First, the jargon.
Back link: this is where a website links to your site; i.e. Site X has a link pointing to your site, so your site has a back link from Site X
One-way link: where only site X links to your site, but your site does NOT link to site X
Reciprocal link: where two sites have swapped links so they both link to each other
Anchor text: the text/description that is associated with your link on the back link site.
Page rank: Google’s proprietary system for assigning a value (from 1-10 where 10 is best) to the combined number and the quality of back links pointing to your site. Often abbreviated to “PR”
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): we use the terms “SERPs” to refer to the search engine results page, and the position of a site on it. So if a website has a SERP of 3, it means for a particular keyword search it appears on page 3 of the results. Note that some people use SERP to refer to the position on the page, so that a SERP of 3 may also mean the site appears at #3 on the first page.

Check you page rank and backlinks now! Quick and easy Page rank checking at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So, what does it all mean?
In the online marketing world, Page Rank means a lot. Increasing a website’s PR is one of the major foci of online marketing.

The goal is to get as high a PR as possible for your site. PR is measured by a proprietary algorithm belonging to Google. What Google does is measure the quality of the site linking to your site. How does it do this? By measuring, amongst other things, that site’s PR. There is also evidence that the degree of relatedness of content is also important. If you site is an e.g. Real estate website, then a back link from a site dealing in scuba gear may not be worth much to you. But back links from sites that have good PR and are related to you (e.g. by industry or by region/location) are well worth pursuing. By increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site, over time you will increase your PR.

Note also that many other engines also use back links as part of their SERP algorithm. Some may not be as sophisticated as Google, but many measure the number of back links in their index and use this as part of how they rank your site under a particular search.

You can check your back links and page rank at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So how do I improve my Page Rank?
Firstly, make sure your site has good quality content. Make other sites and their owners want to link to you. Then get out on the web and start making propositions to other website owners in related fields.

Ideally, you will get links from sites that have a higher Page Rank than yours, but this isn’t always possible. What you should look for are sites that:
Have good content
Are relevant or related to your site
Have some Page Rank already (i.e. not brand new)
Also, older domains may do better than newer domains

Some of the do nots.
Be wary of FFA (Free For All) sites; often these do you no good and can actually do you damage as they tend to be viewed as spam sites by some engines.
Don’t “spam” your anchor text; make it relevant and don’t overload it with keywords or repetitions.
Vary your anchor text. Use different variations or re-writes of anchor text on different sites.
Make sure the page where your link will be placed has been indexed by the search engines. If it has not been indexed (or can’t be for whatever reason) then you won’t get any benefit from it.
Make sure that the pages you place links on have limits to the number of links listed. Single figures are ideal, but not always possible.

Online, it’s no different. People are looking for information. They “go” where the information is, and you as a webmaster own online real estate. Your website.

Your website content must be full of specific, focused information. If your desired visitors are “everyone”, you will fail. You must decide what you are offering to whom, and create in-demand content for those people. Once you have the content, you will get listed highly by the search engines and the traffic will come.

Once on your website, your content must PRE-sell you, your business and, ultimately, whatever your visitors have the opportunity to purchase on your website.

Your perfectly constructed, targeted focused content is a perfect venue for Adsense ads. The Adsense code on your perfected pages will pull up targeted ads for your visitors every time.

But maybe your page has a variety of information on it and you want to emphasize a certain part of it to focus the Adsense ads. Google has something called “section targeting” that you can use under certain circumstances.

You need to be familiar enough with html to add certain code to your site source code, and the sections you want to target need to have a large percentage of your overall page content, enough that Google can understand what you are targeting. You add to the beginning of the section you want to target, and at the end of the section. Google will decide if this section will make you more money, so if it won’t, you won’t see any change in your ads. Also, it can take up to a couple weeks to see a change.

This technique is particularly useful in blogs, where Adsense ads have an uncanny knack for picking up on terms you don’t want it to use.

It’s very simple, but not “easy”, to build that content rich website. We’re not talking overnight success story here. But a long term income built on honest, solid principles that have stood the test of time is nothing to shrug off.

Build it and the Adsense ads will come.

1. Search Engines -You are a site owner and you yourself should get familiar with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN Search to search for your competitors' sites to see how they are positioning themselves in the marketplace, analyze the keywords, check your sites' link popularity (the number of links to your website from other sites) and link saturation (number of pages on your sites have been indexed by search engine). These search engine syntaxes aren't theoretical as you've thought and you don't need to pay attention to the complex algorithms behind them. For instance, to check whether your sites are indexed, just type site:your_site_domain in search engines. Remember that your_site_url and your_site_domain are not identical. Site domain does not contain http:// while site URL must have (ex:http://your_site_domain/your_page.htm is a URL of your website).

Assume the Birmingham SEO firm, in their optimisation report, would ask the site owners to exchange links with other relevant websites to improve the link popularity. The problem is: where can I find the other sites? Don't be concerned, search engines can help you. Site owners can learn from their competitors about which websites they've exchanged links with by checking their link popularity.

In short, if you want search engines to help bring in business, you should become friendly with them first. Search engines are always beneficial friends (despite the fact that they are not easy to control!).

2. HTML basic syntax and HTML editor - Site owners are not obligated to master HTML language to re-design their pages. That is not their task. But basic syntaxes are always needed.
For example, they should know to locate where the <head> block in an html page is to add new auto-generated Meta-tags. I've mentioned auto-generated Meta-tags because site owners don't need to code the Meta-tags either. With "Meta-tags Generator" keyword, they can find that on search engines thousands of websites are welcoming them to use their tool. Besides, the html link syntax is also worthwhile to remember: Look at this simple code <a href="your_site_url_1">your descriptive text</a> which you send to other site owners for link exchange. Your website has many pages for exchanging links so it is important to know this link code to change your_site_url_1 to other pages and your descriptive text respectively. In addition, with the knowledge of html syntax, you can open your web pages and insert the links at your own and stop calling webmasters regularly for editing pages with links. Nowadays, html editors such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver can highly simplify this task in the similar way as you are working with MS Word. Just choose the position in Design view (in FrontPage) and paste the link code in the Code view at the cursor.

3. Google toolbar – Google Toolbar is a valuable tool for web surfers and even more useful to site owners to check PageRank. PageRank is a Google's grade (from 0 to 10) to analyze the quality and quantity of links that point to a page. With high pageranks, they don't ensure a high position in Google's search results but they can tell us many things. PageRank inspires site owners in the long routine of Birmingham SEO. The little green color on this bar resembles fruits in the tree of our efforts and we are motivated to dig more in Birmingham SEO. On top of that, PageRank helps site owners to find appropriate sites to exchange links with. Seek for the sites with the same level (pagerank) to foresee the success of your link exchange requests. To install Google toolbar to your browsers (Internet Explorer or Firefox), just start by typing Google toolbar in search engines and follow the first result.

In this article, I have provided the site owners with some basic but efficient tools to come along their Birmingham SEO campaigns. They include, but not limit to, search engines, HTML editor and Google toolbar. In addition, there exists others such as FTP tool, Google sitemap, Link Directory software, etc… The important thing to novice site owners is leaving behind your main profession and get your hands wet with these tools. Webmaster and Birmingham SEO firm can't do everything for you. Learning Birmingham SEO tools today will never be too late and squandered.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.

This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.

When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.

How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.

Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.

Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.

You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.

This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.

Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.

Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.

Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.