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Author: Ben Weinbaum

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is the science of preparing a website to naturally increase its presence on the internet. SEO is one of the most desirable ways to bring in traffic because of its residual effects in major search engines. Unlike Pay Per Click, there are no long term costs asscioated SEO.

A website can get a large amount of traffic without any advertising costs. Although Aggregate Traffic Solutions does charge for its services, the benefits it provides will greatly reduce your cost day after day as more visitors discover your website. Getting your website to show up as the #1 result on Google is obviously everyone's dream. Believe it or not, this can be accomplished. Just type in the word "miserable failure" in Google and look what comes up.

SEO can be successful for those who take the time to do it properly, and I stress the word properly. Since probably 99% of webmasters don't know the basic do's and dont's of SEO, let me explain how search engines decide which websites to display given a specific "keyword" query.

Let's say you type in the work "Guitar" into Google and hit search. What we find is there are 838 million results by looking in the top right corner. This means Google has indexed 838 million webpages with the word "Guitar" embedded somewhere on a page. This does not mean there are 838 million websites containing the word "Guitar" nor are there 838 million webpages that contain the word "Guitar." This just means Google has indexed 838 million webpages containing the word "Guitar."

Well you may think to yourself that Google displays the webpages that get the most traffic first. Wrong. Well maybe then Google displays the webpages that are the most popular. Yes and No. There are hundreds of things Google looks at in deciding the order of results. All of them are trade secrets and Google doesn't say and will never say squat about their methodology. But SEO professionals know that from trial and error, we can see what works and what doesn't. There are two general criteria that search engines put the most weight on. Content and Relevance.

When we talk about content, we really mean the relevance of the keywords in your content and vice versa. If your website is about guitars, we need the word "guitars" to be optimized for that webpage. That brings keyword density into the mix. Keyword density is simply the # of times a specific keyword appears in the HTML divided by the sum of all other words. Keeping a keyword density of around 3-5% is a good is a benchmark. Anything less than that and search engines won't think we are relevant enough and anything more and search engines will think we are spamming, which we will get to later. Keyword density does not only apply to the body text, it also applies to the meta tags, title tags, header tags, alt tags and link anchor text. It is best to keep all tags similar in keyword content. If we are optimizing for the word guitar, but have the word television in our tags and no where else in the body text, we may be viewed negatively by search engines even though we have a good keyword density. We are trying to make a good impression for the search engines and relevant content is king.

This is only the beginning of SEO. What we have just done in the above paragraph is tell the world that our website is relevant to what they're looking for. Now we need the world to tell web surfers that our website is indeed relevant. This brings us to link popularity.

Link Popularity is a very misunderstood concept. Many people think that just because you have more backlinks pointing to your site, the better. Well in reality, more backlinks can actually damage your rankings. There are 7 important components to link building that search engines view as significant.

1. One Way Links
2. Reciprocal Links
3. Page Rank from Inbound links
4. IP Address from Inbound Links
5. Anchor Text
6. Domain from Inbound Links
7. Relevance from Inbound Links

So as you can see, not all links are created equal. Too many links from the same IP Network will get you penalized. If your site is about guitars and you have too many pages on unrelated topics linking back to the guitar site, you will get penalized. If your links are relevant and from different IP networks but the backlinks all come from low Google Page Ranks, you wont improve your rankings. Links are very powerful in SEO and for rankings. It is critical your linking strategy is done correctly and ethically or you will end up in the Google Sandbox and may never see the light of day again.

The ideal type of link you want to try to get are one way back links, usually ones from .edu and .gov are better, but not that important. You want to be linked with relevant anchor text, such as "learn how to play guitar" and be linked to a page with a PR over 4. Never use automated tools to submit duplicate content because Google can sniff that out like a police dog.

Like I said earlier, Google keeps its algorithm a trade secret, except for its "Page Ranking Technology" But what matters most to SEO'ers are Content and Link Popularity.

About the Author:
Ben Weinbaum SEO and Internet Marketer Aggregate Traffic Solutions SEO Firm