What You Need To Know About SEO

So you have your site optimized for search engines with quality content, navigable links, and keywords specific to your industry. But it has been several months and you still are not showing up on the first or second page of results in Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

There are several things you need to do to get better results in the organic listings.

1. You need to submit your site to the 3 biggest search engines Yahoo, Google, and MSN. You will need to go directly to their site submission pages and submit your site manually. Google and MSN both require a code be typed in for submission. Yahoo requires you have an account with them to submit to their directory. All three are free and only take a few minutes to submit per search engine.

2. If you can get your website link on a Google PR4 or greater site home page, Yahoo will almost immediately start indexing your information. Msn and Google will follow not much later.

3. Search for free directories that include your business category and submit your information to as many as possible. Make sure you utilize the description section with keywords that are specific to your industry.

4. Write articles and submit them to the free article directory services. Include a detailed bio of you and what your services are. Use a valid link to your website. The more original your content, the greater your chance for exposure.

5. Revisit your title, description, and keyword metatags to ensure you are utilizing this information for the best description of your services. Use only keywords in the title; don't waste valuable character space on your business name unless it is a major keyword. Take advantage of the description tag as it explains what your business offers and will determine who visits your site when it does show up.

6. If you offer a local service, post your information in Yahoo Local, Yellowpages and Superpages. General listings are free to post; allow a link to your site, and your business phone number.

7. Keep your website content fresh. Update your page content at least once a month. You dont have to go over board, just add something new every once in a while.

8. Create XML sitemaps. There are free sitemap generation tools that will create a sitemap.xml file of indexed pages of your site. You can then upload this file to your server and submit to Google sitemaps for indexing.

9. Watch your website competition and where they stand in the search engines for current keywords you are using. Look at their title, description, and keyword metatags.

10. When you pull up the free listings you will see a link below the listing titled cache, click on it. It will show you where the keywords show up on your site, how many show up, and when the search engine lasted visited your site.

Get creative, be unique, and have fun. The search engines will reward you for it. Just remember the search engines only want to post relevant information on the keyword being searched. Make sure the keyword you are trying to be listed for is relevant to the information on the webpage you are trying to have indexed by the search engine spiders.