My interest to write this article was spurred by a piece of spam email that I had recieved earlier in day. It was from a company that was claiming to help me build my "link popularity" by buying link packages off of them.

The email was actually well written, and it definately gained my interest enough that I figured I would check it out. There were even 3 testimonials that sounded like this was THEE place to be if you wanted top search engine rankings.

Upon visiting site, which was nicely designed, and very professional looking, I started to "play". Within less than 5 minutes I abruptly left site, and will never go back....WHY?

Well, let me explain;

If you are ever contemplating paying somebody big bucks to do SEO work for you, there are few real easy tests you can run to determine if they are even worthy of you giving them time of day. These are so easy, a 10 year old can do them, and they can save you a bundle!

You will need Google Toolbar installed for these tests! Go to toolbar.google.com and download it for free. It only takes a few minutes to install.

The first thing I did was entered URL of their website in my browser in 2 different formats. One with www, and one without. The reason I do this, is because there are many sites out there that have different Google PR values with or without www. This is simply determined on how they promote and link their site. If I am losing you here, let me show you what I mean;

Link Exchange Exchange links with other sites that relate to yours. Look for other sites that could be of interest to your visitors. Avoid one of most common mistakes of naming filename of your link exchange page 'links'. This is one mistake that is often made and can save future problems from occurring. It is also a good idea to organize your link exchange page. Break links down into categories such as Internet Marketing, Shopping, Business Opportunities and so on. You can also move in on keywords that you're trying to rank with by using them in your link exchanges. An example of this would be if you were trying to rank high with keywords scrapbooking at home you would use those words in your exchange.

Directory Listings Some of best advertising available online would be getting listed in directories. This doesn't mean submitting to search engines. If you write quality ad copies and build a quality site; important search engines will find you. What I am talking about is directories that you pay to be listed in. A good example of this is http://www.WahmStateDirectory.com These types of directories you pay to be listed for a certain amount of time. Some are weekly, monthly or in this case are yearly. This is also an excellent way to get those 'back links' to help you rank better in search engines.

Website Design There are a few details that you can add to each web page to help increase search engine traffic and in turn increase targeted traffic to your website.

Title tags Use your targeted keywords for title. The HTML code for your title tags should look like following:

< html > < head > < title > Your page title (keywords) here < /title >

Meta tags Again, you can use your keywords in meta tags and describe each page within them. The HTML code for your meta tags should look like following:

< html > < head > < title > Your page title (keywords) here < /title >