martworld, some good tips here, but I just wanted to pick up on a fiw points made by riderbabygurl.
Sorry, pet, but I have to disagree with a couple of your comments.
1. Free directories. Generally a waste of time. Unless you have an intern with nothing better to do with their time, then leave this one out. I know loads of clients who have come to me after spending months submitting and cataloguing their entries to free web directories and then having checked the actual links, ends up showing a dozen or so. Time can be much better spent doing other things (I'll get to that).
2. DO NOT manaully submit your sites to search engines, or pay for a service to do so (
there's a thread here today all about site maps, check out pinkfluffybunny's advice and adhere to it). If your site is reasonably well constructed, then your pages will be crawled and indexed. Manual submission is often a reason for search engines to "flag" a site and can create more problems than it's worth. Leave it couple of weeks (can be a lot less), and if you don't see anything, copy a sentence of two from your site and put that in the search bar in google and see if you're there. If you're not number 1, then review the site structure, and make sure you haven't got any silly things in the way.
4. Exchanging links is becoming less and less important. I have a client with NO links page and has been number 1 in a very competative field (travel) for the last 3 years. It sounds out-dated, but linking to
like-minded sites can do you the world of good. It's painstaking, but try it.
6. while I fully support the idea, it's hardly something that will increase position on SERPs - maybe rather improve conversions, CTRs, etc.
williamjoseph has hit the nail on the head with number 1 on his list (although I recognise that it doesn't always have to be this way, but I'm assuming you're a newbie and it's maybe your 1st or 2nd site?). If you're an expert on the area your site is about, then it will become much easier for your blog/articles/press releases/posts on forums to become what people consider to be "viral" - i.e. it's pssed around a lot quicker. If you have great blog which challenges the ideas in your sector, backed up by either your own experience or a new product for example, then you'll send waves though your business sector (if you do it right) and gain much more popularity and branding then link begging. Using social media sites for that will also work, as (although the majority are nofollow links) it's a great way to get your message out there, and for people to see your opinion on your sector.
There are some other posts with great ideas, but don't use a standard "cookie cutter" approach to your SEO, and just have a list of things to do by a certain date each week, or whatever, cos you'll just churn stuff out for the sake of it, and not gain anything.
I hope I haven't complicated things for you, and I don't mean to make any of this sound daunting, just an early kick in the right direction.
hopes this helps ..
Hybrid Mode
