The "professional" affiliations are tracked by a site called "Eliyon.com Business People Search" where links to web mentions are tied to byline of my articles. Seems their forte is finding business mentions to connect with names. OK. But I was surprised to see that one company that I work with was incorrectly listed as being in Northern California, when they are in fact in Southern California. Oh, and they incorrectly named, but correctly linked to web site of that company.

This type of error is probably common in online databases and is one of biggest problems with this type of data aggregation. It is not kept current or accurate by all sources and there are others with same name, etc. There is a prominent link on Eliyon.com site labeled "Log in to Update your Profile" or Didn't find yourself? Add your profile!" link is ridiculous. Why give them info they don't have so they give it to everyone else?

The Property Info tab is truly offensive as it gives you a link to county tax assessors office record of any property owned by someone you've searched for. Plus their home address, square footage of their house, how much it is worth and amount of taxes owed on it. Oh, and phone number, street address, zip code.

The multiple other options take you to financial records such as bankruptcy filings, political contributions, defaulted loans and dozens of other possible financial records you don't want world to see. Why is this acceptable - and bigger question - why is this legal?

A very interesting note comes from Pretrieve.com privacy page where they make this curious statement: "It may seem contrary for a company dedicated to making public information more easily accessible to be an ardent supporter of information privacy, but fact is we take information privacy rights extremely seriously. We believe public information should be open and made available to everyone as adamantly as we believe private information should remain private."

But doesn't making all sources of public information easily available, make possible private information easily available along with it? Actually, this only applies to informaiton directly available on pretrieve site, which is nothing other than your computer and connection info as they don't require registration to use their service. They do place cookies on your hard drive so site will not work if you turn off that option in your browser. The information business seems to be full of contradictions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. - Lock and Load. Prepare Your Site The bottom line is, you will need to concentrate and stuff your target keywords throughout your website, whenever possible, until they are actually 7% or so of all words on page itself (If you go higher than 7%, its at "your own risk". Google and other search engines have "spam alerts" that detect overzealous practices). Repeating keywords too many times on a page can look "funny" to your customers even though Google may like it, so you have to balance your SEO goals with common sense.

This is a brief list of SEO tips you should do to your website in order to focus on a particular set of keywords:

The TITLE tag of your html should include your target keywords

The META TITLE tag of your html should include your target keywords

The META DESCRIPTION tag of your html should include your target keywords

The META KEYWORDS tag of your html should include ALL of your keywords, with most targeted ones listed first, and separated by commas. Last time I checked, Google doesn't read Meta Tags, but its good to do this anyway for other search engines.

If you have a domain which also includes your keywords within name itself (www.my-keywords-are-here.com), you'll get "brownie" points from Google that will help.

Your header tags (H1, H2, etc.) should include your targeted keywords if you use them.

The first major sentence on your page should include your target keywords and concentrate on overall theme of your website.

The overall "density" of your page, should be high (7% or so of all words on page) for your target keywords. I use an online density checker to help with this.

If you "bold" your target keywords on page (sometimes), you'll get brownie points from Google. Link and image ALT tags are good places to "stuff" with target keywords if you need to build your density.

Other pages on your website that link back to your homepage should have target keywords within anchor text (displayed text) of link. The more pages on your site that practice step above, better

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. - Party Invitations. Get Your Site Listed on High PageRank Websites

This may be most important SEO step and that's why I listed it in red. The heart of Google Pagerank system scores your site based on quality of links that OTHER sites have pointing to yours, known as incoming links. By quality, I mean other sites with a high Pagerank score. My personal opinion is that Pagerank system has turned Internet into a "country club" in some ways. If you run with "in crowd", you get points for it. Regardless of what I think about system, I decided to "play ball" in order to get my websites listed well in directories.

One of easiest ways to get incoming links is to participate in a common Internet practice called reciprocal linking. This is where you agree with another website that "if you link to me, I'll link to you". What matters here is Pagerank of other site. If your site starts out at PR 0, it can be hard to find a PR6 site that wants to link to you! This is also because OUTgoing links actually cost sponsoring website a few points. One type of site that lives to list other websites and aren't so PR-conscious are web directories. All most require is a reciprocal link.

Search on Google.com for web directories that have a good PR ranking. Reciprocal links are good and will get spiders to recognize your site, but one-way links are even better. Google doesn't score reciprocal links between two sites "as high" because it's "an arrangement" between sites. Google will score your site much higher if you have a one-way link on another site that points to your site, even though your site does not link back to that site. When I learned this, I thought "Great, but where can I get one-way links?"

I discovered that because of rising demand of links with high Pagerank, there is now an auction specifically made for auctioning off high-PR one-way links (search for it on Google). PR7 one-way links are auctioned off there for about $50. The rule-of-thumb is that highest incoming PR link you have should make your site 2 PR less (a PR8 link should at least create a new PR6 site). I highly recommend site as a source for high PR links. One link can set your website on fast track to great search engine listings.

One more quick tip: The anchor text in your incoming links should contain your target keywords for maximum effect with Google.

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Conclusion:

After you've done Steps I. - III., you should see some spider hits within a few days of your directory listings. Google may then list some or all of your website pages. You can check your listings in Google by going there and searching for "allinurl:www.yourdomain.com". After 6-8 weeks, you should see full effects of your efforts, and your Pagerank should rise. If you've "reached for skies" and targeted very popular keywords and aren't seeing any results, alter your website so that it targets keywords whose listings in Google are more attainable. Be patient. This process takes monitoring and fine-tuning.

That's all I have on search engine optimization for today. It's a challenge that takes effort, but it's nice to actually see some results after a few weeks. That's more than I can say for some of other "advertising magic wands" that are sold all over Internet.

Good Luck!