BlogForward : Money

As
you know, every year is always rocked by a plethora of changes in the
search engine marketing world. The acquisition of smaller companies by
the Big 3 changes the marketing landscape as we know it every month and
with every update to the index that is made, we hold our breath and
hope that we come out better (if not, the same) in the end. So when it
comes to the new year, there are many things that we should look out
for to stay on top of the rankings.

1.
Quality Content: I say this so often and I cannot overemphasize this
enough: Content is KING! Search engine spiders, crawl the net to find
what? Content! Your site has information (hopefully) that you want the
spiders to see and include in their index. By the creation and
publication of quality content, you give the search engines more reason
to return. You are feeding them what they want. In 2006, you should be
finding creative ways to get your content noticed and viewed as well as
finding creative ways to publish fresh content on a regular basis. A
very good way this is done is through the use of message boards (hosted
on your site) and by blogs (enabling you to publish more frequently).

2.
Don’t Overextend Your Link Exchange Structure: Backlinks were a popular
way to increase your rankings fast in the search engines. The tradition
holds: find a PR7 website and trade backlinks and you’ll be indexed in
Google within 24 hours. That strategy still holds true and is
beneficial for new websites.

But in my
opinion the days of tremendous link-swapping are coming to an end. Many
websites have been founded with the purpose of allowing you to exchange
links with other websites. This has caused a massive influx of
webmasters who want to exchange a ton of links with the hope that it
will help them in the search engines.

But
what really matters when it comes to links is the amount of quality
one-way backlinks that direct users to your website. You want the
balance of links to be in your favor, that is what leads to success.

Also,
there has been talk of search engines taking notice of these
“”link-farms”" and penalizing those who take part in them. So if you do
take part in link exchanges, please be moderate in respect to the
number of exchanges you take part in.

3. RSS
and XML: Two new technologies that have begun to take center stage
especially in 2005 include a programming language that has been around
for several years called XML. XML is shorth for extensible markup
language and is a derivative from HTML. The main difference is your
ability to create descriptive tags for your data.

This
has led to the advent of RSS or real simple syndication. RSS is a way
for you to publish your data to an XML file hosted on your site. Users
subscribe to your RSS feed via the XML file and whenever you make a
changes to your XML file they are notified. It’s become a major
technology used by news agencies and bloggers alike as a simple method
of publishing your information across a wide variety of platforms.

XML
has also proved useful with the Google Sitemaps program, newly released
in 2005. The optional tags available with the XML sitemap allow you to
be descriptive about the individual pages on your site including dates
the individual pages were modified. There are some small things you
need to pay attention to when creating this: namely you have to follow
the Google xml schema, and you have to be diligent about tracking and
fixing errors in the code. But if used correctly, it is a great way to
help Google index the hidden pages of your website due to javascript or
flash.

4. Stay away from Flash and Javascript
for the time being: Flash and Javascript are very powerful tools for
creating dynamic and eye catching websites. The most prominent problem
with the two technologies is that the spiders can’t index through them
(at least not yet). This limits your ability to have the search engines
index portions of your site. Many have speculated that the Big 3 are
working on solving this problem, but for the time being, avoid or limit
your use of these technologies.

5. Avoid
Unethical SEO: There are a lot of programs out there that help you to
acheive maxmum linkback ratios in a very short amount of time. Some of
them are good; some are bad. In fact, some of them will waste your
effort trying to post trivial comments on blogs or trying to maximize
your link exchanges. In my opinion, you should seek success in SEM the
right, ethical way. Seek out honest web companies to exchange a
moderate amount of links with. Post only relevant comments to forums
and blogs because that behavior leads to lasting link backs. Also,
don’t try to manipulate your website to make it appear to have a higher
PR than you really do. Google sees that one!

6.
Last, but not least, Articles: There is a little bit of controversial
talk about whether it is right to post articles for free use in
directories. In my opinion, you are providing a well needed service to
webmasters and I don’t see this one as a potential loss for 2006.
Information is valuable. And websites that need content (especially
fresh content) desire what you do to make their efforts a success. So
it is natural for your website rankings to benefit through backlinks
from those articles. It’s a win-win situation.

One
other thought on this subject. Right now, the search engines can punish
websites for having duplicate content, and that is an argument that
many will propose. But, the search engines will usually only punish you
if the html format of a web site is similar, not a couple of articles.
So posting articles is safe for now.

But be
cautious. Many lucrative methods of ethical SEO can be turned into a
problem when too many people attempt to abuse the technology.

So
that’s it. Short, but informative. SEO is both an art and a technology
that we have to use correctly for the right type of success. Who knows
what the year ahead may bring, but playing your cards right, you can
acheive success and avoid any pitfalls that may come.

About the author: John Wooton Author and Creator, The SEO Journal Blog