SEO in 10 Easy Steps Options

[Fabius]

Hi folks,

I'm new here and learning a lot from this great community and omniscient () senior members, thought I'd share my bit.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in 10 Easy steps

Step - 1
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Firstly, you need to find the right set of keywords for your site to be optimized.

Find a list of Keyword Research Tools at:
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.ht...rd-mining-tools


Step – 2
----------
Now, For instance, if you want to optimize your website for the keyword "search engine", just search for the keyword in any of the tools specified at the link above.

From a list of keywords displayed using the keyword research tools, Pick the keywords related to your site. For example when you search for "search engine" you'll see (not exactly) the following results:

image search
internet search
job search
metasearch
mp3 search
multi media
music search
people search
picture search
search
search engines
search guide
search help
search tips
search tools

Step –3
---------

Do a couple of searches more with keywords related to your site, choose the terms related to your keyword ‘search engine’ from the list and note down around 15 (preferable) to 20 keywords.

Step – 4
----------

Now, the Title of the Page..

Title tag must include atleast 3 keywords from your chosen (15) keywords, like for ‘search engine’, your title should look something like this:

"Discover the web with the xxxx meta search engine, Search Guide tips and tools for an enhanced search experience."

NOTE: Title shouldn’t extend 95 characters and not more than 3 "," commas – over 3 "," is considered spam by most engines.


Step – 5
----------

Now, The Meta Tags…

You need following Meta Tags in web page

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
-- Explains that the Content type is HTML and the Character set used is iso-8859-1. There’re others, but this is the most-used.

<META name="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,keyword3">
-- This should’ve all your keywords separated by commas. List the keywords by importance in descending order (most preferred, less preferred) and do NOT repeat/reshuffle the keywords in anyway.

<META name="description" content="Succinct description about the site">
-- Provide a brief description of your website and include important keywords. NOT more than 255 characters and 3 commas.

<META name="robots" Content="Index,Follow">
-- This is for the crawlers/spiders:
index,follow : Index the page and follow the links
noindex,follow : Don’t index the page but follow the links
index,nofollow : Index the page but don’t follow the links
noindex,nofollow : Don’t index page, don’t follow the links all = index,follow none = noindex,nofollow


Step – 6
----------

Moving on to body of the page…

Include all the important 5+ keywords here, For example:

“Discover more of the web with YourSiteName.com meta search engine. Job, images and mp3 search with a click.........”

Put the main keywords in the header tags <h1><h2> and so on. Start with <h1> and then move to <h2><h3> etc..

Header Tags will surely be huge for paragraph text, but CSS works like a charm, define a small font size in CSS for the header tags, if you aren’t CSS proficient, the following simple code placed before the head ends (</head>) should work fine:

CODE

<style type="text/css">

h1, h2, h3 {

font-size: 10pt;

}

</style>

NOTE: Add Top (most important according to you) keyword atleast 4 times in the body and other 2 keywords thrice and twice respectively.

Step – 7
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Now, you need to provide title and alt tags for images and links.

Use some keywords in the tags if required but not unnecessarily, it should just explain what is image all about.

Step – 8
---------

Now, the footer…

Include the top keywords here too, use site keywords as links, for example:

<a href="imagesearch.ext">Image Search</a> <a href="jobsearch.ext">Image Search</a> and so on.



Step – 9
---------

Now, finally you need to educate yourself about the basics.

Site Map - This is page where you need to put all the links to pages of your site, this will help the Search Engines to find the links easily. Provide the link to site map in footer, as search engines start scanning the page from bottom.

Robots.txt - This file contains the path to directories that should NOT be crawled/spidered by search engines. More information can be found at http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html.

Valid Code - Your code should have valid html and doc type, Its difficult to follow all the web standards but you can atleast do your the tags correctly. Clean your code with HTML Tidy (http://tidy.sourceforge.net/), if required and Validate your pages at http://validator.w3.org/.

Check your Site – Check your site for errors (of any sort) with the tools at:
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.ht...imization-tools

..and correct the errors (if any).


Step – 10
------------

Start submitting your site to the engines/directories now:

http://google.com/addurl.html (Essential)
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html (Essential)
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx (Essential)
http://dir.yahoo.com ($299)
http://www.bluefind.com ($50)
http://www.01webdirectory.com ($50)
http://sbd.bcentral.com ($49)
http://www.sunsteam.com ($45)
http://www.goguides.org ($40)
http://www.biz-directory.org ($40)
http://www.allestra.com ($39)
http://www.directoryhere.com ($35)
http://www.botw.org ($30)
http://www.indexunlimited.com ($29)
http://www.123world.com ($25)
http://www.arielis.com ($25)
http://www.incrawler.com ($25)
http://www.uncoverthenet.com ($25)
http://www.webatlas.org ($25)
http://www.cannylink.com ($20)
http://www.rlrouse.com ($20)
http://www.thisisouryear.com ($20)
http://www.allwebdirectory.com ($15)
http://www.1st-spot.net ($10)
http://www.linkopedia.com ($10)
http://www.aroundtheweb.com ($7.5)
http://www.searchturtle.com ($5)
http://www.informationoutpost.com ($5)
http://www.ajdee.com ($2)
http://www.skaffe.com (Free/$40)
http://www.web-beacon.com (Free/$40)
http://www.joeant.com (Free/$40)
http://www.gimpsy.com (Free/$40)
http://www.wowdirectory.com (Free/$20)
http://www.allthebizz.com (Free)
http://www.allthewebsites.org (Free)
http://www.businessplexus.com (Free)
http://www.direct-o-ry.com (Free)
http://www.dmoz.org (Free)
http://www.elib.org (Free)
http://www.goguides.org (Free)
http://www.hedir.com (Free)
http://www.jayde.com (Free)
http://www.joeant.com (Free)
http://www.landoflinks.com (Free)
http://www.netzoning.com (Free)
http://www.seekon.com (Free)
http://www.sevenseek.com (Free)
http://www.sezza.com (Free)
http://www.skaffe.com (Free)
http://www.spheri.com (Free)
http://www.smallerbizz.com (Free)
http://www.stormer.net (Free)
http://www.tygo.com/dir (Free)
http://www.webworldindex.com (Free)
http://www.worldsiteindex.com (Free)
http://www.yeandi.com (Free)
http://www.zeal.com (Free)

..and other engines/directories that you wish.


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Wait for sometime, perhaps a month and keep checking your search term. Use http://GoogleAlert.com - it’ll email you whenever google indexes you website or updates your keywords.

Hey! You did it! Yep, that’s all!

==========

Hope this helps some! :wink:

- Fabius

[Tim]

Fabius,

Welcome to Cre8asite

Thanks for the 10 step tutorial - I'm sure it'll be helpful to some people.

Just wanted to make a comment about step 10 - for the most part, it's not that neccessary, especially the first three "essential" options. Those submissions likely do nothing - it's links that get you indexed. In which case the directories you've listed there would be great places to submit to.

Thanks though, for your input, and I'm looking forward to seeing you around here more.

[Fabius]

Hi Tim,

I'm Zach, Fabius is just my nick. Thanks for the warm welcome though.

Yes, submitting to those directory is completely optional, but as it (somewhat) helps in link building and getting a higher Pagerank, thought I'd list the directories too, might be of some help to new webmasters, however the essential ones are top 4 as I've marked.

This is one of the best communities I've ever joined, no/less junk, more informative posts. I'll certainly try to check back often once I finish with the intensive search project I'm working on currently.

Thanks again Tim for the warm welcome.

Cheers,
Zach L

[bragadocchio]

Hi Zach,

Nice start on this topic.

A couple of things that I disagree with, but disagreement is good. It gives us a chance to explore why we do certain things.

I try to keep title tags under 63 characters long. That's because some of the search engines tend to cut off the end of your title tag if it's longer than that, and I think that it's helpful to have the whole title appear in the search results.

The other is that I'm not really sure that you need to tell the search engine spiders this one:

<META name="robots" Content="Index,Follow">

They do that anyway, so it's somewhat redundant to include it. It really doesn't help, but I don't think it hurts either.


There are a couple of steps that I like to include before getting to the point of trying to find the right keywords for a site.

1. Understanding Business Objectives

Understand the business objectives of the site owner. This includes getting a grasp of what they want their web site to accomplish - sales of products, leads generated, and so on. It also includes getting a good sense of whom they believe their targeted audience is, what their unique selling proposition is, what type of impression they are trying to make upon their audience, and so on.

That type of information can be very helpful in deciding what keywords to include, what type of information should be displayed upon pages, what type of site structure they should be using, and more.

2. Analyze Potential Competition

Understand whom else might occupy the niche that the site owner is targeting. This will give you an idea of the potential competition that you might face when optimizing a page, and might help determine some of the strategies that you will use when you consider keywords, copy, and whether you will use pure natural search results, or a combination of natural and paid approaches.

Seeing what type of information that these competitors display, what strategies they embrace, and how encompassing their presense on the web may be can be very helpful in determining keyword choice, site structure and content, and need for linking and content development.

3. Determine How Spiderable the Site is

While determining the business objectives of a site, and what may be faced in terms of competition, it also helps to see what the exisiting site is like. It may provide some clues regarding business objectives, and whom the site owner perceives their competition to be. You should ask them who their competition is, and get a good sense of what they want their site to accomplish, but you can also look to see if their site reflects those objectives, and an understanding of what they face on the web in terms of competition. You should also see how well their site can be indexed. Are they:

a. Using dynamic pages, and if they are, do the pages use session IDs, more than one variable in the URL, very long strings and are multiple directory levels deep. If so, there may be problems with the search engines having troubles indexing those pages. Recommendations can, and should be given on how to make those pages more easily indexed by search engines, and avoid problems that could be keeping search engines from indexing the whole site, or indexing the same pages under multiple URLs, which is potentially a problem.

Some resistance can be met at this point, in that the cost of making some changes can be expensive. But, remember to couch these recommendations in terms of the site owners meeting their business objectives, and how the way that their site presents pages may keep them from meeting those objectives. The cost of not taking action may be ultimately more expensive than making changes.

b. Is technology used that might keep content from getting indexed, or links from being followed. These can include java script menus, images instead of text in links and in page content, frames and iframes, and sites that use lots of flash instead of plain html.

c. Can the site be tidied up to make it easier for search engine spiders to quickly and thoroughly index pages, such as using external CSS and java script files, fixing broken links, finding redirects and replacing them with direct links whenever possible. I try to make sure that every impediment to the spiders is reviewed, understood, and addressed as well as possible.

4. Review other Aspects of the Site: Spam and Semantic Use of HTML

a. Are the site owners inadvertently or intentionally using tactics that the search engines might frown upon, penalize them for, or possibly even ban their site because of. These might include hidden text regardless of the intent (including the use of FIR design replacement techniques, and words intended for screen readers only), keyword stuffed meta tags and comments and alt and title attributes, and others. The benefits from using these approaches are limited, and the potential risk is very high. It really is better to not use these approaches and do things the right way if possible, which leads to:

b. Does the site use semantically correct html as much as possible, including the use of heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.) Unique page titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords for each page, alt text that is truly an alternate text for images used or empty quotes for spaces and purely decorative images, title attributes for links that tell people where those links lead to, table headers and captions for tables of data, abbreviation and acronym tags, and possibly even long description tags in some places where appropriate. All of these can potentially benefit a site by giving a search engine an understanding of how those words are being used on those pages.

5. Site Structure

Is the site structure set up in a way that helps the business objectives of the site, and increases the possibility that it will be indexed well? A hierarchical tree structure tends to work well, and increase the possibility that anchor text and content will be understood by a search engine indexing program striving to gain some sense of the theme/context/semantic nature of your site. Using a Broad ->General ->more specific -> even more specific or related type structure can benefit a site by making it easier for both visitors and search engines to understand.

It can provide a wider range of keyword phrases to use, by allowing you to use broad terms, more general terms, more specific terms, and then very specific terms in your optimization of pages. It can also allow you to use those terms in primary and secondary navigation.

Say for instance, you have a site that is about the sale of automoble parts and servicing. You might structure your site like this:


Broad to General:

Auto repair -> Auto Parts
-> Auto Repair Services

General to More Specific:

Auto Parts -> Ford Parts
-> Chevy Parts
-> Oldsmobile Parts
-> Honda Parts
-> Volkswagen Parts

Each of those different model type pages may link to each other in a secondary navigation, with the anchor text and the page titles reflecting what appears on those pages.

Auto Repair Service -> Ford Repair Service
-> Chevy Repair Service
-> Oldsmobile Repair Service
-> Honda Repair Service
-> Volkswagen Repair Service

Each of those different model type pages may link to each other in a secondary navigation, with the anchor text and the page titles reflecting what appears on those pages.


Each of those more specific pages may lead to different departments that link to each other in a secondary navigation, also with anchor text and page titles reflecting what appears on those pages:

Ford Repair Service -> Repairing Ford Engines
-> Repairing Ford Exhaust
-> Repairing Ford Transmission
-> Repairing Ford Electrical

These could continue to break down into further categories, or lead to specific product pages, again using link text in navigation, page titles, and possibly even breadcrumb navigation to help people know where they are, where they can go, and where they were. It also helps the search engine understand what is on the site.


6. Reseaching Keywords

This is the point where I'm ready to start researching keywords. I know what we want to accomplish with the site, how well it is being indexed by search engines, how the structure of the site can have an impact upon that, what competitors are doing, and what I want to accomplish.

I can get a good sense of what keywords people who are the targeted audience of the site will use to try to find the pages, and what words they expect to see on those pages.

I know what words that competitors are using, and can get a good sense of how effective those words may be, and decide whether it is worth trying to compete with some of them on some of the words, or to try a different approach.

I have a good sense of how the site is structured, and know whether I can pick a number of general, less broad, more specific, and even more specific phrases for multiple pages, and create pages that can be optimized well for individual primary pages using both the semantically well written html on those pages, and the secondary navigation that changes in different categories and can let me use link text effectively to help optimize those pages.

These are all helpful.

What else do I need to keep in mind?

a. find phrases the people will search for.

Use the tools that Zach mentioned. Use a Thesaurus. Use your brain. Look at competitors. Look at co-occurrence, and e-f ratios. Look at other ways those words and phrases are used in common language. Look at the jargon of the industry involved, and try to determine if the average member or members of the targeted market or markets will use those words. Look at search volumes in word tracker or the Yahoo! Marketing Services tools. Look at recommended categories in Teoma and Ask Jeeves. Test potential choices of phrase against each other. Use Paid search to test phrases. Use people to test pages, and see if they gain confidence as they follow links around the site - give them tasks to perform, and see if they can fulfill them based upon the words that you use in your page titles and navigation text.

b. Put those words in your pages

Support them with well written title tags, content, page headings, link text, alt text and captions for images as appropriate, title attributes for links, a tertiary navigation system at the bottoms of pages that include links to broader categories and make it easier for people and search engines to flow through the site.

c. Use a well organized and categorized site map to also help visitors and search engines travel around the pages.

7. Writing Content

Make sure that you have enough words on your pages for search engines to index, and not too much so that people don't face impenetrable blocks of text. Make sure that the text is scannable, and that it is easy for people to find what they want within that text quickly and easily. Use headings, bulleted points, and (very little) bold and colors in text for emphasis.

Product pages should describe the products. They can use multiple pages to do that. The Three Page Optimization Technique can be used to do that effectively. Use informational pages to help people when they need more information to make an informed buying decision. Keep in mind that those types of informational pages can be optimized well for search engines, too. And if they are well written, and helpful to a lot of people, they may also attract links and bookmarks, and return visits.


Zach includes a number of other helpful tips and suggestions. Anyone with any more?

<edited to correct typos>

[invader]

Great post, Bill!
Imagine if Bill starts writing a tutorial for SEO, probably
beat the number of lines written for programming Windows code.
Just kiddin' :mrgreen:

[bragadocchio]

Thanks, Mairu,

There is a lot more, and there is a lot that isn't very well known outside of the Googleplex, and the cubicles and offices of the other search engines.

Might take up quite a few lines at that.

(kidding - I don't have the weeks or months it would take to do the subject justice.)

[Fabius]

Hi Bill,

I try to keep title tags under 63 characters long. That's because some of the search engines tend to cut off the end of your title tag if it's longer than that, and I think that it's helpful to have the whole title appear in the search results.

Yes, keeping it under 63 is fine, but I've seen 80+ charachters Titles in Google, and 85+ Chars in Yahoo sometime back, I'm not sure if this has been changed lately. In any case, yes, its always good to keep the title short.

he other is that I'm not really sure that you need to tell the search engine spiders this one:

<META name=\"robots\" Content=\"Index,Follow\">

They do that anyway, so it's somewhat redundant to include it. It really doesn't help, but I don't think it hurts either.

This meta tag was necessary for the old Inktomi, but now Yahoo Spider defaults to "index,follow". Although most search engines now want to collect as many as possible pages in their index to become "the authority search engine" so they all default to this setting, but there're a lot more newer engines coming up, including this tag wouldn't hurt.

Bill, the rest of your text is incredibly useful for understanding the basics.

[travis]

Nice post Bill,

One of your best.

It covered a crucial step missing from the 10 points. The competition.

There is no use chasing the worlds most competitive search terms.

What you want is a term which is searched for, but is not that well covered by websites on the internet. That is where the search engine marketing can really help a business.

Another good idea I have found is that regardless of the algorithms and bandwagon of the day in terms of SEO thinking, you can just type in your search term and research the backlinks and internal link structure of the business in top spot.

Its a basic business philosophy. Copy what works, or at least get an idea of the ballpark you will be operating in.

Fabius, the items that you mentioned are great, but I dont know about all the search engine submissions. The only one we submit to is DMOZ. The only engines that Tim and I (Australians) would be interested in are Google, MSN and, to a lesser extent, Yahoo, so you have to excuse our lack of interest in the other engines.

Google is king down under. Here is a sample of the visitors for one Perth website we have completed. Everybody in Perth uses Google and the trend is widening in their favour. Looks like MSN is their only genuine competition.

http://www.hutchens.com.au/images/search_v...sitors_2005.gif

[ILoveJackDaniels]

the other is that I'm not really sure that you need to tell the search engine spiders this one:

<META name=\"robots\" Content=\"Index,Follow\">

They do that anyway, so it's somewhat redundant to include it. It really doesn't help, but I don't think it hurts either.

This meta tag was necessary for the old Inktomi, but now Yahoo Spider defaults to "index,follow".

That's not quite right. The myth that it defaulted to "index, nofollow" has been around for a very long time. Slurp (the Inktomi spider) has always followed links, since at least as far back as 1997. That particular rumour started because Slurp did have a problem indexing dynamic URLs. Any URL with a question mark would be ignored by default. Slurp did improve this over time, but slowly, and adding a meta tag made no difference to that at all.

If I'm not mistaken, there was also a time that the presence of a robots meta tag meant some spiders (altavista?) would assume the page should be ignored, regardless of the content of the tag. I'm not 100% sure about that though.

[Fabius]

Fabius, the items that you mentioned are great, but I dont know about all the search engine submissions. The only one we submit to is DMOZ. The only engines that Tim and I (Australians) would be interested in are Google, MSN and, to a lesser extent, Yahoo, so you have to excuse our lack of interest in the other engines.

I mentioned 4 essential submissions, G, Y & M & DMOZ, rest are strictly optional engines/directories for (primarily) US webmasters and some other countries perhaps.

Google is king down under. Here is a sample of the visitors for one Perth website we have completed. Everybody in Perth uses Google and the trend is widening in their favour. Looks like MSN is their only genuine competition.

Although google is the king in your country, but regardless of your location, your PageRank increases with the number of inbound links to you site that these directories might bring you. Submitting to those free directories wouldn't hurt.

In any case, its strictly optional.

That's not quite right. The myth that it defaulted to \"index, nofollow\" has been around for a very long time. Slurp (the Inktomi spider) has always followed links, since at least as far back as 1997. That particular rumour started because Slurp did have a problem indexing dynamic URLs. Any URL with a question mark would be ignored by default. Slurp did improve this over time, but slowly, and adding a meta tag made no difference to that at all.

As far as I know, Inktomi had the problem till late 2004 but it seems to have been fixed now.

If I'm not mistaken, there was also a time that the presence of a robots meta tag meant some spiders (altavista?) would assume the page should be ignored, regardless of the content of the tag. I'm not 100% sure about that though.

I haven't heard of any such thing as yet, however, it isn't the problem atleast in 2005. All of my 3 websites (having that robot meta tag) started in February, have been indexed by Yahoo, Altavista & MSN fairly quickly.

[travis]

Mate,

Thanks for the advice. Having said that, do you submit your new sites to every single one and pay the fee at the same time ?

I guess the Yahoo directory at US$299 is the hardest decision. A lot of our clients balk at that one.

I will try the other free directories though. Thanks for the links.

[Fabius]

Not really, I don't submit to any/every directory that I come across, not even if its free. The above listed (free) directories - most of them - have proven good, atleast for me. And the only Paid Directory that I've used so far is Microsoft bCentral (http://sbd.bcentral.com). It worked like a charm.

Yes, Yahoo Directory is a big-ticket but I don't think it'd drive a remarkable amount of traffic your way either.

[Tim]

I mentioned 4 essential submissions, G, Y & M & DMOZ, rest are strictly optional engines/directories for (primarily) US webmasters and some other countries perhaps.

Zach,

What I was trying to say before is that they aren't really essential at all, in that the first three will pick your site up anyway - and submitting won't speed up the process at all.

As an example, I come up first in those three search engines for my main keyphrase, and I never submitted my site to them - it was links that did it.

DMOZ, though, is worth submitting to.

[travis]

Fabius,

I guess Tim and I have the same theory on life. Funny that.

But, we are "new ideas" men, and I tried out a few directories. They would appear to be helpful, as I found a few competitors on them already who outrank us for no apparent reason.

The proof will be in the pudding.

We have only ever been able to get 2 customers out of 30 to sign up for Yahoo, and they had full log analysis tools and overseas operations.

Thanks for the links mate.

[Fabius]

Tim ,

Submitting to those directories might not make too much difference for you, but for all my sites so far, submitting to those directories helped a lot. The flow of traffic is not usually instant, it requires a couple of months. But in the end, its worth your while.

Perhaps, it depends on the nature of business. Almost all my sites are End-user, destination sites. I don't sell services/products directly unlike any other business. However, yes, it doesnt work for everyone, hence its strictly optional

Travis,

Yes, Incorporating new Ideas is the only way to stay ahead in the business I believe. Submitting to those directories might not do any good for you, but it wouldn't hurt either.

As for Yahoo (Overture, right?), Use ROI Tracking Tools and Analyze your stats. Some of the smaller PPC's may actually do better since they can offer a more personal service. Roar is an Australian PPC Network I believe, that might work for you.

Your PPC campaign is only as good as YOU make it. If you work hard and understand the networks you are advertising on, then you can make it succeed. If, however, you don't trust the arrangements before hand, you won't trust your results and you won't put forth the effort you need to make it work.

It isn't up to the network to make things work, it is up to YOU understanding YOUR audience and correctly targeting to them and TRACKING your results.

Doesn't matter if its google, overture or anyone.

[theadjudicator]

I am looking to put together a "links" page. Are any "link" software names better than others and where is a good place to start with link building?

[bragadocchio]

Hi theadjudicator,

Welcome to the forums.

I'm not really a big fan of software that helps with link building campaigns, or with helping to find links to use to build a link page.

The best tools for linkbuilding might just be a mix of business acumen, courtesy, and common sense. I delete requests fro reciprocal links I receive that are from automated software programs.

The last few link requests that I actually paid any attention to were from people who:

1. had sites that complimented the services offered on the pages where the links would go.

2. presented those links as something that would be (legitimately) beneficial to the the people visiting the sites where the links would go.

3. were from sites where I felt comfortable about sending customers and potential customers that I valued, and wanted to return at some point.

4. were sincere and personal emails which showed that they actually visited the site, had a sense of who the visitors to the site were, and could explain why their link might be a good match, and were polite about it.

Linking for linking's sake isn't enough. Linking because a legitimate relationship is being created between business owners is a much better reason.

Software isn't capable of making many of those distinctions, and creating good positive relationships. When creating a links page, I look for sites that do offer visitors value. I do it without much interest in links being returned. I do it because visitors might find the links, and the annotations to those links to be of value.

Again, I'm not sure that any software really helps with that.

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, theadjudicator.

I feel as Bill does on this. In addition, I'm not sure how valuable links are to ranking in Google if they're from somewhat 'irrelevant' websites. I'm sure Google has some kind of mechanism for weighting links depending on their relevance. So you would have to get an awful lot of 'irrelevant' links to match the power of getting a really good link from a website that is closely related in topic to your own.

In fact, I've got no good place in my website to put reciprocal links. So my spam e-mail filter, K9, is set to treat link requests as spam so I don't even look at most of them.

This isn't to say that I don't work on getting relevant links to my website. Particularly in my blogs, I try to give as many links to relevant web pages as I can. As folks see them, you will find they link to your web pages and blog postings. Such links are clearly relevant and so are much more valuable.

Just my 2 cents.

[FP_Guy]

Hello I just followed a link that went to this forum and I like what I see. Just before this link I read an article on surrounding yourself with positive like minded people on forums. (Don't think it was a coincedence)

Anyhow I've been in business for over two years now and have been studying SEO intensely and every day for two years and like what I saw here so I joined.

Michael

[bragadocchio]

Hi Michael,

Doesn't sound like a coincidence to me either. Welcome aboard.

Good to have you join us here.