 seo checklist simple tricks to optimize your website internet marketing a little history sometime in 1995 a hip historian coined the term the year of internet everywhere everyone who was anyone was trying to get online andwell do what the internet was kinda dull back then my first ever internet activity consisted of waiting 10 minutes to download a 10 second video clip of a frog dissection a strange choice yes indeed but back then it was all a brave and exciting new world served up on the information superhighwayor in those times of dialup connections more of a small twolane road plagued with hazardous pit stops and mired with construction back then all you had to do to get noticed was be the first in your industry to have a website and there were always mindblowing special effects like blinking text  you re very own virtual snowflakes  or my favorite  psychedelic backgrounds  if that wasn t enough you could always just place thousands of keywords somewhere invisibly in your website to fool every search engine in the world into thinking that your website is better than all the others flash forward to the present it s certainly not 1995 anymore on the internet with over 15 billion users and conservatively about 150 million websites you re destined to the vagaries of the the second or third results page or worse for all but the most specific keywords searches total obscurity the opposite of seo the idea that you can put up a website and just be found is optimistic at best unless you re market is an extremely small niche or local market even then your website will most likely get lost in the shuffle of competitors who may have more money and a better established web presence if i can be metaphysical for a moment if someone builds a website and no one visits it does it even exist fortunately there are a few things you can do on your own that can help the internet has the potential to be the great equalizer allowing small to compete with companies with far more money in fact being more nimble and adaptable small companies are often better equipped to respond to internet trends don t be fooled though search engine optimization is a marathon not a sprint and it takes some real dedication the benefit is when you re done you won t just have more traffic to your website you ll have developed a real working marketing plan and vision enjoy the list i ll probably be expounding on these in greater detail in the coming weeks this list will be just to get you thinking in future editions i ll link to resources i ve collected from all corners of the web that will help give you the edge on your online competition seo and sem checklist do s and don ts some do s do use relevant keywords  what would people type to find your kind of business put those words on your site it s not about keyword density it s about keyword variety get in the mind of the searcher keep industry jargon to a minimum and use words and phrases that you think people would use when searching for you use as many of the phrases as possible in your page content without sounding forced get these words into your page title and heading tags too do make your site intuitive and clean  people like looking at pretty things make your site one of those things but don t sacrifice usability and intuitiveness for looks if people don t understand your site they will surely leave and never return  do develop compelling content  people like surfing the web to read interesting things or find just the information they were looking for or just to have a laugh people don t like browsing the web to read your company s mission statement or sales writeup there aren t many shortcuts here but you don t need to write a book to get noticed add some new content every week and you ll be surprised at your growth make that content informative or funny or controversial or on current topics keep making fresh content  do develop relationships with complimentary businesses and link to each other s webpages  the secret to having a site that search engines trust is being linked to by other quality sites this is a slow process but a worthwhile one if there are any business directories in your field try to get a link from them there are a lot of junk directories out there some good ones are dmoz   yahoo directory  or best of the web  do keep your site fresh or risk google finding it stale  search engines rightly assume that sites which receive more frequent updates contain more relevant information keep your site fresh by blogging posting recent news updating your content or adding new content do give people a chance to participate  today websites are about interactivity and community give people a chance to contribute with comments a forum a blog or a subscription service interactive websites help keep your site fresh and keyword rich develop links and help you maintain customer relationships possibly use payperclick ads to see results faster   ppc advertising allows you to show up on the first page of results sometimes even on top of your big competitors these ads are how search engines make their money but if you use them well they ll make you money too do track your progress  use a good site metrics tool like google analytics to measure how your traffic grows hopefully over time you ll also get some insight into where the traffic is coming from and what they re doing when they get to your site it can be a bit technical to use install but we ll cover this later do test test test  you can t always know what s going to work or leave you high and dry with internet marketing search engine marketing is part science and part art people are your variable and despite our best efforts we can never quite predict what people will think of your website just look at some of the these web fads  dancing baby   lolcats  and mahir  who would have thought  do stay the course  changes don t happen overnight but they will happen keep at it some don ts don t duplicate copy content from other webpages  or the google secret police will find you out and make your site mysteriously disappear don t use link farms   uh what s a link farm a collection of sites interlinked with each other often deceptively in theory these farms increase the amount of sites linking to you but in practice they re havens for spammers and disreputable sites you know the old saying that you are who your friends are well google thinks so too links from spammy websites makes your page look spammy don t repeat keywords over and over  you re righting for people first and search engines second don t rely on flash or javascript to display your page  google can t see it and there s a significant chance that a lot of your visitors can t see it either both are great to add visual spice or some bonus functionality but the technology just isn t there to support it s use for full site development if it seems like a lot to remember well it is if it was easy everyone would be doing it search engine optimization has come a long way from the days of keywords and meta tags and that s a good thing but it means that succeeding in the virtual business world requires real work but most people don t understand what s involved or don t care to try it and that s your edge using just a couple of these tricks can give you results in a matter of days but search engine marketing is a long term online business growth strategy and your business will be all the better for it    internet marketing search engines sem seo  