A Checklist of Modern SEO Techniques

Whether you are an SEO or inquiring customer unfamiliar with the business it's important to have points of reference to see that all possible avenues are pursued when starting a Search Engine Optimization marketing campaign. Site owners should disregard much of the information they are given when a company is listing their services: many of the procedures they describe are either unnecessary or ineffective. Submitting your domain name to search engines isn't necessary anymore - spidering is done automatically by Google and there is even some talk that using submission tools can result in "sandboxing" where the site then goes on probation and won't be visible in search engine results pages for quite some time. Link-building campaigns should be done manually not with automated programs and the directory listings chosen should be free rather than paid listings. There are two reasons for this: you don't want to be perceived as trying to buy better rankings due to the democratic nature of Google and it is expensive and time-consuming to manage and renew paid listings. A small budget should be set aside for one exception - getting fast-moving one-way links via press releases. Newswire services have various fees from fifteen dollars to several hundred to distribure the press releases.

Ideally the SEO should oversee the construction of any site that's planning to make a living through search engine traffic. If it is done right from the beginning the site's "chakras" (so to speak) will be as clear as possible for maximum efficiency. Site owners are often unsure of what needs to be done so they should be briefed on the limitations of the web site design and the hours that must be spent to achieve the marketing goals. A business owner will want to know what the fees are for. When fees are low the chances are you're getting very little for your money - a few directory listings, a couple of predetermined sector keywords rather than a full range of site-specific keyword usage. Does the company use Viral Conent Marketing or not? Here is a useful checklist for SEOs and this list can serve as a comparison of techniques.

There are many other concepts to develop and tasks to perform of course but if this checklist is followed you can feel confident that site is tightened up and ready to make an impact on the Web. During the process, the major factor is the quality of the content creation. A site that puts reams of interesting content in circulation will be deserving of attention and considered an authority in the market sector. The anchor text links show the path to the source of this content and when the link totals constantly multiply through downloads then traffic will arrive in growing numbers.

When you read SEO Marketing blogs there is much talk about Social Media as a worthwhile focus as a way to plant good links. Some effort may be required since many of those pages develop into time-consuming mini-sites so I have reservations as to how large a bang for the buck is being received; perhaps it's because new phenomena like Twitter seem more watered-down than using press releases in established surroundings, warmly cocooned with reams of solid content. Time will tell if networking through Digg, Simpy, Del.icio.us, Furl, Slashdot, et al. produce a measurable ROI or at least a jump in server traffic figures for business websites. Article directories have buttons to over 230 social networking sites so a good strategy is to place a lot of good articles in a lot of directories and find out the maximum allowed number of hyperlinks back to your pages to make optimal use of the opportunity to plant deep links to the inner pages.

SEO consultant Pat Boardman operates Toronto SEO and Web Design.

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