Top 10 - Ten SEO Tips

1. Pay attention to meta tags, the title tag is the most important but make sure it is not stuffed with keywords.  It should contain your primary and secondary keywords (some circles say it should/could contain  your URL as well but I have found it dilutes the keywords too much).  Search engines nowadays, especially Google are becoming very good at detecting spam and if you stuff your title tags with too many keywords you may get penalized.

2. Large images and fancy flash websites may look pretty but they can be a big turn-off for search engine spiders, and humans with anything but the fastest internet connection.  Everyone likes their website to be attractive but the price you pay in slow load times can make SEO and long-term growth impossible.  Clean, simple, attractive websites fair best when it comes to search engines and casual visitors.  Google has recently stated they are working with Adobe and will be able to read flash.  That is great news but I would still recommend going light on flash elements on your site.

3.  Don’t always focus on major keywords, the most important keywords for your industry will be highly competitive and very difficult to rank highly for.  When you start off try to rank for some less competitive keywords and longer phrases.  As you get more comfortable with SEO you can then optimize for some of the more sought after keywords.  The current lingo for this type of longer keyword is 'long-tail key phrases'.

4. Don’t, I repeat….don’t use black hat SEO techniques or linking/spamming schemes.  When you are struggling for traffic it can be tempting to take a short-cut and use some of the more unscrupulous SEO strategies available but even if you get some positive short-term results you will be at a high risk of being penalized or banned from the search engines index.  Just like the fable of the turtle and the hare, you want to be the SEO turtle....slow and steady will win this race.

5. Do read forums and ask others for advice.  Forums are a great way to learn about what is new and useful in search engine optimization and marketing.  As a professional SEO I spend around 2 hours a day reading and writing on webmaster related forums.  Some of the more popular are DigitalPoint Forums and HighRanking Advisor.  There are lots of great SEO blogs too but you might want to get a little knowledge under your belt before tackling those.

6. Don’t be too thrifty to hire a professional.  There are only so many hours in each day and good business owners know when it is a better value and use of their time to delegate and hire outside professional help.  Nobody can be expected to know (and do it) all, optimizing your website for the search engines is a very important part of your chance at long-term success.

7. Don’t hire an SEO if their first language is not the language you are optimizing for.  Outsourcing is the current hot buzzword of business and I myself do a fair share of my business dealing with folks from many countries and many different native languages, but when it comes to keyword research, content writing and tweaking it is important that the person/firm you hire speaks the native language you are optimizing, marketing and analyzing for as a first language.

8. You might have heard this one before but it is worth repeating, content was, is and always will be KING.  Interesting, well presented content will make your website a winner and make any SEO and SEM much easier to accomplish.  Sometimes you need to go back to the basics and re-build your site from the ground-up.

9. This one should probably be higher up the list and I know it causes many sleepless nights for those new to the field, Google page rank.  Don’t sweat it, visual page rank is not very important.  If you build good content and get lots of quality links your page rank will rise naturally over time.  Google has recently used page rank as a weapon against 1000’s of sites that it feels is selling paid links.  Many large, authority sites have had their page rank cut in half or taken away completely.  Since it really means nothing I would advise you to not worry about that little green bar.