Liverpool SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

Liverpool SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Basic Liverpool SEO Tips:

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

So in this way Search Engine Optimization, is important, and helps to bring more visitors and Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your Liverpool SEO.

Visit us:
http://www.halfvalue.com/top-articles/Liverpool SEO-resources.html

How can this be? Well the problem is the physical location of the hosting centre itself. Now, while you may feel you have signed up with a UK hosting company, actually all their hosting centres can be in a different country such as the US or Germany for example.

Now this little quirk doesnt really have many side effects as you may well be getting very good value and good technical support from your host, but what it does mean is that if you do not have a geography specific domain suffix such as .co.uk

for the UK and instead you opt for a .org, .net, or .com then Google will use the geographical location of your hosting centre as the method for determining which local index your results should be found in.

By this I mean if you were to search www.google.co.uk with the radio button switched to UK results only, and your .com site was hosted by a UK hosting supplier but in a German datacentre, then you would never appear in the search results. Of course, you would appear in the www.google.de search results, but obviously not many German google users are looking for websites and businesses in English or relevant only to a UK audience.

There are plenty of studies out there suggesting search patterns on Google that say it is approximately 50 : 50 as to the number of people that click the “all the web” results on google.co.uk compared to searching only UK results. However, I personally do not believe this, if I am looking for a business where a product needs to be delivered or a service provided to me that involves phone or person to person support and contact, am I really going to search every website on the Internet?

No, I am only going to search across UK specific sites, and if I can’t find what I want then I will expand my search to include sites outside the UK.

It is unknown to me at this time whether a .co.uk site hosted outside the UK suffers any form of penalisation from Google in its ranking placements in the google.co.uk index, and is quite difficult to prove either way as search engines are notorious for providing as little information as possible as to how they operate.

Unfortunately there is no real way around this problem if you are already caught up in it other than move your hosting to an ISP that is actually based in the Country that they claim to be on all advertising etc. Always check beforehand if you are looking at a non .co.uk domain name for your site, as you do risk never getting the 100′s or 1000′s of search engine referrals that www.google.co.uk can provide you.

Below is a link to a tool that is useful for telling you the geographical location of your website, make sure you check it out if you are concerned about your site not being included in your local Google index, because there is nothing your hosting provider or Google can or will do about this situation, so get educated and make sure your website gets seen in your local Google index.

Tools for locating where your website is hosted (http://www.dnsstuff.com/)

Instructions

1) Using the “Ping” tool, type in your domain name and you will be given the IP address of the machine your site is hosted on.

2) Copy and paste that IP address into the “tracert” tool, the final hop is the physical location of your website, so check this against the “Country” information on the right-hand side.

I don’t see this problem changing or easing any time in the near future, as the service provided by Google for geographical indexed is fundamentally sound and they have to use some method of discerning which Country group a site is relative to when it has a non-geographical domain suffix, however more and more people are being caught out by this without even realising it, because they believed they were signing up to a hosting provider in their own Country.

I hope this article helps, and please email me any of your stories / problems in this area. Good luck!

Paul Rudman is the director and head of optimisation at Commercetuned (http://www.commercetuned.co.uk/), he’s been involved in developing search strategies and search engine optimisation for 7 years.

Easy to use, Google is a free service with a mission to offer at a click the worlds information. A clever use of the mathematical term Googol, 1 followed by a 100 zeros, it just means infinite information presented in an organized way.

Google is not any ordinary set up its philosophy and commitment to cost containment just means that every employee in any part of the world is a multi-tasker and hands on contributor. Work and play are both inborn in Google staff that enjoy their work and are obsessive about creating search perfection. So, employees from all over the world, speaking dozens of languages, originating from widely differing yet colorful cultures have one thing in common Google is their life and breathe of fresh air.

It is simplicity and faith in its staff that has enabled Google to better the best. Every one thinks on the go and before a blink of an eye innovations are introduced be it a spell checker or Google Number Search to facilitate use of Google from WAP phones. The keys to success lie in information has no end just beginnings, fast is better than slow, the motto is to provide instantaneous answers to surfer queries. The secret to the success is to focus on user needs and keep things simple. And do not stray from the path. The key is to concentrate on search.

What makes great business sense is the motto do no evil. This serves to reemphasize the business ideals and philosophies. In fact one thing people love about Google is that it stands by its beliefs. Google was unique in refusing to give in to a subpoena and submit search query records. On the other hand, Google has the sense to adapt to different needs, in China Google took a step in a different direction and started self-censoring human rights organizations.

Google has strayed into everyones hearts and become a part of everyday life. Gmail, Gtalk, blogs, news, Google maps, and more. Whatever a person needs or dreams about becomes a reality and what more it is at no cost to users. Googlers are friendly, helpful, spirited, and inspired. They evoke admiration among internet browsers. Its not just service Google has extremely good business sense.

Usability is their aim and simplicity their secret password. Anything complex is not evident to the user. Google realizes that to be ahead even non techies, young and old must be able to use the search engine and different services. They should not be confounded by complexities. No frontier is too far and no problem too great. If a problem exists Google will make all attempts to solve it.

Smart, devoted, and dedicated are three words that can aptly describe Googlers world wide.

Everywhere I turn these days Im seeing ads for websites being sold proclaiming that theyve optimized that particular site for an outrageously priced keyword, such as Mesothelioma (a cancer of the lungs caused by asbestos). In fact, Ill bet that if you did a search at this very moment on EBAY, you would find at least one auction for such a website, probably claiming that youll make thousands of dollars a month with it if purchased. But dont send them that Paypal payment just yet, you might want to read a little further.

In fact, some companies and law firms ARE paying upwards of $100 for specific keywords in the Adwords program, but that does not mean that you, as an Adsense publisher, will receive anywhere near this payout per click. In fact, you may end up being severely penalized and paid very poorly for that search phrase.

Lets do another search. Hop on over to Google and search the term Mesothelioma. As of this writing, there are over 5 million results. Just a few months ago there were far less. All this tells me is that many believed the hype, and are now competing for a very small market. Wont they be surprised when they find out how much that click actually pays. Ill bet its less than a buck.

Lets understand one thing. Google is smart. Period. They have spent a truckload of money in developing this program. And they have made BILLIONS from it. If you had something that was making you several billion dollars a year, wouldnt you work hard to protect the customers that were paying you? You can bet Google is, and they are watching your web traffics quality closely. If youve put up a page that is worthless to the surfer, worthless to the advertisers, and just plain worthless overall, you will be penalized for it financially.

The fact of the matter is, theres a reason why advertisers are willing to pay an extreme cost per click for certain terms. Its just that there arent very many searches for them. Some terms may only have 100 or less searches a month, internet wide! So these advertisers are willing to shell out the dough in order to get that tiny market.

But its just not smart business for the little guy to chase these terms. There are a ton of terms out there that pay between $1 and $5 per click that are an absolute goldmine. For example, one of the terms on this site: http://www.thegiftedone.com does quite well for me. Does it pay in the triple digits? Of course not. But Ill take the smaller paying keywords every time. There are more searches overall for them, and more people actually looking for the content I have to offer. The result is clear. More clicks, more money.

My advice to you on this is simple. Quit chasing the myths, quit searching for that one word thats going to pay you $500 a click. Focus on building strong websites that are informative for the surfer, and more importantly, productive to your bottom line. Then build as many of them as you can. In time youll see just how far a London PPC program like Adsense can take you, but only if you work for it.

If you would like more information on Affiliate Websites and London PPC programs like Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network, I have set up a forum at http://www.affiliatewebsitedesign.com . Its completely free and full of information regarding promotion of London PPC targeted websites. I hope to see you there soon!

Till next time,
Chuck Crawford

I will use the example of a Web Designer and Developer in Melbourne, Australia.

1. The website should be hosted in the country and if possible the city in which you plan on targeting with your online marketing strategy.

2. The website should have on page search engine optimisation which is tailored towards the region – country – city. So, in other words these three elements, if they are identified as the target market, should be mentioned in titles, keywords, meta tags, content, on page titles, links etc within the website.

3. Any controllable external links to the website should have a sprinkling of the region – country – city within them, without over doing it.

4. The website should have a fully qualified domain name. In this case .com.au

5. The website should be listed in the regional Google search index. You can go to your local search engine and simply register and request for the googlebot to scan your website. If you host within the region and/or you have a fully qualified domain name then you should get listed within the regional index anyway but registering will triply ensure.

6. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and then go to Tools->Set Geographic Location. Some sites target users for a particular geographic location. For example, a site may target all users within a specific country, or it may target only those users who reside within a very small geographic area within that country. Using this feature allows you to further refine your target your market.

7. Have a regional specific phone number. For example, for website design in Australia it would be 1300 880 841.

8. Get listed in local online directories.

9. Use a Google map that shows your business location. This will ensure that your regional association is further enhanced within the search engines.

Once you have done all of these things then your website should be fully targeted towards your identified target market. Now you just need to make your site interesting, make it sell and get it developed properly in order to do this.

Let me show you How to Get Top Listings for every page of your site and Rank #1 for all of your Keywords in the Search Engines – Guaranteed.

Did you believe this? If your like me you’ve probably seen a million pages and emails like this that claim they can work miracles for you in all the search engines. They claim everything from having inside information or special relationships with Google and all the search engines.

The simple Truth is this: No one can guarantee top listings on any search engine, in fact, no one can even guarantee that you’ll ever be listed. So beware of big claims and unethical Birmingham SEO firms as there are many out there.

So how do you get top listings in the major search engines. Let me try to answer that as simply as I can without thoroughly confusing you. CONTENT – yes that’s right… content is still king… the more you try to fool search engines the more damage you’ll do to your rankings. Search engines are getting smarter and smarter and they have seen every trick in the book done by every unethical Birmingham SEO/SEM firm and spammer out there. So don’t fall pray to the hype and false claims.

Here’s the big Search Engine Secret

Well Written and Related Content, Relevant Page Titles and Meta-tag Descriptions. So there you have it, the secret is out… if anyone tries to tell you different or convince you otherwise – put away your check book and run. Yes, there are other things you can do to help your rankings using the 3 items above and a few more.

How to improve your chances in the search engines rankings:

*** Know your top keywords.. Use Yahoo’s Keyword Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=us〈=en_US or Goggle’s Sandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox to find what users are actually typing into the search engines to find sites like yours. Once you have all your top keywords – don’t loose them… you will use these over and over and over again.

*** Use your top keywords in the content of your pages, in your page titles and in your mate-tag descriptions. I don’t mean to use pages that are filled with nothing but keywords, use them in Real Sentences. Pages that are nothing but keywords will hurt you in the search engines, this is called keyword stuffing and will hurt your rankings or worse yet, get your site delisted or banned from the search engines. Simply take your current site content and use your top keywords in appropriate places where they make sense in real sentences.

*** Don’t over use keywords or try to use to many on one single page. Have your main keyword in the title, the description and a couple times on the page content is usually sufficient. Do this for every page of your site optimizing it for the subject of that particular page using the relevant keywords from your research. I see so many sites with the same Title and Meta Descriptions on every page. Make sure yours are different.

*** Get as many high value links as possible. Best way to determine High Value links is to install the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/ and use Google’s Page Rank to determine link value. You can also use out PR Tool at http://www.i4market.com/tools/rankcheck.html. The higher the rank the better. You may have to pay for links on PR7 or higher sites – but don’t pay too much. You can also use Alexa Traffic Rank or their toolbar – http://www.alexa.com/. The more High Value links you have the better your Search Engine Popularity will be.

*** Install Link Exchange Software… but be selective about the link exchanges you approve.

*** Add value added relevant content to your site, such as articles, news, blogs or tools related to your business or industry. This will increase your search engine saturation. A site with 100 pages of good quality content has much a better chance of being found than a site with only 10 pages.

*** Use Google XML Site Maps or find and company that will create one for you. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

*** Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, break the site map into separate pages.

*** Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Search Engines do not recognize text contained in images or flash content. If you must use images, then always use the Alt tag to describe the link.

*** Check for broken links and correct HTML.

*** If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as Google does not include these pages.

*** Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

*** Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the spiders from content you want included.

*** Understand the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory. A Search engine uses spidering technology and will search the web for new sites. Directories will not seek you out and you will have to be tell them about your new site manually.

*** Revisit your keywords on a regular basis. There are a 1000′s ways to search for the same thing, search patterns change from time to time. You’ll want to keep up with those changes.

*** Submit your site to the search engines if it has never been submitted or you are not listed in that particular engine. Most search engines still have a free submit for the “Natural Listings”, yet they may not be easy to find. You can find Google’s ADD URL here http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

*** Submit your site to the Directories including Yahoo! and DMOZ. DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/ is the Open Directory Project and is used to power thousands of other sites and directories – Inclusion in this directory gets you links in 1000′s of other sites. DMOZ is also the directory Google uses. http://directory.google.com/

WHAT NOT TO DO.

– Don’t Use hidden text or links
– Don’t Use doorway or gateway pages.
– Don’t Use pages that redirect users to other places.
– Don’t use any type of cloaking technology – no matter how great it sounds. It might work for a short time – but you will get caught.
– Don’t use Flash content for important information. Flash is an application that is completely invisible to most search engines. Flash is good for animations and other page elements – not for an entire site unless you also have an html version.
– Don’t Use Misleading or overly repeated words
– Don’t Use Bait & Switch tactics… they don’t work.
– Don’t Use Duplicate sites or pages
– Stay away from Free For All or Link Farms schemes, as these will only hurt you.

There are many things that affect your rankings then just the content on your pages, so DON’T obsess about being #1 – you may never get there no matter what you do. Your time is better spent operating your business in areas you have more control over.

Following the above guidelines will get you the best results your site will achieve. That’s not to say that there is not more you can do – but these are the main items that will effect your rankings in the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). The internet a huge place and technology changes all the time – so do the search engines – a site that is #1 today might be #1001 tomorrow.

You can try to do all this yourself or you can hire a company that specializes in Birmingham SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing), however beware, there are many that will separate you from your money quickly and leave you with little to no results. We suggest you take some advice from Google concerning selecting an Birmingham SEO firm for your company. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/Birmingham SEO.html

Above all else – remember this – There are NO GUARANTEES in any type of marketing campaigns, be it on the web, in print, on television or radio. So spend prudently and select your Marketing firm wisely!

KEYWORDS

First and foremost, search engines look for keywords and keyword phases in which to index your webpages. So you must prepare each page for the search engines. Thus, when you are writing copy for your website, keep four or five keywords that you want to emphasize for that webpage — then weave the words into the copy.

However, don’t blatantly use the keywords over and over again — or as they say — use keyword stuffing — or the search engines will penalize you for it. And, needless to say, your readers will click away, if the flow of the copy is so obviously stuffed with your keywords that it jeopardizes the quality of the copy. Quality of copy first, keywords second.

META-TAGS

There are several meta-tags that the search engines look at. The two most important are:

1. Title
2. Description

Both the Title and the Description Tags should have your most relevant keywords. Now, the keywords meta-tags is not used by Google, but the other search engines may utilize them. Are they important? It really depends who you are talking too. Some say, by putting the keywords into your webpage you are giving your competitors the edge. Others, feel that if your competitors want to know what keywords you are using they will find a way. (I’m of the latter’s thinking.)

LINKING

Linking is another important factor in Search Engine Optimization. Without proper linking — or establishing a linking campaign — your great site may not be found by the search engines. You need to find ways in which to allow human visitors, beside yourself, to find you.

INBOUND LINKS

Inbound links — links pointing to your website is very good for search engine rankings, and gives more ways for human visitors to find your website.

How do you get inbound links? Write articles and place them on article directories for ezine publishers, newsletter publishers, or bloggers to pick up.

Blogs is another way in which you can get one-way links to your site. Again, that same article you wrote for the article directories can be put in your blog and then submitted to a Blog Directory. Just do a search on Goggle for “Blog Directory” and you should find enough to keep you busy.

OUTBOUND LINKS

An outbound link is a url that you have on your site that points to another website. An outbound link on your site means that you feel the link has quality content for your readers — and you are redirecting them to it from your site.

So, what does outbound linking offer you? You can see what an outbound link can do for another website, right? Well, by carefully linking to other sites– relevant sites — you can increase your own relevancy.

So be careful who you link too — because outbound links figures into the entire ranking algorithm process — or restated — your page ranking.

To conclude, this overview is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Leeds SEO. It’s not an easy task, and it is time-comsuming. Will you see a quick return moneywise. No, but Leeds SEO will eventually give you the money you seek, as well as, offer you longevity. And isn’t that what you want–longevity? I know I sure do. I would rather be the tortoise, and not the hare — and slowly, but methodically move in the direction of my dream of a home career. If you take the wrong shortcuts, you can lose your dream and your home career. So, is Leeds SEO worth it? I think so. How about you.

The Search Engine Optimization Quality guidelines have a direct impact on how search engines rank your website in search results and your websites page rank. While they are listed as suggestions wise people are advised to listen REAL CAREFULLY when Google talks search engine optimization guidelines. Failure to follow them may have their website from being removed from Google. Worse than death (at least you have a grave stone) banishment removes your site from Google’ and partner sites. Here are search engine optimization techniques to stay friends with Google and sleep soundly at night (while thousands of people visit your website)

Enhance Content

First of all, forget search engine ranking and website design and concentrate on website content. Create a enough web pages to give a sense of what visitors will experience on your site. Email pages to people for their comments and feedback on your subject. Soon youll have a sense of what you have to offer and how to design your website. With the emphasis on content useful information to people, website design is logical and quick.

Site Maps

How will people reach the pages on your website. A proven London SEO approach is to provide a simple hierarchy and text links for your website along with a site map. If you dont have one, Google offers an online site map generator. It seems like an obvious search engine positioning technique, but worth repeating a visitor should be able to reach each page from a static text link. Your site map point to the right page and also boosts your search engine ranking not a bad deal. For large site maps over a hundred links, create smaller site maps.

Web Page Hierarchy
An important search engine marketing tool is the proper placement of titles on your web page H1, H2, H3, and so forth. These title tags guide the search engine though you page and help it determine what to read first, second and so on. The main subject of the page should be identified with an H1 title tags and secondary subject with an H2 tag and so forth. The proper use of titles benefits both the reader and search engine optimization.

Meta Tag Mania Search Engine Marketing

Do you just go nuts trying to write the perfect meta tags? Join the club! While whats in the meta tags are important.. how should we say, Its whats in the bun that counts! In other words, search engine positioning techniques such as meta tags are secondary to what written on the page. Create useful, useful, entertaining content and your meta tags will write themselves. Be sure that your pages have the words listed in the meta tags and display important names, content, or links in text not pictures. Got that? See you in Google Heaven!

When they first introduced the Adsense program, it was to be an innovative “outreach” for the Adwords program. Advertisers placing Adwords would have unprecedented, laser targeted reach and penetration.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to make money from webpages through Adsense has led to the proliferation of webpages created solely to coax out money through the program, with absolutely no worthwhile content.
In addition to this are the duplicated sites, and sites with duplicate content – “Adsense ready” websites bought in bulk, sites carrying the same “Private Label Rights” content distributed by Adsense Clubs, and sites created solely out of free-for-all articles from article directories. And now we have sites powered by RSS feeds alone.

With the increasing use of “smart” techniques to capture search engine positioning for search keywords, the quality and usefulness of search results will also take a beating.

Hopefully, Google and other search engines will change the way they rank and display websites, by upgrading their crawlers to disqualify duplicate sites, sites with duplicate content, sites with an unnatural density of keywords in their content.

That will be the only way to restore the internet to what it actually is – a great source of information on anything, available worldwide, to anyone with access to an internet connection.
That will also be the only way for the search engines to remain relevant, and thus continue to be in business.

Let’s start with the actual information on the home page of the web site. What is the first thing that a spiderbot will see when it crawls your web site – complex graphics, tables of information that do not directly relate to your products or company, or does it see some well-written, grammatically correct text? We have found that the first 100 words on a web site are of particular interest to spiderbots, and a lot of emphasis is now placed by them on what is found there. This is the place to put your key words, what search words and phrases do you want to be found under.

But what about key words in the Meta tag statement? This was a great idea, but unfortunately became abused by people doing key word stuffing. Look at you own site, what keywords do you have there. We would suggest that you consider putting up to 10 key words in the Meta tag, and these words should re-enforce the key words that you use in your actual text. I saw a site for buying property that repeated the words house sales a hundred times; do you think that fooled Google? Search engines are now trying to ensure that the content and key words the actual web surfer sees, relates directly to how the page is ranked.

On a similar theme, have you ever been to a web site that is very difficult to navigate and you end up giving up because it’s just too difficult to find the information you require. Well, think how the spiderbot feels when it hits such a site. Do you think it will spend time and effort trying to build a complex navigation map, or will it out the site it the too difficult pile and move on. Make your site easy to navigate; on a small site being able to access any page from any page is a useful concept.

This brings us nicely on to the whole question of Inbound Links (IBLs). Some sites have very few external IBLs, but still do well because of the structure and linkage of their own pages. Unfortunately, this can mean a fairly major redesign and re-write of a site but if you can do this, you will improve your visibility. Other ways of getting IBLs are link farms, reciprocal links and one-way links.

We believe that link farms are a dangerous way forward. Search engines do not like this idea as it cuts across the major concept of searches that they should reflect the true popularity of sites. Either now or in the future, sites using link farms will be penalised and maybe sandboxed, a bit like being sent to the sin bin for 6 months and not recommended.

Reciprocal links can again be seen as a false way of increasing the popularity of sites. Many high ranking sites use this idea and to date have not suffered. However Google and other search engines are starting to take the relevance of the linking site into account. So if you are a property company and you link to a frozen food supplier and vice versa, yes I’ve seen this one, then the search engines will ignore it as an IBL. We are aware that more sophisticated companies are using a 3-way reciprocal link procedure that is far more difficult to track. So 3 property companies work together, company A links to company B that links to company C that links to company A. So at the moment, the search engines probably cannot see the 3-way reciprocal links, although this may change in the future.

Update on Reciprocal links. The latest Google Dance (update) is taking place (end of October 2005) and many sites with lots of reciprocal links are saying that their Google search rating has disappeared. This leads us to believe that such links are definitely not a good idea.

By far the best way of getting links is by having a quality site that other people want to link to. So again, we are back to content. If you provide quality information, over time, more and more sites will link to you, and if they are in the same business sector as you, so much the better.

Finally, we would like to stress the need to write the cleanest and most error-free html code that you can. Again, it is fairly obvious if you think about it, spiderbots want to be able to crawl a web site quickly and efficiently. If you have bad html, links that are broken or tables that don’t have the correct number of entries, then spiderbots will struggle to classify your site. We have invested in a very sensitive html validator that picks up lots of errors and potential errors. To date we have not found any web sites that validate 100% error free using this validator, except our own. When I mentioned the validator in a previous article I was inundated with requests for information on the product, so if any one wants to try it, I have put up a 14-day free trial copy at http://www.Birmingham SEO-gurus.co.uk/csesetup.exe. Don’t be surprised if it throws up lots of errors, I have seen 200+ of many web site home pages, often with the same error replicated many times.

In summary, good clean readable text backed up by clean html programming and some good solid inbound links will give you a far better chance of good search engine rankings. So, if you do all of this, will you need a Birmingham SEO company? If you can achieve all of the actions above, we believe you will have done about 40% of the work we would expect to do for a client. Maybe that will be enough for you, if not feel free to have a look around our website.

And now a poem

Written by my partner, reflecting Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Dummies are everywhere,
They are dotted all about,
Sometimes they are within,
Sometimes they are without,
Sometimes in shop windows,
Looking sleek and tall,
Sometimes in the living room,
Sometimes in the hall,
But most of our dummies,
That we deal with every day,
Are very much like you and me,
But just stranger in a way,
For they are now on the net,
Their 15 hours of fame,
They lose their sensible marbles,
And are all soon fair game,
For unscrupulous and devious,
Those twins of guile and charm,
Who in the blinking of an led,
Soon strip off leg and arm,
Thus a dummy is so created,
Whence can they become whole?
Already minus arm and a leg,
To those who own their soul,
And flailing blindly in a net,
More binding by the hour,
With money leaking from cards,
All too sadly in their power,
Yet just as the worst seems likely,
When hope seems yeste rdays dream,
Yes, Birmingham SEOgurus Superbeing appears,
Almost serenely on the scene,
“What seems to be the problem2,
His booming voice proclaims,
“I will rid you of your demons,
Cast them out in your name,
And take you to a better land,
Where everything works well,
And where your website flourishes”,
You see, he tells a few as well,
Yet he’s not such a bad guy,
Though he needs spell-check advice,
In fact compared to some,
He’s actually very nice,
We may be slightly biased,
We may just overemphasise,
But he really is a good guy,
And he really truly tries,
To put you on the right path,
Primarily to help yourselves,
He doesn’t use a witchdoctor,
Or consult with toads or elves,
He just uses simple tools,
And a common sense approach,
He knows you can do most of it,
And just acts as your coach,
And advises now and then,
Of tools or websites to try,
And he isn’t ever dodgy,
And he isn’t ever sly,
He just tries to help you,
In an age where others abuse,
So why not trust the Superbeing,
What have you got to lose?
He’s related to the Ferrits,
And cousin to the Stiffsteiffs Bears,
And reportedly the Frankfrogs,
Though mad as March hares,
But though they seem a rum bunch,
Above all this motley crew,
Are beavering away on your side,
trying hard to help you through,
And this month a free trial,
You can use to help yourself,
Has been offered for a while,
Just download it from its shelf,
And for zero pennies outlay,

You can begin to see just why,
The Birmingham SEOgurus Superbeing came,
So gloriously from the sky,
And should you ever need him,
Should your efforts be not enough,
Fear not for he will be with you,
Once emailed hell strut his stuff,
And though he’s a bit cocky,
And a bit “I’ve been here before”,
There are others out there lurking,
Who would hurt you for evermore,
And make you pay for nothing,
Over and again quite dearly,
For getting you “quite close”,
For endless results of “nearly”,
So on balance a flawed superbeing,
With aging but true good intent,
Is infinitely preferable to those,
That would help you spend your rent,
Though our cape flaps annoyingly,
And our colours are almost luminous,
We are honest to goodness superbeings,
And you can trust in us.