Starting a blog is quite easy; blog sites like Word Press and Blogger.com offer ready-to-use formats. You can customize a blog page by selecting from different template looks, lay-out of the page, colour etc. You can start posting immediately, but there are a few areas to pay attention to for optimizing the blogs so it can send maximum traffic to the parent website.

Blogs should be themed on the website: The content of the blogs should be built around the website that you wish to optimize. The niche of your blog will determine the type of links it will garner so to direct relevant traffic to your website write on related topics. Also, your blog can start attracting free traffic from social bookmarking sites around the niche.

Optimizing the title: As with article directory submission, blogs too should be optimized by giving correct titles to blog posts. Include keywords in the title and try to keep the keywords in the beginning of it, because that is the route the search engine spiders take. A good title is also essential for catching the attention of a reader.

Winning subscribers: Getting a reader to subscribe is important because chances of conversions increase with regular visitors. This can be done by adding a prominent RSS feed button or offering subscription via e- mail or adding a line at the end of the post that says-‘Liked this post? Subscribe for more.’

Update with new blogs: Especially in the beginning few days of starting a blog try to post once a day. Write about the new products/ services on your website, illuminate readers to their benefits and leave a link to the website. This is important because search engines index active blogs fairly quickly, giving them higher Page Rank. This will ensure that your blog appears on the 1st result page, in plain view of net searchers.

Communicate with other blog writers: Browse for quality blogs on related topics and interact with their writers through meaningful comments. This is the best way to build links and direct traffic to your website.

Follow your commenter: Respond to genuine comments that you get on your blog, engage the commenter with queries etc., you can expand on the benefits of your products/ services but do not be too pushy.

Directory Submission: Manual directory submission of blogs to high PR blog directories will get you natural contextual links. These quality links will drive huge traffic to your website.

Blogs are a natural search engine driver. By choosing the right keywords, good content, regular post updates and right directory submissions, they can become instrumental in increasing traffic to your website.

Keywords make-or-break your website rankings! So it’s important to get your keywords right to peak your search engine listings and multiply web traffic. Here are crucial guidelines that can fix your problems and help you avoid the common SEO mistakes.

One of the sure-fire ways to botch up search engine rankings is to duplicate meta-tags from any other source. Most SEOs seem to bungle up with their meta-tags so far as originality is concerned. Understand that original and innovative meta-tag is one definite way to pep up search rankings. The cue is to use unique title, meta-tags and keyword tags for each page.

If you are a pro webmaster, then you possibly are no stranger to the importance of title tags. Title tags are the text that appear on the browser window and get displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Translating your keywords into title tags will step up your rankings. However, make sure that your title tags don’t exceed 60-70 characters. Title tags with more than required characters are overlooked by the search engines. So keep an eye on your character count when framing the title tag.

Most web designers tend to integrate animated banner advertisements and flash intros to add a professional feel to their websites. While Flash ad adds to the attraction of the sites, it could lower the search rankings. Search engine spiders or crawlers find it difficult to index the content text that in a way decreases the ranking. Always offer an HTML alternative to your Flash website to boost its usability and your ranking.

Proper way of directory submission is also vital to achieve the right SEO goals. What webmasters need to realize is that automated directory submission can pose as a hurdle on the way to achieve your long term targets whereas manual directory submission with exclusive descriptions and headings on each directory can aid with better page rank. SEOs while doing the link building and directory submission should use unique title and descriptions on each link through manual directory submission.

Organization is another oft-ignored aspect of SEO which most webmasters tend to under rate. Know that websites with well-organized content have greater chances of winning higher web rankings. Always use heading tags like h1, h2, h3 etc. to organize your text. It will improve the readability of your content and the way search engines index it.

In order to avoid problems and mistakes with on and off page optimization of your website, it is prudent to hire the services of specialized professionals. SEOMixi.com is one of the leading SEO companies offering top notch optimization services like directory submission, social bookmarking, blog writing, press release submission etc. to their clients through a skilled and efficient team of professionals.

The best way to generate a Sitemap for Google is the Google Sitemap Generator. It produces Sitemaps in XML and can be easily installed on various operating systems and web servers including Windows and Linux. It works by analyzing the web server traffic to your website and then building Sitemap files containing the URLs that you want to be tracked by search engines. It also processes each URL for metadata such as the latest updates, frequency of change and its relative importance vis-a-vis the other links in the site.

It is better to create Sitemaps under The Sitemap Protocol 0.9 because all the main search engines support it. This format consists of XML tags. (XML is considered more precise than HTML coding). You can use an XML syntax validator like ‘W3C Markup Validator’ to help make your pages error free. Sitemaps can also be just a plain text list of URLs- the Sitemap Protocol file specifications of XML Sitemaps include text Sitemaps as well. The file must be UTF-8 encoded.

Google Sitemaps generated are easy to configure and have the options of a) Generating and submitting Sitemaps for not only the web but also Google powered Mobile, Code search and Blog search. b) Different URL collection mechanisms such as web server filter and file scanner. c) Specifying patterns for selection of URLs. d) Setting Sitemap generation schedule. If you want to tweak the initial configuration settings, it can be done by using web- based administration console.

Once a Sitemap has been created, it can be submitted to the search engines by configuring the Sitemap Generator in one of the following ways: a) Put the Sitemap URL in the robots.txt file so that it can be found by the spiders, b) To submit (ping) directly to specific search engines, c) Submit through Google Webmaster Central.

Sitemaps generated through Google Sitemap Generator also take care of keeping your private user data safe. All URL query fields which may contain private information such as passwords and names are removed from the URLs before including them in a Sitemap.

Another benefit of using Google Sitemap generator is that once it has been installed on the web server, you can use it for all your sites on that server. Each site can be configured individually through the administration console.

You can opt for getting Sitemaps for your website done professionally by soliciting the services of SEO companies like SEOMixi.com. At SEOMixi you will find a whole gamut of SEO services including article directory submission, forum posting, RSS directory submission etc. which are all done through manual directory submission.

Good content: This automatically increases your site’s popularity and rank as quality unique content is much valued by search engines and readers alike.

Give an effective title to your site: Title should be short as well as descriptive, including a few important keywords. Though short, title should be able to explain as to what exactly your site has to offer. If the title is attractive enough, it will definitely grab clicks from the users. Title should be moderately rich in keywords, using less of filler words.

Write a descriptive Meta tag: The description should give complete and a clear idea as to how this site can be beneficial to the user. Meta tags must include the keywords on the page, but one has to be cautious of overcrowding keywords.

Using keywords in headers (H1,H2,H3): Make sure that your desired keywords appear in one or two header tags as search engines consider keywords that appear on the page headlines and sub heads to be important on that page.

Keywords in the first paragraph: Locating the keywords in the beginning of a composition as compared with the rest of the body helps it to get accounted for by the search engines faster.

Search engines reads only texts and not images: Use meaningful and short Alt text to describe your image. Image linking, image title and clear file names add up to visibility of the page. Do not forget to hyperlink your keywords.

Navigation system should be search engine friendly: Regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, supplement Java script and Flash menus ensure proper hyper linking to take a search engine spider to every page of your website from your home page.

Site map creation: A Site map lists all your pages in a single page layout so that visitors and search bots have an easy idea about all your pages, thus increasing your page rank.

Promoting local business on the internet: Aim should be to inform maximum people about your site and its products. So advertize on each page of the website your business address, phone number etc. to get noticed by users.

Optimize video, audio content: As search engines like Google display not only the webpage content but also videos and audio clips in search results, including them in your website can help boost overall web ranking.

Linking Strategies: Inbound links from popular and top listed sites raise your web site’s rank. Page rank determines quality and quantity of incoming links.

Directory Submission: Directory submission is an important tool of SEO to boost up the page rank. Manual directory submission creates one way link to your website, thereby increasing the flow of traffic towards your site in order to gain a good rank. It is a good optimization strategy to submit your site to specialized directories by utilizing directory submission service.

Issue new releases: Regular press releases about your business and industry improve traffic as your site covers the latest news and catches viewer attention.

The general optimization list is endless. Linked with other functions like article writing and marketing, forum posting, social bookmarking etc. together with all the above factors, one can expect guaranteed returns in terms of good page rank.

Web Analytics Tools:

Web analytics help you to measure your website’s performance. They let you track the number of visitors to the site, number of times each page was viewed, which landing pages lead to higher conversions, which are the keywords that sent you the most traffic and which external links are sending traffic to your site. This data will allow you to track the profitable areas of your website and the areas that need improvement. Some popular web analytics tools are:

a) Google analytics is a free but powerful tool that gives you data on all the above said points. It allows you to integrate Google Adwords to track the conversion rate of each keyword.

b) Advanced Web Statistics (AWStats) and Webalizer - both are good for basic data analysis and are available by default on some servers.

d) Clicky and Mint- both are inexpensive tools similar to Google analytics.

f) Click - is relatively expensive and can be downloaded or hosted. It offers superior analysis and is very easy to use; even for non- techies.

Keyword Research Tools:

These provide you the keywords that are more likely to be typed in by an internet user when browsing the net. Some of them are:

a) Google Adwords Keywords Suggestion Tool gives list of useful keywords appropriate for your niche.

b) Google Suggest Tool for key phrases.

c) Word tracker Keyword Question shows you the likely questions asked containing your keyword.

Competitive Research Tools:

Knowing your competitors’ strategies for promoting their website can give you valuable insight for SEO of your own site. Some competitor analysis tools are:

a) Compete.com Search Analytics shows the keywords that send the most traffic to competing sites.

b) Keyword Spy shows the keywords that competitors are buying.

c) SEO Digger shows you keywords and search positions against a domain name.

d) SEMRush shows you which keywords send traffic to a particular domain, list of top ten sites using those keywords.

e) IndexRank compares the ranking of your site with your competitors’ on Google.

PPC Tools:

Help you analyze your Pay Per Click advertising budget. You can analyze dynamically how much to bid for which keywords.

a) Google Traffic Estimator gives an estimate of number of ad clicks and bid prices for Google Adwords.

b) CPC ROI Calculator and CPM ROAS Calculator show you how much you should pay for an ad.

c) Click tracks Bid Optimizer

d) Google Conversion Optimizer helps you increase your profits by maximising your CPA (cost per acquisition) hence ROI.

Link Analysis tools:

Link building is essential for SEO of any website. There are tools to tell you if they are inward or outbound links, good sites to get links from and sources of your competitors’ links.

a) Back Link Analyzer lets you analyze link anchor text and know the sources of competitors’ back links.

b) Link Harvester tells you the sites with multiple links to your website, total pages indexed and number of C block IP address.

c) Google Webmaster Central for an overall view of your links shows you any breaks in the link chain and gives you access to Google site maps.

d) Xenu Link Sleuth tracks broken links.

Search Engine Rankings Checker:

Lets you track your rankings on the search engine pages and see the progress. It lets you see your rank on multiple keywords. These tools save you a lot of time from checking each keyword individually by manual input.

a) Advanced Web Ranking

b) Rank Tracker

For those who find the many tools of SEO mind – boggling, you can easily engage a SEO service provider like SEOMixi.com which offer optimization services like manual directory submission and other directory submission service like article submission, search engine submission etc.

SEO has a number of tricks and tools up its sleeve to make sure that your website has a high page rank and subsequently heavy and relevant traffic.

1.Keywords:
Make a list of keywords relevant to the website. Countercheck them with the list provided by Google on Adwords Keyword Tool. Then use these keywords in the titles on the pages of website, in the content, domain and file names. You also need to judiciously repeat these keywords a specific number of times to maintain acceptable level of keyword density.

2.Top quality Content:
There is no short cut here, good content rich in information will attract visitors to the website and give you valuable backlinks which in turn will increase the Page Rank of your website. The content should be updated regularly because search engine spiders recognize active sites which are updated with fresh and relevant content.

3.SEO Friendly Website:
When designing your website, make sure all features of the site – the graphics, titles, content and page codes – are in tandem with the search engines’ page indexing criteria.

4.Link Building:
This is the back bone of SEO activity as search engine spiders collate to how many sites is your website linked with, to decide the importance of your website. There are many SEO tools for link building

a)Article Directory Submission – you can submit well written articles to popular article directories related to the subject of your website. Always opt for manual directory submission since it ensures that directory submission is made only to relevant backlinks providing sites.

b)Forum posting – Again, make sure to participate in high authority forums, because backlinks from them will give you high ranking instantly. Regular, useful and friendly posts can win you many valuable back links.

c)Blogs – are very effective in today’s online marketing and as an SEO technique. Start a blog and interact with other blog writers on similar topics by giving comments and leaving your URL in their blogs.

d)Video Submission – Actions speak louder than (only) words! Search engine bots love images so submitting a video to popular sites like You Tube is an affordable and quick SEO technique.

5.Cross Linking of Pages:
For internal linking of pages of your website use the keywords as anchor text as this will provide more links and lets the web spiders know that this is inter – related content.

6. SEO Friendly URL:
The URL of a page should describe the content in it, for e.g. you can incorporate one of the keywords from the page or the title of the page into the URL.

7.Site Map Page:
Site mapping means to publish a list of all the links in your website’s pages. As Bing, Yahoo, Ask and Google, the biggest four search engines follow the same site maps protocol; it is the surest SEO way to increase traffic to your website.

These are some of the essentials for increasing traffic to your website through SEO. If your reasons to want higher traffic are commercially motivated like in the case of an online business then you can seek the services of a good SEO company for forum posting, video and directory submission service.

Social bookmarking has become essential for search engine optimization of a website because it is fast becoming the preferred vehicle for searching the internet. Search engine spiders are software, used to locate and classify information whereas in social bookmarking all classification is done by humans. As someone comes across an article, blog or a website and bookmarks it, it is stored with similarly tagged web pages. Since the content has been scoured by a fellow human, the segregated information so collected under different tags offers a more concentrated result of relevant content when one types in the search keywords.

Social bookmarking is a great medium for SEO of your website but the trick to doing it correctly is to get others to bookmark your site/blog. Bookmarking your own site is against SEO ethics. What you need to do is to make your webpage really interesting and add a ‘Bookmark me’ button to each page. Once a page or website gets bookmarked, it becomes a strong contender for high page rank, because search engines really trust social bookmarking sites.

Your website becomes very visible once it is socially bookmarked because browsing social bookmarking sites is becoming more and more popular and the chances of your website being found increase manifold. The more your website is visited the more back links it builds, thus compelling the spiders to put the website in the 1st search engine result page.

Each Social Bookmarking site is a hub of different types of activities for e.g. Digg and Propeller are social news sites for current affairs, TechNet is for IT professionals, Del.icio.us, Simpy and Backflip are some other popular bookmarking sites. So for successful SEO of your website by social bookmarking, select the appropriate sites.

To make social bookmarking easier, you can use social bookmarking tools like ‘AddThis’ and ‘ShareThis’. They are integrated into a website by using a web widget. AddThis allows a visitor to your website to bookmark a page through popular sites like Facebook, Myspace and Google bookmarks. Similarly ShareThis lets a visitor share any content including photos, text across sites like Digg and Facebook. These tools can be used on any site to drive traffic and enable your website to go viral. Customized versions are available for leading blog publisher sites including Blogger and WordPress.

Just as manual directory submission is preferred for directory submission, social bookmarking too can be made more effective by manual submissions. Indiscreet submissions can do more harm than good and expose the website to the risk of being banned as spam. Social bookmarking can be a great SEO technique if employed correctly.

The W3C Validation does not affect search engine ranking. Matt Cutts from Google has already said that Google does not consider W3C validation for their search engine ranking. There are various reasons why using W3C validation for search engines can be tough. Primary job of search engines is to provide accurate search results. So if a search engine does not consider a website (having relevant content) in its search results just because it does not satisfy a standard, then the whole purpose of search engine will be lost. Also it would take a lot of time to load a website if search engines start validating a website. The bigger a website more time it takes for validation.W3C validation does not ensure that all browser compatibility issues can be removed. This means even after spending considerable time in making a website W3C compliant, there is no guarantee that a webpage will turn out perfect across various browsers. This is another reason why Google does not consider W3C validation for its search engine ranking. There are many websites including many top rank websites who do not have a W3C validation for their website. In fact many search engines themselves do not have W3C validation.

Having said that, W3C validation does help in making a website clean. It helps to eliminate human errors while coding.W3C validation leads to a faster, leaner code with better use of semantics. And all these are the criteria which search engines like Google consider before coming up with search ranking. Clean website means that search engine spiders will not get confused by unnecessary coding; they can easily crawl and explore a website without any hindrance. Having a code with error can turn out to be an unpleasant experience for your customers as the pages may not load correctly in a web browser. W3C tool can sometimes help in finding defects which can turn out to be a major problem for your website later. So even if 100% compliance may not be necessary, W3C tool can be used to look into various errors and remove the ones which can cause much impact on your website’s overall performance. You also need to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing before deciding on whether or not to opt for W3C validation. It may so happen that you are in such a field where all the major websites do have a W3C validation, then in that case it will be a good idea to get one yourself too.

W3C validation complements your other outsource SEO efforts like directory submission, article directory submission, blog writing and submission, social bookmarking, PR writing and submission etc. that help rank your website better with the search engines.

1.Black Hat SEO or
2.White Hat SEO

1.Black Hat SEO :It refers to the illegal or unprofessional procedures used to direct greater number of search engines and searchers to view the website. Black hats usually do not adhere to all rules and regulations laid down by search engines.

Some of the key methods used for Black Hat SEO are -

• Keyword Stuffing: It involves putting too many keywords in the content to get more number of search engines and browsers to reach them as keywords are the main source of getting traffic onto a website.
• Link Farming: It’s a network of interconnected pages that link to each other within the group. It works by directing the user from the main site towards the linked sites. However, certain features of this technique led to its detection by the web spiders. Thus when such content or pages were found during search they were automatically removed and hence link farming became less popular.
• Cloaking: It’s a technique where the content is designed using server-side scripting to be viewed differently by the search engine spiders as compared to the usual searchers. By using this method unethical content can be hidden from the spiders.
• Hidden Content/ Invisible Text: This method allows the content to appear useful to the browsers by hiding the stuffed keywords and phrases which are visible only to the web spiders. Certain techniques used to hide content are – having the text and the background in same colour or making the text size extremely small.
• Gateway pages: Commonly known as a doorway page that is not visible to the browser and acts as a bridge. The gateway is just another way of getting more number of searchers to view the site.

2.White Hat SEO :It involves using ethical means to get the site into top search results. It ensures that the content made available to the web browsers is genuine, of good quality and makes appropriate use of the keywords and phrases. Hence such sites are more relevant and search engines are able to crawl and index them more easily.

As we compare the two, we see that the techniques used in White Hat SEO are similar to that used by the Black Hat SEOs, but the difference arises in the ways and means used. Sites adhering to Black Hat SEO techniques may have a temporary advantage but in the long run it may prove to be fatal. Black Hat SEO generated content is aimed at attracting the search engine spiders, while on the contrary in case of White Hat SEO, the content is made to be relevant for both the browsers as well as the web spiders. In many instances in the case of Black Hat SEO, it is difficult to assess the quality due to the content being invisible or hidden. While in the case of White Hat SEO, everything is transparent and nothing is hidden from general view.

White Hat SEO technique of directory submission is widely used to increase the incoming traffic on a website. The popular directory submission service helps to add the website’s link to the submission directories that increase the website’s visibility to the search engines. There are many SEO websites available online which provide automatic or manual directory submission services at competitive prices.

So if you are looking at tapping the online market you need to spend some time in doing “Keyword Research” on your own or you can outsource SEO needs to a well reputed affordable SEO service expert. Keyword research is a process that helps to find appropriate keywords which describe your business well and increase the overall ranking for your site. But keyword reach is not the only thing to look out for. Even if you do come out with some great keywords and get a higher rank for your website you may end up a loser. This may be because the area for which you are becoming a high ranker during web search is actually not your area of work, so you actually are not reaching your target customers. Thus, appropriate keyword research and analysis of relevant traffic via Google adwords and other ranking tools can greatly help in reaching out to your target customers. Only when the traffic reaching your site is of potential customers, i.e. people who are actually interested in your product, will you be able to convert them into real customers. An SEO search engine submission agency can be of big help with their professional knowledge and wide experience in locating the right keywords for your website optimization.

As there are so many businesses out there which offer similar services, keyword research becomes all the more critical. With so many businesses operating along the same lines they tend to use the same keyword for their search engine optimization. So even if you use a high ranking affordable SEO service keyword, your chances of actually ranking high might be slim since your competitors will also be using the same word. So proper research needs to be done to see how good are the ranking chances of using a specific keyword among the competitors.

Another thing to keep in mind is which country or region you are targeting. Some keywords which rank higher in some areas may not work well in another area. Also you need to concentrate on the spelling and local usage before deciding on a particular keyword.

Optimizing your website with relevant keywords, directory submission, social bookmarking and press release distribution among other things might just be the catalyst for your online business to take off with a big bang. Thus, whether you choose to outsource SEO to another agency or do it in house is a choice you can make; but to opt for search engine optimization or not is not a choice, it’s a MUST!