Latest Google’s Updates March 2012: Anchor Text, Image Search, Navigational Queries Search & More

Google’s latest round of search quality updates is now available, and — at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old SEO — this month’s seems even more difficult to grasp than normal. There are a lot of words in this month’s list of 50 changes, but it appears to me that there’s not really a lot of explanation.

So be it, though. The monthly updates are a welcome thing from Google’s search team, and they’re always good to get discussion and speculation going.

With that in mind, here are a few of the items that stand out to me on first perusal of Google’s blog post.

Anchor Text Tweaks

There are two items on the list that make specific reference to how Google processes anchor text. Here they are, word-for-word from the announcement:

Tweaks to handling of anchor text. [launch codename "PC"] This month we turned off a classifier related to anchor text (the visible text appearing in links). Our experimental data suggested that other methods of anchor processing had greater success, so turning off this component made our scoring cleaner and more robust.

Better interpretation and use of anchor text. We’ve improved systems we use to interpret and use anchor text, and determine how relevant a given anchor might be for a given query and website.

The first mentions a specific classifier (i.e., signal) that’s been turned off; the second mentions a new way (signals?) for determining anchor text relevance.

Your guess is as good as mine re: what exactly that means. Comments are open if you want to speculate or tell us (and other readers) what you’ve noticed lately regarding links and anchor text.

Image Search Changes

There are also a couple items related to image search, and more specifically related to the quality of the pages on which images appear:

More relevant image search results. [launch codename "Lice"] This change tunes signals we use related to landing page quality for images. This makes it more likely that you’ll find highly relevant images, even if those images are on pages that are lower quality.

Improvements to Image Search relevance. [launch codename "sib"] We’ve updated signals to better promote reasonably sized images on high-quality landing pages.

In one case, lower quality pages are rewarded; in the other, “reasonably sized” (I read that as “smaller”) images on better quality pages are rewarded. I think.

Indexing Symbols

Google is no longer ignoring several punctuation marks and symbols. As the owner of a website whose name begins with the @ symbol, I love this one. (It used to be that searches for “@U2″ led to the official site, U2.com, not my independent site.)

Improvements to handling of symbols for indexing. [launch codename "Deep Maroon"] We generally ignore punctuation symbols in queries. Based on analysis of our query stream, we’ve now started to index the following heavily used symbols: “%”, “$”, “\”, “.”, “@”, “#”, and “+”. We’ll continue to index more symbols as usage warrants.

I would think this will also benefit searches for Twitter usernames, for example. And maybe hashtags? Haven’t checked on that. Feel free to ignore me.

Navigational Queries

There are a pair of updates regarding navigational queries:

Improvements to results for navigational queries. [launch codename "IceMan5"] A “navigational query” is a search where it looks like the user is looking to navigate to a particular website, such as [New York Times] or [wikipedia.org]. While these searches may seem straightforward, there are still challenges to serving the best results. For example, what if the user doesn’t actually know the right URL? What if the URL they’re searching for seems to be a parked domain (with no content)? This change improves results for this kind of search.

Better handling of queries with both navigational and local intent. [launch codename "ShieldsUp"] Some queries have both local intent and are very navigational (directed towards a particular website). This change improves the balance of results we show, and helps ensure you’ll find highly relevant navigational results or local results towards the top of the page as appropriate for your query.

On that second one, I did a search for the word “twigs.” When my location was set local to my hometown, Google showed results for a local restaurant named Twigs at the top of the results page. When I changed my location to New York City, it showed an East Village hair salon named Twigs. Results related to actual twigs (branches) were further down the page. If that’s what they’re referring to, this is an interesting change.

Other Changes Worth Reading Closely

Here are a few other things that caught my eye:

More accurate short answers. [project codename "Porky Pig"] We’ve updated the sources behind our short answers feature to rely on data from Freebase. This improves accuracy and makes it easier to fix bugs.

Improvements to freshness. [launch codename "Abacus", project codename "Freshness"] We launched an improvement to freshness late last year that was very helpful, but it cost significant machine resources. At the time we decided to roll out the change only for news-related traffic. This month we rolled it out for all queries.

Better indexing of profile pages. [launch codename "Prof-2"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of public profile pages in our index from more than two-hundred social sites.

There are also several updates related to synonyms and universal search results.

But what stood out to you as you read through the 50 search updates for March? Comments are open.
Written By: Matt McGee Source: SearchEngineLand.com

Search Engines vs. News Sites - Optimizing News for Searchers

While content is central to news publishers’ value proposition, you could say that distribution is a close second. Before the Internet, consumers either got their news from a newspaper, a magazine, or a TV broadcast (and word of mouth, but for our purposes, we’ll stick with the media versions).

These media channels are essentially “push” distribution vehicles delivering, at scale, a produced and edited unit – the news – for mass consumption. Even if consumers wanted to engage with multiple news sources, it's difficult to read five newspapers in a day or watch three separate news broadcasts simultaneously.

This paradigm changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet, as readers could now easily read snippets of news from various sources with a few clicks of the mouse. You could scan the front pages of several newspapers, or even more simply, scan the headlines on a news aggregation site in a matter of seconds to get a quick feel for what is happening in the world. Furthermore, if there was a single big story that day, you could read through dozens of articles on the same subject for different angles and tidbits.

With this paradigm shift, news distribution has evolved into being more of a “pull” mechanism, where consumers are in greater control of what news they consume and how they consume it. News discovery has evolved beyond deciding which TV station to watch; consumers can request information on particular subjects and they’ll come right to your computer screen. Search plays a critical role in this discovery process, and when analyzing the data, some notable patterns emerge.

News Search Optimization – Search Engines vs. News Sites

Keeping up on news search optimization is a daunting task for any news publisher or marketer. With the news business being so dynamic, it's hard enough keeping up on all of the latest news stories, let alone optimizing your search campaigns to capitalize on breaking news at a moment’s notice.

SEO and SEM professionals at these organizations are constantly trying to come up with evergreen architecture and techniques to maximize their exposure as events unfold. Although this is often the most pressing concern with news search, there is an overlooked area worth paying attention to as well:

• Is the way that searchers look for news on search engines any different than the way they look for news on news websites? 
• Is there anything we can learn from this that would allow us to better prioritize our marketing efforts?

News-related searching has ballooned over the past few years, both on search engines and on news sites, but how people search on these different sites and what they search for differs greatly.

For the purposes of this research, search engines are defined as the big 5 web searches – Google web search, Yahoo web search, Bing web search, AOL web search, and Ask web search – while news site search includes the six largest news sites based on their search totals – Yahoo-ABC News Network, Google News, Bing News, NYTimes.com, CNN.com, and MSNBC.com.

In February 2012, U.S. searchers conducted 371 million news related searches on search engines, as defined by comScore’s intent categorization methodology, which accounted for 2.3 percent of all search engines searches performed during the month.

But searches performed on non-search engine news sites actually outdistanced search engines news search, totaling 581 million searches in February. Although search engines play an integral role in the news discovery process, the actual news providers and aggregators are still leading the pack.

Behaviorally speaking, it appears that consumers of news data are still more likely to go directly to a “news” specific search engine than they are to run news searches on search engines themselves. The vertical nature of these sites appears to resonate with the searchers, as news searchers are less interested in extraneous results for their news searches that they may get on the broader search engines (e.g., Whitney Houston CDs being sold right next to the news article they want to read regarding her funeral).

News Search Behavior Reflects Search Context

With a review of the actual terms that news searchers use on these different types of search sites, we can see a distinct difference in the intent of the searchers. Search engine news searches focus heavily on a particular news destination.
Within the top 25 search terms driving traffic to News/Information sites in February, half referred to specific news destinations, such as “CNN”, “TMZ”, “Fox News”, and “MSNBC.” The searchers clearly want to be taken to a news specific destination to consume their news.

Search terms driving traffic to news sites from search engines – February 2012

News site searchers, on the other hand, focus almost exclusively on the content they’re interested in because they are already at their intended news destination. The search term lists pulled from news site search isn’t cluttered with branded news destinations, they are solely about stories and topics of interest.

Celebrity name searching is a particular favorite, dominating the Top 25 list. If this data is any indication, it becomes abundantly clearly why the Paparazzi follow celebrities everywhere they go, U.S. consumers are obsessed with reading about them!

Using Search Intelligence to Win Long Term News Brand Loyalty

Based on the intelligence available, there are opportunities for news publishers and marketers to better allocate their advertising resources that could drive better click-through rates and engagement.

When searchers are on search engines, they focus very heavily on finding a branded news destination first, before searching for a particular news story. So anything that can be done to better brand your news destination site could potentially drive much greater long term value with search engine searchers. This is not to say that optimizing your news stories to be found on search engines isn’t valuable, but the behavioral inference that they rely heavily on branded news destination search terms can impact your broader marketing efforts.

News searchers type in a news destination first, and then search for specific news stories after arriving on those news sites. Being that the branded destinations are key to the way searchers navigate to news stories from search engines, you have to allocate your marketing resources accordingly across search, display, and video. You don’t want to just be their news destination for today’s stories, but for every day’s stories.
Written By: Eli Goodman Source: SearchEngineWatch.com

How Google Panda has Turned Our SEO Strategies

Google Panda has made life hard for a large number of SEO specialists and websites and so they are now looking forward to solutions in order to fight against the Google Panda algorithm. Actually, the main idea is about countering the strategies of Google Panda. In all, the primary focus of Google is to push the websites which the average user enjoys visiting higher in rankings. At the same time, it wants to push the unnecessary and boring websites to the low rankings.

What should you do?

The main objective of the search engine giant is to offer the users better quality and top page results. Indeed, Google quoted once that its objective is to low rank sites that are of bad quality and so ensure that the good sites get the change to be at top of the search engine results.
Earlier the webmasters needed to focus on getting the sites indexed in any way. This in turn meant that higher is the number of pages which are being indexed, more keywords will thus remain in the Google Index for the particular site. And so, this would then facilitate traffic which the site earned to it. But, now there has been considerable change in the manner the search engine indexes different pages and has thus put pressure on webmasters because they need to work hard and make the sites get observed in top search engine results. Link Wheel Service is one of the Seo Strategy which still works like charm so you can use it for boost in your SERPs.

Times have changed now

It can thus be said that Google Panda has changed the strategies that we earlier used for SEO. Now, you need to optimize the site in a way that it takes less loading time. Never give the chance to users to go away from your site even for a second. Ensure that you put sufficient efforts as well as time to structure your site, optimize the images, videos that take much time to get uploaded. Google indeed prefers the sites that are efficient and fast.

Points to keep in mind

Also, now, you need to focus on good quality content if you really wish to fight against the Google Panda algorithm. Ensure that your content is both original and useful and is written by the ones who actually know the topic and have interest in it.
After the Google Panda, now you even have to measure your site carefully and thus modify it for the better. Surely, you will have to modify the site if you wish to fight against Panda. It is crucial that you measure overall performance of the site first and analyze it in perfect way. Ensure that you even make changes in site accordingly and make it come in line with requirements and guidelines of Google Panda.

Give preference to users

While you optimize the site, ensure that you do it for the users first and then for search engines. So, let the users come first and focus later on the search engine as this is where you will be able to match the thinking of Google. The design needs to be compelling and impactful. Even the navigational structure needs to be user friendly and easy to use.
When you keep these points in mind, you will see that you site will enjoy amazing results even after the Google Panda effect.

Summary: Google Panda has changed a lot of SEO strategies that were used earlier for one’s benefit. Now you need to keep in mind some important points to beat the Panda and have your site at top.
Written By: Ankit Pandey Source: Skotgat.com

Content Strategy for SEO and Social Media: Tips to Ensure Success

An effective SEO strategy involves much more than content strategy. However, the content strategy takes the center place of the overall SEO strategy and makes up the major factor of SEO success. In this article, you will find important tips to maximize the effectiveness of your content and to ensure the SEO success in return.

Realizing the Importance of Benchmarking

Before building your content strategy, you should be aware of what is happening in your niche especially on your competitors’ websites. You should not only follow their rankings but also know where they position themselves in the market. The benchmarking strategy is important to be relevant to your customers’ needs and expectations. Also, it allows you to assess the results of your marketing strategies including the content strategy.

Understanding the 5 W’s of the Content Strategy

Creating unique and fresh content based on a keyword strategy is a must have aspect of a successful content strategy. But before going that far, you should base your gatherings from benchmarking studies on the 5 W’s strategy. The 5 W’s strategy involves the questions of “why”, “who”, “what”, “when and how” and “where”. More clearly, you should find the best answers of why do you want to create content, who is your content for, what are you trying to achieve with your content, when and how are you going to create the content and where will your content be posted. The answers to these questions are extremely important to refine and build a successful content strategy.

Following Search Trends

A successful content strategy for SEO purposes requires you to follow the search trends to find current search terms relevant to your content. You can achieve this by using Google alerts, Google AdWords Keyword Tool or some social media monitoring tools. By using this strategy, you can create new content with current search terms and also update your existing content according to current search trends. Your efforts of updating your content will surely be rewarded by Google and other search engines and will help increase your search rankings.

Creating Keyword Focused Pages

It is imperative to focus on one keyword for each main page to get the best SEO results. For the best practices of keyword focused pages, you should divide up your content on the main product or service pages to cover a specific topic. For example, if you are selling discount kitchen cabinets online, you can divide your content up into custom kitchen cabinets, contemporary kitchen cabinets, wood kitchen cabinets, wall kitchen cabinets, base kitchen cabinets, etc. You should be as specific as you can in order to focus on more keywords which will increase the chance that your customers find what they are looking for.
Another important strategy is to use the keywords properly and in the right places. In fact, you should use the main keyword in your title, first 50 words of your article, last sentences and H1 tag. These are the most essential places, but you can surely use your keyword in other places too as long as you do it naturally and without overdoing it.

Using LSI (Latent Semantic Index) Keywords

While it is extremely important to focus on your main keyword during your content creation, using LSI keywords in your content shouldn’t be skipped either. This is a powerful strategy and can boost your page rank right away.
LSI keywords help search engines associate your main keyword with the actual topic your content is about. For example, if your keyword is “dinner plates”, you wouldn’t want search engines to relate your content to unrelated terms such as “license plates” or “collector plates”. With the LSI technology, search engines look at your content and try to find other terms to associate your main keyword with the appropriate topic of your content. Therefore, if you have food related terms in your content such as knives, steaks, recipes, etc., then the search engines will index your content for the term “dinner plates".

The important tip in this matter is to use your main keyword 1 to 4% of the time while using LSI keywords 1 to 2% of the time. Another tip is to use Google Keyword Tool to find LSI keywords. You should search for terms that are relevant to your main keyword. When you have a list of terms, sort them by their relevancy to your main keyword and choose the most relevant ones as your LSI keywords.

Creating Engaging and Likable Content

The readability of your content may not be assessed by the search engines but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to it for SEO purposes. Search engines measure visitors’ behaviors during their visits to websites. If you have unique, relevant and smooth flowing content, your visitors will spend more time on your pages and may possibly want to visit other pages linked to the page they have enjoyed reading. Even if your content is a technical or fact based topic, you should make your content engaging and likable to your readers.

Adding and Updating Content Continuously

There are great benefits to adding new and updating existing content. Top search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing like fresh content. By adding new and updating existing content, you show search engines that you care about your readers. To achieve favorable SEO results, you should update at least a few times a week. Some of the effective ways of updating your content includes adding fresh blog posts and using Twitter syndication and Facebook integration. You can also update the existing content manually with current information.
Speaking of adding new and updating existing content continuously, you can use an editorial calendar for your updates or new content. More clearly, you can target new keywords related to specific events or certain times relevant to your product or service. For example, an outdoor gear seller can benefit from adding new or updating existing content just before winter regarding snowshoe models and prices.

Creating Successful Calls to Action

Many people would agree that having successful calls to action in your content is extremely important to achieve business objectives. However, some of those people overlook its importance for SEO purposes. Successful calls to action improve positive user experience and increase your customer base. All these help you reach your SEO objectives in return.
For successful calls to action, tell your visitors what action to take and direct them to the link they should click. Also, your calls to action should be simple, offer benefits and have a positive approach.
Building Internal and External Linking Structures
For the best SEO results, you should build internal and external linking structures as part of your content strategy. Your pages should have quality links from relevant sources to your homepage and also deep links to the other relevant pages. These links help search engines determine the relevance of your content and the rankings of your pages. On the other hand, internal linking emphasizes the important pages and help search engines determine what your website is about.
The important tip here is to use proper anchor texts for your links. In your anchor texts, you should use relevant keywords to the page you are linking to and avoid using invaluable terms like “click here” or “read more”.
To sum up, to ensure SEO success, you should have a carefully planned and well applied content strategy. Your strategy should include using benchmarking, answering 5 W’s, updating your content with current search terms, creating keyword focused pages, using LSI keywords, creating engaging and likable content, adding new and updating existing content continuously, creating successful calls to action and building internal and external.
By: Anthony Saladino Source: NoobPreneur.com

50 Qualities of the Best Business Blogs in the World

Every day I get emails from all over the world of business owners and marketers asking me one simple question:
“Marcus, will you take a quick look at my blog?”
And to the best of my ability, I always try to take a look. Yes, I’m feeling the time crunch more and more, but I still find so much joy in having someone in Europe put enough trust in a “pool guy from Virginia” to give him or her blogging advice.

Doing It Right

I mention this because over the last 2 years I’ve looked at and analyzed hundreds of business blogs. Some companies were big. Others were small. Some had an army of content producers and curators. Others had an army of one. Some had an unlimited budget for blogging and social media while others couldn’t rub two nickels together. Some sold soap. Other sold jet engines.

Yep, by this point, I’ve seen some of the best, worst, and most diverse the blogosphere has to offer.
This being said, I’m always impressed with businesses doing it right. I love it when success is achieved and when folks are getting positive results through the incredible medium that is blogging.
But results don’t just come naturally. There are certain actions and qualities that one must take in order to rise above the chatter and receive the love from their readers, their industry, and the other master of all—Google.
So that’s what this post is about, 50 of the most essential qualities of some of the greatest business blogs in the world. Here goes…

50 Qualities of the Best Business Blogs in the World

1. They answer the basic consumer questions first and foremost.
2. They don’t suffer from the curse of knowledge.
3. They don’t try to impress readers because they know that happens naturally with great teaching.
4. They don’t brag about themselves, their company, and why they’re so awesome.
5. They are willing to have a conversation below the post (in the comments section) or behind the scenes via email.
6. They don’t waste words, and if they can state it shorter, they do.
7. The owner/CEO of the company is involved and also is a blog contributor.
8. They include at least one image on every post.
9. They make it readable by using short paragraphs, bullets, headers, etc.
10. They include video as much as possible.
11. They address subjects no one else in their industry is willing to address.
12. If they see something wrong in their industry, they tactfully call-out the action, person, or company doing it.
13. They leverage as many employees as they can in the content curation process, and see every member of their staff as a “blog contributor.”
14. They don’t have a bunch of frivolous red tape, filters, and stupid management teams holding up every blog article that’s written.
15. They have thick skin and don’t back down as soon as someone doesn’t like what they have to say.
16. They are very consistent in their writing schedule, and most post at least twice per week.
17. They recognize the importance of great content combined with solid SEO, and don’t turn their back on either one of the two.
18. They don’t like to waste the time of their readers.
19. They never talk about their silly company picnic, employee retreat, etc.
20. They look to shine light on others “doing it right” in their industry.
21. They don’t try to make everyone happy.
22. In fact, they push customers out of the sales funnel as much as they push customers down the sales funnel, all for the pursuit of building the right tribe and creating the right clients.
23. They don’t care about their competitors stealing their “secret sauce” because, well, it’s likely not a secret anyway.
24. Their writing has personality, flair, and passion—the opposite of a college lecture hall.
25. They don’t give a rip about metrics that don’t mean a dang thing…like Klout.
26. They don’t bury their head in the sand when it comes to addressing issues (good, bad, and ugly) their readers are thinking about.
27. They are the best listeners in the world because they understand that listening to customers is all they really need to do in order to have unlimited ideas for blog content.
28. They are master storytellers.
29. They talk about their customers way more than they talk about themselves.
30. They write with passion and clarity.
31. They know their shtick.
32. They’re not afraid to make you laugh or make you cry.
33. They see themselves as “teachers” and “educators.” This is not just a blog thing, it’s a cultural shift within the company.
34. They quickly get rid of employees that don’t share this vision.
35. They see everything their business does, every service it renders, and ever product it carries, as a content opportunity.
36. They stay on the cutting-edge of their industry.
37. They run stories and articles when no one else will…because it’s the right thing to do and they’ve got guts.
38. They know by “giving it away” they will receive way more in the long run than their competitors who hoard information, thought, and industry best-practices.
39. They make the time to blog when there is none.
40. They understand the need for community, but also realize community is nothing unless their business doors are actually open and they’re turning a profit.
41. They invest money into their blogging platform so it doesn’t look cheap.
42. Even though their goal is to educate, they still understand the power of subtle selling, calls-to-action, etc.
43. They focus on numbers that matter the most—visits, leads, and conversions…and not on stats that don’t always equal profits—likes, tweets, shares, etc.
44. They are willing to be imperfect, make mistakes, and learn as they go.
45. They track their blog’s ROI (return on investment) and realize which articles are generating the most revenue and which ones are not.
46. They think wayyyy outside the box.
47. They show gratitude, support, and sincere appreciation to those readers, fans, and other companies that support them.
48. They don’t strive for “awards” or “best-of lists” or anything of that matter, understanding that such accolades will come naturally if they just do their part.
49. They understand complaining for the sake of complaining is a stupid business model and eventually, if done too much, will turn them into “the boy who cried wolf.”
50. They love what they do. They do it well. And they are relentless in their pursuit of excellence.

Your Turn

What’s funny about this list is that even though I’ve listed 50, there are many more I’ve not mentioned, which is why I’d love to know your thoughts. What qualities would you add to the list? Which ones do you disagree with? Which ones have you had the toughest time with?
Written By:  Source: TheSalesLion.com

55 Quick SEO Tips, Every SEO should know

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Source; Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO trainer based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing.

By Richard V. Burckhardt! Source: SearchEngineJournal.com