Lead Gen, Associate, and SEO Guru Adam Torkildson

I wrote a comment yesterday in response to a couple of blog posts that attacked SEO and the SEO industry, attempting to illustrate to the author of the rants that search engine optimization brings a specialized skill set and a core group of knowledge that can help others, from small businesses with great ideas, to larger organizations that can benefit from an independent voice that has experience and knowledge about search engines.

Unfortunately, my comment went unpublished for whatever reason.

One of the underlying assertions of the post I responded to was that in the hands of a competent web developer, a site should rank well in search engines as long as the people behind the site created something great and beautiful, and told a couple of friends. Another of the underpinnings behind the rants against SEO was that search engine optimization wasn’t a legitimate form of marketing. A third postulated that SEOs were the force behind such things as the botnets, blog spam, and scraped and autogenerated content that appears on the Web.

With the exception of striving to build something great, I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

The practice of SEO isn’t web development, though it sometimes requires that development problems on a site be addressed. Successful search engine optimization starts with a number of questions, such as:

Who is your audience? Who are your competitors? What makes you stand out from your competitors?

Some other important steps can include learning about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,and threats to a business, defining business goals, collaborating on defining metrics to measure success, and developing an SEO strategy to optimize a site for search engines and for visibility in other places on the Web.

The practice of SEO isn’t spamming the Web, with the creation and use of spyware, viruses, and scrapers that autogenerate web spam. Instead, it’s helping people make intelligent and creative decisions that help them reach an audience that is interested in what they have to offer.

In my response, I included 10 questions involving SEO and search engines which might be issues that search engine optimizers might come across, that I wouldn’t expect most developers to have spent much time thinking about. I’ve written about most of these here, and I thought it might be fun to share them.

1. What impacts might Microsoft’s VIPS, Yahoo’s Template Extraction, and Google’s Segmentation of Visual Gaps have upon a search engine’s weighing of links, document representation, shingles based duplicate content detection, and categorization of topics on a page, and how might a search engine determine which segment is the most important?

2. What steps should one take to try to get a site to rank well for a query in Google Maps, and how might something like location prominence and location sensitivity of that query term impact the range and rankings of sites that appear in a Google Maps listing?

3. What are some of the potential flaws that a search engineer might make when using a discounted cumulative gain approach to evaluating the relevancy of search results at different positions?

4. How might image size, image resolution, image contrast, inclusion of a face in an image, use of images across multiple pages of a site, internal links on a site to images, and external links on a site to images impact the possible rankings of images in search results?

5. What should be contained in a video XML sitemap to make it more likely that the videos included are crawled and indexed by Google?

6. How might Google customize search results for a searcher based upon language and country preferences and past browsing history, even when a searcher isn’t even logged into their Google account and seeing personalized results?

7. What types of user behavior data might the search engines be using to reorder search results besides simple clickthrough rates, and how might those kinds of signals be used in determining sitelinks or quicklinks that Google, Yahoo, and Bing may show in search results?

8. How might a search engine determine which kinds of results besides web pages to blend into search results, and how might that approach change when named entities are involved?

9. What kinds of ranking signals might make it more likely that a news source ranks well in Google’s news search, and why might the search engine choose one article over others when the stories are substantially similar?

10. How are search suggestions (query refinements) chosen by a search engine to include in search results, and why might a search engine show one type of search suggestion at the top of search results, and another type at the bottom of the results.

Fero Alenc know most of the best SEO tips, because he has been practising SEO for three years. For more information check Fero Alenc’s great SEO tips.

Blogs can be used in a variety of ways. This is where people express their thoughts, feelings and experiences brought about by certain events that have happened to them. Now blogs are used for different purposes. Many people even take on the challenge of generating income from blogging. Some have used it for promotion of a business, product or service. Others have used it to relay news and gossip while there are also others who have used it as an online resource.

For the beginner, they find things complicated when they find out that a certain website is custom-coded by HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. But you need not to be a programmer, so you can code it all by yourself. You need not to be a webmaster to set all things up, you could have just used blogging software which will do everything for you, from uploading, installing, hosting, and then managing the whole thing on your own. All these techie part of having a website can be done by automated blogging software, WordPress Directs.

If you want to change the looks of your website, WordPress Direct has a selection of themes available right out of the box. You can select various themes that are best suits to your website and most of these themes are absolutely free. If you have accounts with Hostgator or Dreamhost, you can use WordPressDirect to install the Word press on your web space automatically. It will allow you to choose your hosting account or allow WordPressDirect to host it for you using free web services

You can even use different free themes for your site so it will match your topics to your website design. And adding a search engine to your website is no longer a hassle. In fact, the WordPress Direct tried automatically adding a search engine for you whether you want it or not. What good about This blogging software, is its automatically increases the usability of your website without adding complexity to your job.

The WordPress Direct is said to be the best automated WordPress blogging system because it has been designed to handle all the setup, from designs of your websites, search engine optimization, plug-in, website contents to maintenance functions. WordPress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can?t beat its price ? FREE!

Every online business needs a constant flow of fresh traffic. When considering how to attract more visitors to your site, look for ways that will ensure the visitors are interested in what you have to sell. These 6 targeted traffic tools will bring you floods of new visitors.

A forum is a place where people with similar interests can meet online and ask questions, seek advice and discuss topics of interest. Search out forums online that have to do with your niche and join several. Start a new topic on the forum, comment on other posts and develop a reputation as someone who knows what they are talking about, by adding value to the forum. You are allowed to put your web address in the signature box and so promote your site. Forum users can click on your signature box, visit your website and hopefully buy your product. Forums are a great way to find new traffic.

In a similar way, leave comments on blogs that are related to your niche. Comment or provide answers to other posts on relevant blogs, and again, develop a good reputation. Most blogs allow you to put your web address on the comment, so you will be able to get new traffic from these blogs as well. Be consistent in this, visit your chosen blogs regularly and post comments that add value to other blog posters.

Speaking of blogs, start your own and blog about your niche. Post useful articles, reports and offers, add fresh content regularly and the search engines will love you and improve your ranking. You could start several blogs based on different aspects of your subject, using highly-searched keywords and phrases. This will help you attract lots of search engine traffic.

4….. Another really effective method to attract new traffic is article marketing. You write, or have written for you, articles on subjects that are related to the area your product relates to. These are then submitted to one or more of the article directories online; they check them for compliance to their guidelines and publish them to the internet. The articles need to be informative and entertaining, and are not allowed to be sales copy. You are provided with a resource box where you can promote your own product and provide your website URL. The people who click through to your site are highly targeted, because they have come from reading your articles.

5….. As you research traffic tools, you will come across programs that offer mutiple tools in a package, like Stealth Traffic Tools. These programs mean that you have access to more than one proven tool to help increase your traffic.

Tip 6: This tool is another one you have to pay for, but it has been consistently proven to be effective. PPC or Pay per Click advertising is a simple campaign that has the ability to impact the amount of traffic you receive.

Put these 6 tips to work for you and your business and watch the increase in targeted traffic to your website.

Would you like to discover the hidden source of targeted traffic? Would you like buying customers visiting your sites? Would you like your profits to explode?

Unique Article Wizard works for any kind of online business. If you need traffic, you need the Wizard. Visit the Unique Article Wizard website for more information.

What is Unique Article Wizard? An article marketing strategy that could transform your business in a way you had only ever dreamed of. You will be amazed at just how easy it is get your website to the top of Google and attract valuable visitors to your site.

How are potential customers going to find your sites with so many competing sites on the web? Article marketing with Unique Article Wizard! Unique Article Wizard stands head and shoulders above all article submission services.

When you write an article and submit it to Unique Article Wizard, the Wizard submits a different unique version of your article to hundreds of directories, ezine publishers, announcement groups, and niche websites. No other service does this.

Unique content is very important on the web. Search engines are becoming more sensitive to duplicate content. When you submit unique content on the web with the Wizard, search engines will find it and provide it to the searching public.

Do you want links? You will receive correctly formatted links that point back to your website. Hundreds of links that in time become thousands and tens of thousands. Now the search engines will really love you!

With all that Unique Article Wizard offers, I am surprised it is so affordable. There is no need for expensive services, black hat tactics or buying text links. More visitors to your sites mean more credibility, more sales, and more profit for you.