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How to succeed with search engine
optimization
Much has happened to search engine optimization (SEO) in
the last years. It has become much more difficult to get high
rankings for a web site. However, it's still possible to get
your web site at the top of the list if you do the right things.
The good old days
When the Internet was young, it was enough to submit your
web site to search engines to get high rankings.
Then webmasters found out that they could further improve
their rankings by stuffing their web sites and meta tags
with keywords. Search engines quickly discovered that this
was abused by many webmasters.
Nowadays, the meta keywords tag isn't worth much anymore
and search engines can quickly detect web sites that stuff
their pages with keywords.
When Google entered the market, incoming links seemed to
be the trick of the trade. However, many Google updates
have shown that even a high number of incoming links cannot
guarantee high search engine rankings.
What have you got to do to get high rankings in the current
search engine situation?
The rules have changed
There's no single path to successful search engine optimization
anymore. Most people know that it's pointless to submit
a web site to search engines without doing further SEO work.
However, it's likely that you also won't get good results
if you focus only on incoming links or optimizing your web
page content.
If you want to succeed with search engine optimization,
it's important that your web page has all factors that are
important for high search engine rankings:
Make it as easy as possible to find and to parse your web
site. Good incoming links and optimized web page content
are a must if you want to have high rankings.
Don't try to trick search engines
Tricking search engines with techniques such as cloaking,
doorway pages and other dodgy tricks might be tempting because
it seems that you can save so much time and effort with them.
Be very careful with that. Search engines don't like to be
tricked. You might get away with this for some time but as
soon as search engines find out that you're tricking them,
they will ban your site.
Don't go for quick-fix solutions
You probably get spam email messages promising you to get
listed in Google within a few days, others promise you to
submit your web site to thousands of search engines (although
there are only a few search engines that really count).
Getting high search engine rankings with these one-shot-no-work-quick-fix
solutions is as likely as getting rich with the hot stock
tips you get in other spam email messages. Use common sense.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't
true.
Getting your web site into the top 10 results on Google and
other major search engines is possible if you employ the right
tactics. Further information can be found in our free SEO
book.
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