archangelabove

So, I was doing a little bit of reading on search engine optimization, as it is going to be key for a business I am running with my family. We are entering an already pretty thick market, and are going to need to pull as many strings as possible to get as many hits as possible.

So every single detail is of utmost importance. Now, I've read and heard, that through clever optimization, you can get your site higher up in the rankings of relevant hits.

This is going to be vital.

Has anyone ever worked with SEO tactics before? I've heard it's a bit of trickery, so any thoughts would be helpful!

I've got plenty of work and research to do until this is good to go.

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Aumotocnic "An unfortunate member of the overclock.net insomnia club"
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theRemix

i do SEO as part of my position... it is quite the opposite of what you think.

if you try to do "SEO Trickery" you will end up getting lower rankings or even banned from listings altogether.

don't do keyword padding or anything like that.

the way you Optimize is to be "honestly worthy of the position"... you can't cheat the system, if you need it that bad, do paid inclusion programs or something.

so, if you have a site about babies and baby care for example. having lots of information about babies (in a naturally speaking language, not just massive non-sense words about babies) then you will rank high. but that's just it, you need quite a lot of information about a subject if you lots of competition. that's why blogs and forums are so popular, information about the same or similar subjects keep adding to the value of the site. your site NEEDS to update, it is alive. also, back in the day, people made brochure-ware websites, a few paragraphs won't cut it anymore, because it's not as valuable to someone searching... right?

now, after you have relevant content, what sets you apart from other sites just like you? popularity... think of high school. now, the "trick" is to massively load your sites with external links... but how is that valuable to someone searching for your content? the truth is... it's not "who you know" that makes you popular... it's "who knows you".
links back to your site help your rankings... but even more, GOOD reputable and popular "kids in school" that link to your site, make you that much more popular. so... if yahoo talks about me, i'm popular. get on a bunch of directories first, then keep building your links, imo, the easiest way is naturally... i have tons of people linking to my site that i've never heard of, they just saw my content, thought it was cool/useful/interesting, and posted links.

there are many other factors, but i'm off work so i'll give you one more.
monitor your traffic! sign up for google analytics, it's free. then learn how to use it. for example watch the bounces, if people are bouncing off a certain page, maybe it's broken? maybe it renders improperly in a certain browser (which google analytics will also show you). look at where your visitors are coming from, physically and webbically (yah i made that up). i found that a lot of my visitors were coming from european countries, now i 'could' tailor my site more to satisfy their interests and get more of them coming for example, but instead i decided to see how they heard of my site. you can do so much with all the information google analytics provides.

good luck.!

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