that you are going to optimize your page for. Each of these must be good bets of driving some traffic to you.

One of these should be an “easy goal”. Look for a keyword phrase that is not very competitive, but has enough targeted customers to be worth attempting. Often this will be one that has a smaller number of searches – but that is OK. This is something that you may be able to achieve in a shorter amount of time, hopefully within 4-6 months. If you read up on the SEO halo effect, you may have a clue on why we start with at least one easy goal.

One of these should be a “reach goal”. It should be one that will drive a lot more traffic to your site, but is not too competitive that it would break your pocketbook. There is always time and money involved with any website optimization efforts. Don’t be surprised if it takes over a year to reach this goal.

For the third, I usually choose another “reach goal”.

Now you need to design and optimize your website for these keywords… If you are choosing a domain name, you should consider having one of your keywords within it.

This articel froom seo book

Tip #1 – Make Sure that You Get Listed With Yahoo! If you’re not listed with Yahoo!, you should go ahead and pay for the Yahoo! Directory submission. This will set you back around $300 annually. Getting a Yahoo! listing will help your Google page rank. Having a link from a site such as Yahoo! – which itself is a popular site is very beneficial. Remember that Quality is better than Quantity.

Tip #2 – Submit to All the Other Directories, Especially the Dmoz Directory The Dmoz Directory (www.dmoz.com) also known as the Open Directory Project contains search results that are reviewed and categorized by human editors in a way similar to Yahoo! The results are popular among a variety of search engines and power various other listings. Therefore, getting listed at Dmoz.com can have a great trickle down effect. Recently, DMOZ has been having problems with accepting new listings via their submission form. However, I urge all webmasters to keep checking and submit when the form is working. Two other directories worth getting listed in: business.com and jayde.com.

Tip #3 – Create a Large Volume of Inbound Links (But Only the Right Kind!) Make it a point to initiate link exchanges with other relevant sites – but don’t bother exchanging links unless the partner site has a Google page rank. It is best if the exchanging site has a Google page rank of at least 2 or 3. Pages that have a page rank under 2 have little impact on your search rankings. You can observe any site’s page rank by downloading the Google toolbar at: http://toolbar.google.com. Again, remember that Quality is better than Quantity. You should also try to find sites with topics related to your website to trade links with.

Tip #4 – Include Keywords in Text Links When requesting text links in your link exchange campaigns, it is most beneficial to include some keywords in your title of the link. For example, if your company is called ABCcarts.com and your main service is offering shopping cart software, I would recommend the following link title: “ABC Carts – Shopping Cart Software” Note that by separating keywords in your domain name, you may have the benefit of adding additional keywords.

Tip #5 – Stay Ahead of Your Competition by Reading Online Resources Regularly Search engines change ranking algorithms frequently and the search engine industry is rapidly changing. Subscribe to online news services and read bulletin boards to keep up with all the changes. We recommend the following resources, some of which may are paid services:

you can get detil seo progres from seo book. so don’t waiting for a long time. buy seo book now

How to Improve Your PageRank

Every webmaster dreams of getting a higher PageRank in the next PageRank update. How can you ensure that your site will be one of the lucky ones which get a jump? The answer: backlinks. Obtaining a high amount of quality backlinks is crucial in increasing your PageRank. So how do you get backlinks? Is there even a way to do it for free?

Of course, if you want to boost your PageRank, you need to have lots of backlinks attached to your website. These backlinks should also have a high-relevance rating to make it count. Do not just allow those websites that have low-relevance rating to link their sites to yours because it will not help you any. Instead, try linking your site to those that have a high-relevance rating. Listed below are some tips on how to improve your PageRank.

Try submitting your website to directories. There are paid directories and free directories that offer this kind of service in the Internet. Choose those directories that have high-relevance and high PageRank rating, not only on the homepage, but in the category where your site will be listed.

Excessive outbound links are a big no-no, but if you do want to create an outbound link, choose those sites that have a similar theme or topic to yours; it will benefit you the most. If you just link your website to any other website with different topics, you might find yourself penalized by Google because they do such a thing.

Submit articles you have written that are interesting and helpful to the Google article directory. It not only increases your PageRank, but it also gives you ample exposure. Most importantly, the Google article directory is a one-way link only. If what you have written caught the attention of webmasters, they might utilize your article and post them in their websites. Think of it as a free advertisement. Not only will you get that exposure you want, but you will also have more inbound links attached to your website.

Like writing articles, why not write reviews. You can write reviews just about anything like movies, books or websites reviews. Just make it as interesting and as honest as you can. You can also post them in blogs that allow individuals to comment freely about certain topics. Just make sure though that you state your link or the URL of your website in your review if the blog site allows it. There are also some interesting forums that you can join. Choose one to participate in that has a similar topic to yours. Since most forums permit signatures, so you can put in your signature as well with your link underneath it. Forums are also a great way to create networking because different websites of similar topics get to link their sites to each other. Think also of the free advertisement you will receive through forums. In similar lines, there is also the site content. You can post useful contents in your site like tips and tricks and how to do things. This is a good way to get backlinks or inbound links for your site as well.

Joining affiliates is also a good way to increase your PageRank. Keep in mind though that the affiliate you will be joining is of a similar theme to yours. It is important to note though that there is a danger in joining these affiliates. If you join one that has a not-so-good reputation, then it can hurt your reputation in a way by being associated with a ‘bad affiliate’.

this is SEO top links

1- Check for No Follow
http://www.tradeweblinks.com/free-seo-tools/no-follow.php

2- Keyword Forecasting Tool by MSN Adsence
http://adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx

3- Google “Supplemental Results” Identifier
http://www.seovalley.com/seo-tools/google-supplemental-tool.htm.

4- Page Strength
http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength/

5- Google Trends
http://google.com/trends

6- Top Ten Analysis SEO Tool
http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/default.htm

7- Link Suggestion Tool
http://www.123seotools.com/link-suggest/

8- Google Datacenters Popularity Checker Tool
http://www.123seotools.com/google/datacenters/popularity/

9- The Neat-O-Backlink Tool
http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/

10- Page Rank Decoder
http://www.search-this.com/pagerank-decoder/

11- Search Engine Decoder
http://www.search-this.com/search-engine-decoder/

12- SEO Links Extention
http://www.webmasterbrain.com/seo-tools/firefox-extensions/seo-links/

13- Bulk Google Page Rank Checker Tool
http://seotools.alfalogic.com/bulk.google.rank.php

14- Visual PageRank
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/visualpagerank.html

15- Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

16- Cloaking Detector
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/cloaking-detector.html

17- Pagerank Script for your website
http://www.freeseoscript.com/script_client_browser.php

18- Website Analyzer
http://www.manvish.com/eservices/seo/analyser.htm

19- Google vs Yahoo Graph
http://www.seobench.com/google-yahoo-graph/

20- Keyword Density Analyzer
http://www.seobench.com/keyword-density-analyzer/

21- Retrieve SERPs
http://www.seocritique.com/serptool/serplist.htm

22- Kontera Ads Preview
http://www.webconfs.com/kontera-preview-tool.php

23- Page Strength
http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php

24- IP Location Lookup
http://www.seomoz.org/ip2loc/ip2loc.php

25- Keyword Difficulty
http://www.seomoz.org/ip2loc/ip2loc.php

26- Speed Tester
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/speedtester.html

27- Backlink Check Tool
http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/

28- Backlink Builder
http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php

29- Backlink Anchor Text Analysis
http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-summary.php

30- Atom & RSS Feed Validator
http://www.feedvalidator.org/

31- Adword Keyword Generator
http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx

32- Search Engine Position Checker
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-position-checker.shtml

33- Link Popularity Checker
http://www.prsearch.net/inbx.php

34- Robots.txt Generator
http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/robotstxtgenerator.php

35- Robots.txt Syntax Checker
http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html

36- Yahoo Rank Position
http://www.prsearch.net/

37- Yahoo Search Rankings

38- Alexaholic
http://www.alexaholic.com/

39- Alexa Page Ranking
http://www.alexaranking.com/

40- Alexa Rank Tool
http://www.searchbliss.com/rank.asp

41- Alexa Related Rank Check
http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/alexa-related-rank-check.php

The format for the site submission has changed in the free Yahoo web submissions http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request . At first it allowed you to submit your site to it using the free submission form. This was normally the home page, and you would hope that their spider would crawl the rest of your website from there. Some webmasters have found this inadequate and have submitted other pages that Yahoo failed to notice otherwise.
More recently Yahoo allowed you to put in a text document with a list of URL’s to simplify the submission process.
A few weeks ago I noticed that Yahoo also allows RSS feeds of your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls in this submission form. What does this mean? What will Yahoo do with the links in the RSS feed?
The text list of URL’s was obviously an effort to simplify the process for Yahoo to find all the pages in a website, as their documentation describes. But the RSS? Will they just add this to their database of RSS feeds for RSS searches, or will they follow the links with their spider to evaluate all the pages listed?
I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out. (Google uses their XML-formatted Google Sitemaps to help discover all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo’s response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know?
If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes in the website. This has more information than the list of URL’s, since it also has descriptions and date changed. They have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.
It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both the feed and the home page of the website.
For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search engines in any way possible. If they want information on what files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.
In addition, for those who have the coding experties, it is advisable to automate pinging Yahoo when your RSS feed changes. This is a standard blogging technique.

Many of you have heard of submitting your website, but what does this really mean? What places should you really submit your website? What about submitting to thousands of search engines and directories through some website promotion service?
WHAT PAGES TO SUBMIT:
At the minimum, you should submit your home page. Many search engines will promise to find and crawl the rest of your website automatically (in their own good time). But if they don’t discourage you from doing so, I would submit several of the important pages in your site. For example, a site map is definitely something I would want to submit, since it should have direct links to the rest of your website.
Also, if I get another webmaster to link to my website, it I like to submit that page as well. I want the search engines to recognize that this resource has changed – it has a link to my website and I want the credit for it.
WHAT TO PREPARE:
For the search engines, I would make sure that the website is properly optimized. At a minimum, I would do a double check the meta-tags to ensure that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords properly describe the web pages and have some of my desired keywords in it. I would also run a website validator on the pages I intend on submitting – to keep the search engine spiders from choking on my website. (http://validator.w3.org/) For more information on optimizing a website for the search engines, go to http://website-optimization-2.blogspot.com/.
For the directories, I would normally prepare some commonly requested information. This really helps to speed up the process. I normally use a generic text editor like Microsoft Notepad and save the following data before I go and submit to the different search engines and directories. This enables me to use copy and paste.
This should have:

• Your email
• Your website url
• A good title for your website
• A description for the website

Since Yahoo will allow you to submit a list of URLS that are in a text document (or an RSS feed) I would encourage you to prepare one to help them out. These should be at the root directory of your website and be updated whenever there is a change to your pages. That way you can just submit the location of the RSS feed or the text file and let Yahoo use that to find the rest of your pages. It is a nice time saver. Personally, I like using an automated RSS feed since Yahoo can use it to determine when the last changes occurred and decide what pages to re-crawl first.

(If you don’t know what RSS is, here is a great article on it: http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html.)

Google uses a similar technology to help it find all of your web pages. It is called a “Google Site Map”. That is the subject of another article. I wrote one that has a lot more info on the Google Site Maps, for when you are ready to build one. Google also has a special way to submit these. Just follow their instructions. If this is too complicated, contact a webmaster or a SEO specialist who is familiar with this feature.
WHERE TO SUBMIT:

I would recommend submitting your home page to the major search engines individually, at least initially. However, there are several services that do groups of them for you – and is a big time saver for the rest of your site. The following is one of my favorites: http://www.freewebsubmission.com/ I have always deselected Google, though, since I submit to them manually through the Google website. I submit my web pages to the following search engines manually (without a special tool) just to ensure that it is done.

• Submit to Google
• Submit to Yahoo
• Submit to MSN

You will need a Yahoo account to submit to the Yahoo search engine. And don’t fret if you don’t see immediate results. Your site should normally exist in MSN within about 6 weeks, in Yahoo in 8-12 weeks, and in Google within about 3 months. (You will not likely get much search results from Google for the first year though – but hold out and keep working on the other tricks. In the long run, Google will normally give you about 60 – 70% of the search engine traffic if you follow these methods.)
Also, if you have the Alexa toolbar installed, navigate to your website and click on the “info” button on the toolbar. Then you will have to fill in information about your website. Once this is registered, you will start seeing how your website’s Alexa rating looks. There has been some rumors that Google considers the Alexa description in its searches – so make sure it is relevant to your website as a whole and has at least one of your keywords.
You should also submit your website to DMOZ. This is a massive directory that is republished in several other websites. It is managed by humans, and is therefore considered to be of special relevance by other search engines. I strongly recommend reading all their rules before submitting – and follow them closely. Make sure that you try to get listed in only one category – the most relevant one for your business. It can take a month or two to get listed, but it really helps with your backlinks and overall relevancy as a website.

After DMOZ, here are the most important list of directories to be listed in.

• Yahoo Directory website submission ($299 annual fee)
• Business.com website submission ($199 annual fee)
• Microsoft Bcentral Directory website submission ($49 annual fee)
• Best of Web website submission ($40 annual fee)
• goguides.org website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
• gimpsy.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
• joeant website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
• Tygo website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
• Skaffe.com website submission ($40 lifetime fee)
• 85directory.com (39.95 lifetime fee)
• wowdirectory.com website submission ($25 lifetime fee)

If you haven’t used directories before – try browsing these before you fill out the form to submit your site. They are organized by category. You need to find the most relevant category to put your website before you start to fill out the form for each of these. Have a pen and paper as you browse – and write down directory paths of where you want to be.
Being in some directories just adds some good backlinks. (When another webmaster links to your website, this is considered a backlink.) Others, like Yahoo and DMOZ, tend to get some special relevance to certain search engines. After you get familiar with these well-known directories, look for niche directories that are specific to the type of business your website is about. The following web page has a larger list of directories: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
There are specialized directories that focus on a particular category of links. These can be valuable – you will just have to do a bit of searching to find them. These may be considered as part of your overall strategy.
Being listed in a search engine there doesn’t guarantee that you will have a good ranking – this is just the first step – letting them know that you exist.
IF YOU SEE AN OFFER TO GET LISTED IN HUNDREDS OF DIRECTORIES AND WEBSITES AUTOMATICALLY – Be careful! Research it before submitting. Many of these will list you in hundreds of FFA (free for all) sites. If they suggest that this is to be done monthly – then you can be guaranteed – IT IS FFA. These sites are considered SPAM by search engines and I would strongly encourage you to avoid them. Did I mention to avoid these?

The best kinds of directories (according to search engines) are those that require a human review before publishing the content. All the ones I listed above require some human to review the directory listing before posting it.

Check out what Google has to say about FFA sites: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html . They may get you quick backlinks, but they are from the “wrong” type of site. These are just a list of sites – and they stay there temporarily. Only the latest 100 submitted or so are displayed there and you need to be resubmitted regularly to stay there. Few humans use this – it is just a linking game to trick the search engines about your popularity (and search engines don’t like it). Don’t bother. And dont pay someone to do it for you.

TO WRAP IT UP:

Get backlinks – but avoid FFA sites. There are some important directories, but being listed in “THOUSANDS OF WEBSITES AND DIRECTORIES” is likely a promotional trick to get you listed in FFA sites. The most important backlinks are from web pages with content related to your website and those that your customers visit. If it isn’t likely to draw your customers, it may not be very important for your website traffic.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of tailoring your website to be found on the internet when someone types certain keyword phrases in a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Search engines can drive targeted customers to your website – those who are interested in your product. But this takes a lot of work.

Search Engine/Website optimization is the first step in promoting your website. Those with foresight will have a SEO-savvy webmaster (such as myself) build the website that is optimized from the start. Otherwise, a website may need a SEO-facelift later to help it be digestible to the search engines – and to make it obvious to the search engines that the keywords you are trying to be found under are truly relevant to your website. Like any specialty, performing website optimization involves skills, special tools, and a willingness to keep up with current changes in the market.

For those who want to do it themselves, here are the steps.
BOOKMARK THESE TOOLS! YOU WILL need them!

The first step in website optimization is to make sure you have well-formatted HTML. I would encourage you to use the following tool to check this: http://validator.w3.org/ Do your best to get your website as close to conformance as possible.
If you use CSS, then use a CSS validator at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html There is rarely an excuse for not having it validate here.
If you follow most of the suggestions for having valid HTML code your web pages will be more digestible for the search engines, as well as being much more cross-browser compliant. You should also do this after any significant edit of the web page – to ensure that it is still compliant.
The second step in website optimization is to work on the Meta tags and the title tag for each page in your site. These are in the header of your web page document and need to be tailored to attract users who type in one of a select group of keywords. If you need a tool to help generate these, use this meta tag generator tool here (http://www.spiderweblogic.com/HTML-Meta-Tag-Generator.aspx) that I built.

The title tag:

The title tag is, of the three, the most important for the major search engines. Don’t make this too long – normally no more than 6 words. But have your most important keywords here. Some SEO specialists advise that even the order of the text here is significant. They suggest that if you place your company name in the title, that it should be placed last so the other keywords are being considered with greater weight.
The meta-keywords tag:

This is now of lesser importance than before, due to abuse by webmasters to achieve high rankings. However, it is still important and is required by many of the smaller search engines. Make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times. That would be considered Spam (bad SEO tactics) by the search engines. Remember, your visitors will see the title of the web page. Make it useful to them as well.
The meta-description tag:

This is of higher importance than the keywords tag. Several search engines use it when they show your listing. It needs to encourage your potential visitors to visit your website. Of course, having keywords in here is important. But keep the primary purpose in mind as you write it. Here too, you should make sure that you don’t repeat any keyword or keyword phrase more than three times.
Each page in your website needs its own tailored title, meta-description, and meta-keywords tag. These need to be focused on the keywords you are trying for. (These are the words or phrases you want to be found at when people are doing searches.) These shouldn’t normally be the same on every page. They should be customized to the content that is on that page. You should also keep your visitors in mind as you write them.
The third step is to work on your content – especially on your home page. Ideally you would have between 800 – 1200 words of text. It should have your most important keywords at the top, middle and the bottom of the text. If possible, use an “h1″ tag at the top for your title – and have your most important keyword imbedded in it. Also, have some of your keywords in a sentence or phrase that is bolded. Keep it natural for your visitors to read. If it doesn’t look natural, you will loose any visitors you have attracted.
The fourth step in website optimization is to edit your links and your images to make full use of the “title” and “alt” attributes.
Text links can have a “title” attribute. The content is to more fully describe your link. When you put your mouse over the link, the content of the “title” attribute is displayed. I would encourage you to tailor the description so that it contains at least one of your keywords – but keep it accurate – that it really does describe the link. It must make sense to the common user.
Images HTML tags can have an “alt” attribute. It is used to describe an image when you put a mouse over it. It is also used for different devices for seeing impaired. Also, it is used when the user decides not to show images with the web site. They will see this text instead. (It is the “Alternate Text” for the image.) Try to incorporate some keywords here too – but keep with the spirit of being the “alternate text” for the image.
If you are using tables, you may even include a table “summary” attribute. The purpose of this attribute is to assist for those with disabilities to understand the contents and structure of a table. Keep all summary comments within that purpose – and add keywords only where appropriate. Note that these summary attributes may cause your web page validator to spit up an error – but this is newer item that is encouraged.
The fifth step is to have a good menu system or a site map. Search engines follow links to find the different pages in your site. If your navigation is one of those JavaScript drop-down menus or Flash menus, the search engines may not find all of your pages unless you have an alternative non-JavaScript link path that they can follow. If you use the fancy JavaScript links, you should have a hard link to a site map on every page. The site map should have a real non-JavaScript list of links that the search engines can follow to map out your whole site. As a standard policy I tend to avoid the JavaScript links in the menus.
OPTIONAL:
If you haven’t chosen a domain name yet, you may strongly consider having your top keyword phrase in the domain name, with the words separated by dashes. This is an excellent idea, but not always feasible. Many companies already have a domain name selected, or prefer to use their company name as the domain name. This is a business decision left up to the customer.
THINGS NOT TO DO:
Don’t create and market mirror sites though to accomplish this trick either. Sites that are identical in content, but have a different domain name are considered SPAM (bad/taboo) by the search engines. They don’t appreciate such tricks, and the ranking of both websites will suffer for it.
Also, don’t get too crazy with stuffing keywords where they don’t belong or by repeating keywords or by having keywords in hidden layers. Search engines don’t like that and will ban your site.
SEO SOFTWARE TO BUY:
I have used IBP and SEO Studio to do website analysis during my optimization. Both have been invaluable tools for analyzing how saturated my keywords are in a particular web page, and giving good guidance on how to improve my rankings. Both have free trial periods – it is worth checking them out. They are reasonably priced and I have been very satisfied with their performance. It is easy to see such things as keyword density relevance for the whole web page. It also is helpful in showing where the keywords are not (and can be). You will learn a lot about website optimization just by using these tool! If you are serious about website promotion, this is a must!
NOW WHAT?
After all this “Search Engine Optimization” you need to do a human review your website – is it natural/useful/helpful for the human visitor? Remember, getting website traffic is only half the game. This site needs to quickly convert them into paying customers.
Once it is “Optimized”, then you need to let the search engines know that you exist. Only after it is ready should you tell them about it. But this is a subject for another article. Do a search of different article warehouse or SEO news sources. You will find a lot of information on this.
WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION NEWS SOURCES:
Since there are new quirks in the website optimization and website promotion that come out all the time – some that apply to all search engines, and some that apply to a particular one, it is wise to keep up to date. I strongly encourage you to join a couple of relevant mailing lists!
I really like the news sources from Entireweb.com. If you submit a site through them, I would encourage you to accept their free newsletters. They have great content. http://www.entireweb.com/submit_site/
Another place to get really great articles on website optimization or promotion is http://www.SiteProNews.com They also allow you to subscribe to their articles. Do this!
If you are serious about keeping up with your website positioning, keep up with the news. You will find these resources invaluable!

Everything
in website optimization and website marketing is based around keywords.
The first and most important step in this process is keyword selection.
Normally you focus on 2-3 for each page of your website. Of course,
your home page is the most important, but a good webmaster knows that
each page could be a possible entry point and most should be optimized.

This article will discuss some of the tools and techniques of the trade!

You
start with what you think your customers would type in – if they were
in the market for your product. Normally these are 2-3 word phrases. Most people who are ready to buy have refined their search by using at least 2 words in their search. One
word phrases (in general) tend to be too vague and competitive. They
seldom bring the results that the customer is interested in either. To
that end, it may bring a lot of traffic, but it is very expensive and
not very focused traffic.

Unfortunately, you may not choose the keywords that many others do. If
your selection is keywords people seldom type in, then you are not
likely to get many visitors – even if you are number one for that
keyword. If your keywords are very competitive and you are not
an SEO expert, then you are not likely to get the top position. You
ideally want achievable goals. You want to optimize for keywords that
you have a chance of getting a good ranking in. And you want these
keywords to be the ones that bring paying customers to your website.
It’s all about the right balance.

FREE TOOLS TO BOOKMARK:

1) The keyword selection tool from Digital Point. After typing in your idea of a good keyword,
it shows various alternatives and how often it was requested in
WordTracker and in Overture in one day. This is great information! It
tells you what keywords are used more than others. If you chose a flop, you could easily pick a better one.
2) The Google Adwords keyword selection tool
is another great freebee. When using this, I normally select the
keyword popularity option. This will show the keyword you selected,
various synonyms, and their relative popularity and competitiveness.

COLLECTING DATA

In a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper, write the following columns:

• Keyword Phrase
• WordTracker Search
• Google Search Volume
• Google Competition
• # Google Results
• Avg # backlinks (top 3)

The Keyword Phrase
is the phrase you are investigating. It may be the one you initially
chose, or it may be one of the automated suggestions from one of these
tools. If you think it would be a good one to use, write it down.

WordTracker Search:
Write down the number of searches that WordTracker has in a given day.
This is not Google or Yahoo searches, but the proportions should be
pretty similar. Bigger numbers is better.

Now use the Google keyword selection tool for that keyword.

Google Search Volume:
Write down a numeric representation of the graph shown (0-10) for your
keyword. Bigger volume is better. This should complement the
WordTracker numbers. Big numbers in both is a good sign. Normally when
I start, I sort the list of suggested keywords by search volume. This
keeps me from looking at keywords that are hardly being used by my
customers.

Google Competition: This is AdWords
competition, but this is also reflective of the competitiveness of the
market for that keyword phrase. The smaller the competition the easier
it will be for you to optimize for this keyword. If this number is
high, then lots of people are trying to be positioned for this keyword
- and spending money on it. Those that look like a 7-10 in this
category will likely take more effort. People are spending money for
these keywords – and likely on both SEO techniques and AdWords.

If
you are wanting an “easy keyword” to be found on, sort them by the
Google AdWords competition. Look for keyword phrases that have no
competition, but have some significant searches.

Now open a new browser at http://www.Google.com and do a Google search for your keyword phrase.

# Google Results:
Write down the number of pages Google has returned for that keyword
phrase. This is in the top-right of the page. Lower numbers are better.
If there are less pages available for a given keyword, you fare a
better chance at having good position.

Avg # backlinks:
This is the average number of backlinks for the top position. For each
of the top three type in link:http://www.yourcompetion.com to see how
many other webpages they have linked to them. Write down the average
number of backlinks the top 3 have. If they have a lot of webpages
linked to them, then you have a lot of work to do – in a link-building
campaing. This can be time consuming and expensive.

FILTERING THE LIST TO 3 KEYWORDS

Now
you try for “achievable goals”. You want to choose 3 keywords that you
are going to optimize your page for. Each of these must be good bets of
driving some traffic to you.

One of these should be an “easy
goal”. Look for a keyword phrase that is not very competitive, but has
enough targeted customers to be worth attempting. Often this will be
one that has a smaller number of searches – but that is OK. This is
something that you may be able to achieve in a shorter amount of time,
hopefully within 4-6 months. If you read up on the SEO halo effect, you may have a clue on why we start with at least one easy goal.

One
of these should be a “reach goal”. It should be one that will drive a
lot more traffic to your site, but is not too competitive that it would
break your pocketbook. There is always time and money involved with any
website optimization efforts. Don’t be surprised if it takes over a
year to reach this goal.

For the third, I usually choose another “reach goal”.

Now
you need to design and optimize your website for these keywords… If
you are choosing a domain name, you should consider having one of your
keywords within it.