SEO is a relatively new marketing industry. Although there are many purported experts, most of us who call ourselves SEO specialists are learning. The search engines are constantly in flux, so SEO techniques that worked yesterday may not necessarily work tomorrow. As a result, it is exceedingly important to keep up with fervent pace of Internet, and search engines in particular.

One of frustrations of search engine placement is that your rankings are constantly fluctuating. The key to a successful search engine optimization campaign is creativity, perseverance and practice, practice, practice. Do not try to fool search engines by "tricking" them with unsavory techniques (e.g., keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text) because you will risk having your web site lose favor with search engines, or worse, getting banned altogether.

If you are developing a new web site or redesigning an old one, now is a good time to think about search engine optimization. This article will describe process of optimizing your web pages for search engines, as well as highlight some of other components that are important for a successful search engine marketing campaign.

WRITING KEYWORD-RICH WEB COPY

I'm sure you've heard old cliché: Content is king. Well, you know what, it is! Although Internet is graphic-rich, it is a text-based medium. Information is what your visitors are seeking. If you web site doesn't present information they want, don't forget your competitor's web site is only one mouse click away.

Search engines need copy to know what your web site's theme is and how your site should be indexed in their directory. If your home page consists solely of a Flash movie or an image map, there will be nothing for search engines to index. Flash is cool, but it is not so cool when your web site doesn't come up in search engine results.

So, how do you write keyword-rich copy?

The first thing you need to do is identify keyword phrases that are important and relevant to your web site. For instance, how would you describe your company, products and services? More importantly, how would your visitors describe your company, products and services? Although answer may seem like a no- brainer, it really isn't, because you need to think outside of box. You need to get into your visitor's head and think like your visitor. What search terms would they use to find your web site?

A good place to start your keyword research is by looking at your log files. What search terms are your visitors using to find you? Armed with this information, you can begin researching popularity of those terms. Researching your keywords is a very important task, because if you target wrong terms, your traffic will suffer. Although your site may rank number one for some obscure term, if no one is searching for that term, your site will not be found in search engines.

There are a number of handy tools available online to help you begin building your list of relevant keywords. Overture (formerly Goto.com) offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool on its web site that will not only tell you how many times a particular keyword phrase was queried in past month, it'll also present you with a list of alternative terms to consider for your search engine optimization campaign. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

In addition to utilizing keyword suggestion tools to research your keywords, I highly recommend brainstorming keywords with your co-workers, employees, friends and family members. Better yet, ask your clients and customers what terms they would use to search for your web site. Brainstorming keywords will teach you a lot about how others think and use Internet to find information.

Once you have identified your keywords, you will need to integrate them into body of your web page. Your sentences need to be intelligible and grammatically correct. Don't forget: Your web copy will be read by human beings, as well as search engines. If your web copy doesn't make sense, your visitors will hit their back button never to return again. Bad web copy will defeat whole purpose of your search engine optimization campaign.

WRITING YOUR META TAGS

The most important tag in header section of your web page is title tag. The title tag is displayed in bar at top of your browser window--above toolbar. Many webmasters do not use title tag properly. For example, their page will be titled "Home" or "Welcome," or worse yet "untitled," because they don't include a title at all. The search engines place a lot of relevance on words contained within title tag, so be sure to include your targeted keyword phrases when writing your title tag. This tag is generally limited to 60 characters, so choose your words with care.

The next important tag in header section is description meta tag. This tag is used to describe your web page. Like title tag, many of search engines will extrapolate this information to summarize your web site. Again, be sure to include your targeted keyword phrases.

The third and least important tag in header section is keywords meta tag. Because of abuse by unscrupulous webmasters, keywords tag is ignored by many of search engines. Even so, some do use it, so it doesn't hurt to include it. Like your title and description tag, choose your keywords carefully. Do not include keywords that are not included in body of your web copy or irrelevant to theme of your site.

LINK POPULARITY

Much is said about link popularity, but what is it exactly?

Next subject . . .

What about free submissions to FAST? Are they a thing of past?

According to Baker, "Free submit will continue to operate. There will be no effect on pages (already) in index. The inclusion service is simply a guarantee that your pages will be indexed regularly and are guaranteed a reservation in FAST index. The trick with free submit is amount of spam we receive through that channel. It makes it difficult to keep up with all of submissions. PartnerSite provides an economic incentive to NOT submit spam."

How quickly does FAST index free submissions?

Mr. Baker answered, "Usually within 2-6 weeks. However, 95% of what comes through free submission is spam, and that's what causes bottleneck. Also, there's no guarantee on refresh rate of those sites that we pick up through free submit. Unfortunately, it's 5% of submitters that are spammers that ruin it for rest of us. The extent that people go through to spam index is truly amazing."

Is there a penalty for submitting your site through their free Add URL?

Baker replied, "Not really. Freshness does effect rank, but only marginally. I have never seen freshness boost ranking more than 1 or 2 spaces."

What does FAST consider spam? As stated earlier, FAST estimates that an amazing 95% of submissions through their free Add URL page are spam.

Baker further explained, "Unfortunately this is case. We believe there are approximately 30 million crawlable servers globally, two-thirds of which have been blacklisted as spam servers."

Whew! Think about it: 20 MILLION crawlable servers globally are blacklisted as spam servers. If this is really true, it explains why engines have collectively gone to such great lengths in their efforts to curtail spam.

At Dallas Search Engine Strategies Conference in November, FAST introduced their new spam policies. Baker explained that according to FAST, spam comes in three different categories:

* Page Spam, which consists of any measures to boost ranking, such as link farms, etc. * Spam stuffing, such as keyword stuffing, invisible text, etc. * Offensive content, which is not so much spam, but is something that we detect and flag as such.

You can access and read Fast's entire spam policy at: http://www.alltheweb.com/info/spampolicy.html

And, if you're so inclined, you can report spam to FAST by emailing spam@fastsearch.com.

The ultimate fear of a search engine marketer: your site has been banned. What recourse is there for a site that gets on Fast's spam list and becomes banished from engine? Is this forever?

Baker replied, "This really is handled on a case by case basis. We have worked with sites that have contacted us and informed us that they have cleaned up their act. Obviously, this is very time consuming, so combination of PartnerSite, spam guidelines, and not having your site hosted on a banned server should enable a site to get in index through a variety of means if they think they have cleaned up their act."

Translated: If your site is hosted on one of 20 million servers tagged for spamming, you'd best move it to a different server before you initiate kiss-and-makeup ritual with FAST.

Baker further explained, "What really matters is server where submission is coming from. So many servers have been completely blacklisted due to proliferation of spam. I suggest 'know thy neighbor.' The crawler will take care of rest."

This again underscores importance of your site having its own unique IP address to insure against problems caused by an unruly site sharing same IP.

How does FAST feel about cloaking? In Dallas, Mr. Baker and I had a long discussion about cloaking and how FAST engine feels about it. We even served on a panel where a question came up about cloaking and about responsible cloaking guidelines.

As I mentioned to him, from our position as SEO's, we see issues from opposite perspectives. Of course, we don't have a front row seat to parade of spam but, even so, our viewpoint is dictated by that of legitimate businesses trying to ethically compete in arenas that are often very competitive and sometimes dominated by nefarious position jockeying. Therefore, on issue of cloaking, I pointed out instances where it's only tool available that prevents our work from being stolen. My thinking is there's no harm done provided that a person follows all of engine's guidelines and does not spam in any way.