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How's it going? This forum is huge! I'm the webmaster full-time for Sarasota Memorial Hospital (smh.com - and no, that's not my design, we are launching a new system end of April). I also do a lot of freelance work.


Thumbs up to the Admin, I learned alot from reading for a long time, thanks guys.. Beaty at it's best and keep the good work.
My latest work!

Are you a Wordpress beginner looking to create your own Wordpress theme?

Building basic Wordpress themes only takes 2 things: CSS knowledge and some Wordpress Code.

If you already know how to put a stylesheet together to give your theme the “looks”, than all that is left is to learn some basic Wordpress tags, conditionals, what if’s and other code to turn your pretty looking CSS into a fully functional Wordpress Theme.

If you search how to make a Wordpress theme you may be bombarded with TOO much code. However, I will only provide you with the basic Wordpress code for theme building.

Wordpress Theme Building Code for Beginners

1. Theme Structure

A basic Wordpress theme is composed of the following php files:

header.php ……………………………………… Header Section

index.php ……………………………………….. Main Section (homepage)

sidebar.php …………………………………….. Sidebar Section

single.php ……………………………………….. Post Template

page.php …………………………………………. Page Template

comments.php …………………………………. Comment Template

search.php ……………………………………….. Search Content

searchform.php …………………………………. Search Form Template

archive.php …………………………………….. Archive Template

functions.php ………………………………….. Special Functions

404.php ………………………………………….. Error Page template

style.css …………………………………………. Style Sheet

2. The Loop

The basic Wordpress loop to call posts/pages is:

<?php if(have_posts());?>

<?php while(have_posts()); the_post();?>

// Put your custom HTML & PHP code here

<?php else;?>

<?php endif;?>

3. Category Based Loop

Basic loop to call your categories:

<?php query_posts(’category_name=

Category&showposts=10′); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

// Put your custom HTML & PHP code here

<?php endwhile;?>

4. Defining the Theme

When creating a Wordpress file the main stylesheet must first define the Theme in the following way:

/*

Theme Name: Wordpress

Theme URI: http://wpexplorer.com

Description: Wordpress Theme Development Cheat Sheet

Version: 1.0

Author: WpExplorer

Author URI: http://wpexplorer.com

Tags: worpress, cheat, sheet, theme, development

*/

5. Template Include Tags

You can call one Wordpress file form another using the following template include tags

< ?php get_header(); ?>

< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>

< ?php get_footer(); ?>

< ?php comments_template(); ?>

6. Wordpress Template Tags

Wordpress Template tags have many purposes from display titles, categories…etc

Displays the posts/pages title:

<?php the_title() ?>

Displays the content of the post/page:

<?php the_content() ?>

Displays the excerpt of the current post/page:

<?php the_excerpt() ?>

Displays the time of the current post/page:

<?php the_time() ?>

Displays all the pages:

<?php wp_list_pages(); ?>

Displays a tag cloud:

<?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>

Displays the categories:

<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>

Displays the calendar:

<?php get_calendar(); ?>

Displays a date-based archives list:

<?php wp_get_archives() ?>

Displays Previous page and Next Page links:

<?php posts_nav_link(); ?>

Displays Newer Posts link:

<?php next_post_link() ?>

Displays previous link:

<?php previous_post_link() ?>

Displays the edit link:

<?php edit_post_link(__(’Edit Post’)); ?>

Value for search form:

<?php the_search_query();?>

Displays the register link:

<?php wp_register();?>

Displays the log in/out link:

<?php wp_loginout();?>

Meta for administrators:

<?php wp_meta();?>

Time to load the page:

<?php timer_stop(1);?>

Displays the custom field1:

<?php echo c2c_custom(’test’);?>

Display links from Blogroll:

<?php get_links_list(); ?>

Displays the built-in calendar:

<?php get_calendar(); ?>

Link of the posts comments:

<?php comments_popup_link(); ?>

Displays the date of a post or set of post/page:

<?php the_date() ?>

Displays the URL for the permalink:

<?php the_permalink() ?>

Displays the category of a post:

<?php the_category() ?>

Displays the author of the post:

<?php the_author(); ?>

Displays the numeric ID of the current post:

<?php the_ID(); ?>

7. Blog info Tags

Like it sounds, the Blog info Tags will allow you to call certain aspects of your blog such as title, description, address, etc.

Title of the blog:

<?php bloginfo(’name’); ?>

The character set:

<?php bloginfo(’charset’); ?>

The description of the blog:

<?php bloginfo(’description’); ?>

The address of the blog:

<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>

The RSS URL:

<?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?>

The URL of the template:

<?php bloginfo(’template_url’); ?>

The pingback URL:

<?php bloginfo(’pingback_url’); ?>

The URL for the template’s CSS file:

<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>

URL for WordPress installation:

<?php bloginfo(’wpurl’); ?>

Version of the WordPress installation:

<?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>

HTML version of the site:

<?php bloginfo(’html_type’); ?>

8. Blog Info Tag Conditionals

These Tags will allow you to set conditionals so that you can do certain tasks only on certain pages/posts/templates…

is_home() ……………………………. Do task if the user is on the blog home page

is_front_page() …………………….. Do task when the user is on the home page

is_single() ……………………………. Do task if when the single post displayed

is_sticky() …………………………….Check to see if a post is sticky

is_page() ………………………………Do task as soon as a page is displayed

is_category() ………………………… Do task if when a category is displayed

9. Navigation Menu

You can not have a working blog without a navigation. These tags will allow you to add a basic navigation to your wordpress theme

Category Based Navigation

<ul id=”menu”>

<li <?php if(is_home()) { ?>< ?php } ?>>

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(’home’); ?>”>Home[/url]</li>

< ?php wp_list_categories(’title_li=&orderby=id’); ?>

</ul>

Pages based Navigation

<ul id=”menu”>

<li <?php if(is_home()) { ?>< ?php } ?>>

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(’home’); ?>”>home[/url]</li>

< ?php wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=’); ?>

</ul>

[Video Marketing:]

Building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. How does one start to rise above the noise to distinguish themselves as a heavy hitter? What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.

Video Marketing:

1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.

2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.

3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.

4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.

5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.

Conversational Marketing

6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.

7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.

8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.

9. Contribute to online groups like Google groups and my space groups.

10. Market yourself by adding a blog.

11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.

Pay Per Click

12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.

14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3rd tier networks.

15. Utilize key compete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.

16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.

17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.

18. Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.

20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.

21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.

22. Create content to support edits in Wikipedia.

Email Marketing

23. Team with companies with double opt in lists

24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.

25. Try to leverage DBA lists

26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.

Mobile Search Marketing

27. Create a click to call campaign

28. Develop a mobile version of your site.

29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.

Search Engine Optimization

30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.

31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.

32. Develop search engine friendly html site map.

33 Develop quality internal linking structure.

34. Create optimized html source code.

35. Create optimized robots.txt

36. Create optimized XML site map.

Affiliate Marketing

37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.

38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program

39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.

40. Incentavize  your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.

Banner Advertising

41. Examine potential sites demographics.

42. Get media break outs

43. Consider Portal Advertising

44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.

Application Marketing

45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messengers

Contextual Advertising

46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.

47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.

On to offline Marketing

48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.

My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..

[1. Content 2. Freshness 3. No Tricks 4. Links 5. Structure 6. Accessibility 7. Quality Code 8. URLs 9. Style 10. Images]

 
Many small business owners struggle with the seemingly overwhelming task of managing their web site. There always seems to be so much to do, yet no time to do it all (something we know all too well). This brief primer should help to highlight the key aspects of web site management that will help them gain the most from their web site with the time that they have available.

The following ten tips are key to maintaining a successful web site. Follow these and your site will do better. Nothing will guarantee that a web site will be successful as there are simple too many different factors that impact web success - but as a general rule these ten tips will always lead to better performance.

  1. Content
   2. Freshness
   3. No Tricks
   4. Links
   5. Structure
   6. Accessibility
   7. Quality Code
   8. URLs
   9. Style
  10. Images


For more detail consult Building Web Site Success a detailed primer about these and other aspects of Internet marketing.

#1 Content
Content is key
Almost all the search engines scan a sites content now - almost ignoring things like meta tags. The more content you have on your site the more the search engines can scan - but there is more to it then that: people like content too. Many people measure a web site's success by the number of visitors it gets - so ask yourself - why would people come to your web site? do you offer them interesting and informative information that relates to your product or service? if not, why would they come?

Relevant content and lots of it is a key for a successful web site. There is always room for more content on a web site, and you can never have too much.

Take this article for example, while it's fairly useful information for many of our visitors, it's also additional content for our web site - and will serve to help our site do better. Writing articles about aspects of your industry is a great way to generate content.

Set asside an hour a day (or at least an hour a week) to devote to adding new content to your web site.

#2 Freshness
Keep it current
Having lots of content is great - but if it is all three years old it's not going to look like your site is much of a priority. The search engines actually track this. They monitor how frequently your site changes as they visit it for indexing. The more often it changes the better your rank in the freshness category.

What constitutes change? pretty much anything - which is why keeping a BLOG or adding frequent news articles to your web site usually produces such good results. It is also the reason why having something as simple as rotating content and the current date on every page has been shown to make a difference (although the search engines have been getting wise to this kind of tactic)

#3 No Tricks
Don't try to outsmart the Search Engines - Eventually you'll loose
Many design firms promise success through the use of tricks, backdoors, and special tactics designed to sneak a web site into a top position rapidly. Something, of course, that the search engines are constantly battling to defeat. Why play the game? as the search engines find the cheaters they will plug the holes and a rank (that usually costs a pretty penny to achieve) will immediately be lost.
Rather, follow the recommendations of the search engines - most set out rules for web masters that outline what they would like to see in a web site (incidentally these rules are the main source of research for this document) By following the rules the engines are actually battling all the cheating web sites and working to promote the sites that follow the rules - they are fighting FOR you!

#4 Links
Links both in and out must be relevant
There has been a lot of talk about link exchanges - people linking to others merely to gain a higher rank (hmmm this smacks of breaking tip #3) if you are going to link to someone and/or ask them to link to you - ask yourself: is it relevant?
Any old link is not going to help you much - search engines will look at who is linking to you - they are also starting to pay very close attention to how many links you have off your web site on a page. This is being done to try and drop sites with pages of links (do you have a links page on your web site?)
It is far better to have relevant links places throughout your web site - on only those pages that specifically the topic that relates to the page being linked to.
Unfortunately you can't exert too much control over the way that other sites link to yours but it is worth looking at how a site usually links to others before to specifically go requesting a link from them.

#5 Structure
Organize your web site and everyone will thank you.
Both the search engines and your web visitors prefer a web site that is well structured. The search engines due to their very nature (being computer programs) must break down all web sites into elements based on the structure of the pages. People, so frequently rushing to find the specific information they are looking for, rarely read through web pages but rather scan headings and bullied lists to find the detailed sections of interest. In both cases a well structured site will be far better received then one that is a mish-mosh of information haphazardly thrown together.
This is simple to do - but all too often missed. Make headings, use the correct coding tags for them, organize sections of content into groups, and use bold and bullied lists to present key points.
Keep in mind when writing paragraphs of text that most humans will not read them unless they are specifically titled with a headline that matches what they are looking for.

#6 Accessibility
A web site that speaks to all is better then a site that only speaks to some.
Tips #6 and #7 are closely related: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a list of guidelines for how to create web sites that are accessible to as many people (and systems) as possible. Think about your web site - can someone with a visual disability (perhaps even something as simple as colour-blindness) still get information about your product or service? If not, how do you feel knowing that you have just excluded a vast segment of the population from accessing your web site?
There are many simple ways that you can ensure your web site is accessible to people with special needs. A group of simple tests for the sites content and design that ensure your product or service is presented to the widest possible audience. The specifics are beyond the scope of this document - but be sure that you check with your designer to ensure that your site design and code is following accessibility guidelines.

#7 Quality Code
Well coded web sites perform better.
Many small business owners don't have too much control over the code used to create their web site - but it is still important to know how important it may be. Standard compliant code that has been checked for errors is easier for the search engines to assimilate. It is more widely visible across varied platforms (computer types) and in different browsers.
Ensure your web designer is writing standard compliant code that is validated for errors. You can also check your own web site using free on-line tools from the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium - the standards body that administers Internet technologies)

#8 URLs
Prudent choice of URLs will impact your web site's performance
Professional web designers should already know this - but if you are using a content management system to build your web site, or portions of it, it is important to understand the significance of the URL used to access pages on your web site.
Search engines look at the address of every page on your web site and try to extract key-words from the content of the url. For example, you may have a page about "Widgets" on your web site called "somewhere.com" creating the page with a filename of wigits.html will give a better keyword rank then page6.html this is also true of sub-directories on the site somewhere.com/widgets/... being better then somewhere.com/files/...
This is a fairly subtle point but makes a significant difference for most search engines. It can also make it much easier for people that are typing in a URL to access a specific page of your web site. Notice the URL for this web page - it's called http://www.blasterbouncer/ for a reason!
If you really want to target a key phrase consider purchasing a microsite for that phrase. An inexpensive secondary web site that can be tailored to focus on a specific key phrase or concept.

#9 Style
Looks do matter - but perhaps not the way you think...
In the grand scheme of things the "looks" of a web site in the classic sense are not really that important - honestly! once people have looked at a web site for a few minutes they will quickly discard their first impression (based on looks) and move immediately to asking - is this site giving me the information I need - and can I find it quickly (going back to tips #1 - content and #5 - structure)
So what are we on about with style? simple - ensure the style of your site makes it easy to read. Avoid things like black backgrounds with white text (inverse text is harder to read) ALL CAPS (humans read by identifying word shapes - writing in all caps forces people to read every letter and quickly becomes annoying - plus on the net it is used as an typographic method of indicating you are screaming) You should also check your web site using a colour blind test to ensure that visitors with the various types of color-blindness can still actually read your navigation.

#10 Images
Selling a product - better make sure it looks good
If you are selling something that has a visual representation - then professional looking photography is key. Even a multi-million dollar resort will not look good if the photographs are amateurish. If you care about what you have to sell, then it's worth investing in some professional photographs to show people what you have. Remember, on-line people can't get a hold of your product - so you need to give them some really good photographs so that they can feel confident that it meets their needs.

If you need more help or more information?   
Contact Us:  http://ratsattic.com/       admin@ratsattic.com

Visit :http://oogyah.com/
This is a helpful site if you want to redirect with short Urls.
This URL Redirection engine is dedicated to Redirecting Shorter Url's that you create.
Join the World's  largest FREE URL Re director Engine.
     
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      Just make it short.

  Welcome larnaclarksontwo.

I would just like to introduce myself to you real quickly - my name is Frank, and I'm from the Racknecks area. I am located midway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh


Thanks to the Admin, I enjoy reading for a long time, thanks guys.. Cool forum is what I say and keep the good work.
My latest work!

According to a poll I conducted, just over 1 out of 10 people don’t think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is mandatory as a designer; and what really surprised me is about 24% don’t even know what SEO is! If you’re among the quarter of people who don’t know what SEO is or understand how it can help you, you should really read this article. This is an SEO guide for designers who want to learn about making it easier for websites or blogs to be found by search engines. I’ll explain the common mistakes made by designers and developers. Then I’ll provide some basic tips that you should be practicing to optimize your site for search engines.

Why Should You Learn About SEO?

    * SEO isn’t only for online marketers. As a web designer or frontend developer, most on-site SEO is your responsibility.
    * If your site is not search engine friendly, you might be losing a lot of traffic that you’re not even aware of. Remember, besides visitors typing in "www.yourwebsite.com" and backlink referrals; search engines are the only way people can find your site.
    * There are many benefits of getting a high ranking site. Let’s use RatsAttic.com for example. I have, on average, about 14,000 visitors a day. About 40 - 45% of that traffic comes from search engines (about 6000+ referrals a day). Imagine, without search engine referrals, I would be losing thousands of visitors everyday. That means, I’m risking losing potential clients too.
    * SEO is also a value-added service. As a web designer/developer you can sell your SEO skills as an extended service.

The Basics: How Search Engines Work?

How search engines work

First, let’s look at how crawler-based search engines work (both Google and Yahoo fall in this category). Each search engine has its own automated program called a "web spider" or "web crawler" that crawls the web. The main purpose of the spider is to crawl web pages, read and collect the content, and follow the links (both internal and external). The spider then deposits the information collected into the search engine’s database called the index.

When searchers enter a query in the search box of a search engine, the search engine’s job is to find the most relevant results to the query by matching the search query to the information in its index.

What makes or breaks a search engine is how well it answers your question when you perform a search. That’s based on what’s called the search engine algorithm which is basically a bunch of factors that the search engine uses to say “hey is this page RELEVANT or NOT?”. The higher your page ranks for these factors (yes some factors are more important than others) than the higher your page will get displayed in the search engine result pages.
Your Job As a Search Engine Optimizer

SEO jobs

Each search engine has its own algorithm in ranking web pages. Understanding the general factors that influence the algorithm can affect your search result position, and this is what SEO experts are hired for. An SEO’s job has two aspects: On-Site and Off-Site.

On-Site SEO: are the things that you can do on your site, such as: HTML markups, target keywords, internal linking, site structure, etc.

Off-Site SEO: are the things that you have much less control of, such as: how many backlinks you get and how people link to your site.

This is a guide for designers and developers. The main concern is the On-Site aspects. Secretly though, if you do your job right… and design a beautiful site… and/or produce useful content… you’ll get Off-Site backlinks and social bookmarks without even lifting a finger.
Top 9 SEO Mistakes Made by Designers and Developers
1. Splash Page

Splash page

I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link "Click here to enter" on their homepage. The worst case — the "enter" link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.
2. Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.
3. Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.
4. Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because Ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.
5. Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (ie. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.
6. “Click Here” Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use "Click here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here". But if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”

Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.
7. Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t
that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because every single blog post will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the title tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it
should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including
spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

      "Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures"

“Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.
8. Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms "abstract" and "dj".
9. Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title
Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356
General SEO Do’s and Don’ts

Let me tell you WHAT TO DO by telling you WHAT NOT TO DO:
Don’t Ignore Your Audience

Write about topics your audience cares about. Like what? Find out, by conducting a poll (like I did), scan some relevant bulletin boards or forums, look for common topics in customer emails, or do some keyword research. There are great free keyword tools like the Google Keyword Tool or SEO Book’s Keyword Tool and loads more. The plan is not to spend your life doing keyword research but just to get a general idea of what your visitors are interested in.
Don’t Be Dense About Keyword Density

Keyword density

Once you have a topic for readers; help search engines find it. Keyword Density is the number of times a keyword appears in a page compared to the total number of words. You want to make sure your keywords are included in the crucial areas:

    * the Title Tag
    * the Page URL (friendly URL)
    * the Main Heading (H1 or H2)
    * the first paragraph of content.
    * at least 3 times in the body content (more or less depending on amount of content and if and only if it makes sense).

Most people aim for a keyword density of 2% (i.e. use the keyword 2 times for every 100 words). But what if your keyword phrase is “SEO for Web Designers and Web Developers” how many times can you repeat that before it sounds just plain unnatural? Write for your readers not for search engines. If you follow the tips
in this article you’ll be writing naturally for your readers; which works for the search engines too.

Warning: Do not over fill your page with the same keywords or you might be penalized by search engines for keyword stuffing.
Don’t Ignore Relatives

In this article, it makes sense to mention topics like “keyword research”, “search engine crawlers” and “title tag use”, but what if I mentioned a highly trafficked term like “cell phone plans”… kind of out of context right? So use other keywords and topics that make sense to your audience, the search engine measures keyword relations to determine relevancy too.

    * Cars and Tires (yes)
    * Web Design and Flying Monkeys (no…well sometimes)

Don’t Be Afraid of Internal Linking

Do you want the search engine to see every page on your website? Help the search engine spider do its job. There should be a page (like a sitemap or
blog archives) that links to all the pages on your site.

Tip: You can promote the more important pages by inserting text links within body content. Make sure you use relevant linking text and avoid using "click here" (as mentioned earlier).
Don’t Ignore Broken Links

404 not found error

You should always search for and fix the broken links on your site. If you’ve removed a page or section, you can use the robot.txt to prevent the spiders crawling and indexing the broken links. If you have moved a page or your entire website, you can use the 301 .htaccess to redirect to a new URL.

Tips: You can use the Google Webmaster Tool to find broken links and your 404 Not Found errors.
Don’t Be Inconsistent With Your Domain URL

To search engines, a www and a non-www URL are considered two different URLs. You should always keep your domain and URL structure consistent. If you start promoting your site without the "www", stick with it.
Don’t Be Scared of Semantic Coding

Semantic and standard coding not only can make your site cleaner, but it also allows the search engines to read your page better.
Search Result Position

Coding and setting up your site to be SEO friendly can improve how well a search engine can access your website, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll end up at the top of the search engine result page (SERP). There are many factors in determining the search result position, but here are the basics:
PageRank

PageRank

Some professional SEO’s pay attention to Google’s PageRank and some don’t. In my experience it doesn’t hurt to have a high Google PageRank. It’s a nice little benchmark to let you know how important Google sees your web page as. You can improve your PageRank by following the tips above and building-up quality backlinks. If you want to learn how PageRank works, Smashing Magazine has a very good article.
Domain Age Before Beauty

You might be surprised to learn that domain age is also a factor in the search engine algorithm. Older domains have a history, and their content is looked at as more credible than the website that got started last week. Older domains sometimes get the edge in search results.
Be Patient

You may have done every single thing right., but your site is still not showing up in the search engines for your target keywords. Why? Because everything takes time. It takes time for the search engines to index and rank your site (especially for new domains). So, be patient.

Another reason — it could be the keywords that you’re trying to target are very competitive. Try altering the keywords on the page and you may have different results. Remember, you are competing with millions of web pages on the internet.
Resources to Help You Go Farther
Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools allow you check the crawl statistics of your site. If you haven’t been using this great tool yet, login to the Google Webmaster Tools, then add and verify your site.

After you’ve verified your site, you can find out:

    * When was the last time Googlebot crawled your site
    * HTTP errors
    * 404 Not Found errors
    * External link counts
    * What keywords people are using to link to your site
    * What are the top search queries to your site
    * And more.

Free SEO Tools

Here are some online SEO tools that you can use to check your PageRank, Link Popularity, Search Engine Position, Keyword Density, etc.

    * www.pagerank.net
    * www.iwebtool.com
    * www.seochat.com/seo-tools
    * www.webconfs.com
    

Link Popularity is based on the premise that people link to good sites, and if a lot of people link to your site, then it must be good. In plain English, if other sites are linking to your site, your site is popular, therefore it is useful and deserves a boost in rankings, so people can find it faster and easier.

Link Popularity is not specific to Google only, but was adopted by the vast majority of Search Engines.
Link Popularity is only one of the many factors (good content, number of pages, text, anchors, internal links, static URLs, keywords, meta tags, and many, many others) that are used in calculating your place in a search result page (ultimately, this is what all of it is about - how findable you are in a search).

PageRank (PR) is specific to Google and is a trademarked proprietary algorithm. There are many variables in the formulas used by Google, but PageRank is primarily affected by the number of links pointing to the page, the number of internal links pointing to the page within the site and the number of pages in the site.

PageRank focuses strictly on the quantity of links and is directly influenced by the PageRank of the pages that are linked.
In Google, Link Popularity puts more emphasis on the quality of links (ex. links from sites related to yours by topic or by industry rank much higher than links from non-related sites).
PageRank - as the name suggests - is specific to a web page, not to a web site. Every page on your site has a PageRank and every one is different, based mostly on your linking system.

Generally - but not always - the goal is to achieve maximum PageRank on your main page, the one people hit when first entering your site.

You can check the PR of a page by installing the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer (the "official" way), a PR checker extension in Firefox, or by using one of the many online utilities.

In Google only, PageRank is one of the factors that influence Link Popularity.
PageRank (PR), developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University is considered to be the heart of Google's software. PageRank solves an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives and by the PR of the page which casts the vote.

There are two types of incoming links that can effectively contribute to increasing your Link Popularity:

1. Links from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases you do. In other words, if a site that can be found in search engines by using a search phrase like "corporate cd-rom presentations" links to your site, and your site actually specializes in designing interactive media, like CDs or DVDs, then that link will help your Link Popularity. But if your site is about selling onions, then the mentioned link will be useless.

2. Links from relevant categories in major directories industry-specific directories and portals. The most important major directory is DMOZ (who feeds data to many others) and is the toughest to get in. Submission is free and there are actually people reviewing your site.

The waiting times are in the months order, so my advice is submit and forget. The industry-specific directories are very important. For example, if you make interactive media, and list your site in a directory dedicated to graphic design or media under the appropriate category, then search engines like Google will pick that up as an incoming link and will increase your Link Popularity. Listing your site in such a directory is very useful to your potential visitors, and this is what Google is trying to emulate with its software. Remember, with Google and many others, there are no humans reviewing your pages, but software acting under very specific and strict rules (algorithms).

Both types of links I described above can be unilateral or reciprocal ("you link to me and I link to you").

Reciprocal links are subject of controversy and misconception today. Many people think that exchanging links with sites is the easiest way to get them, new people learning about link popularity are under the mistaken belief that they must have links that are reciprocated on their site. Still many others are saying that reciprocal links are dead and that not only you won't gain any benefit from them, but your PR (Page Rank) will decrease (your page will "leak PR", as it is said in the SEO circles).
Both camps are not entirely correct. You certainly don't need to get reciprocal links, but you can if you want to. Remember, it is links pointing to your site that are the helpful ones. Links pointing from your site to other sites are wonderful to have because they help your visitors find related stuff, but if your site doesn't lend itself to linking to other sites, then by all means, don't do it. You need to do what's right for your company or hobby and your site visitors, first and foremost.
Links from sites that have nothing to do with yours will definitely not help you gain Link Popularity, but might produce a temporary boost in PR (PageRank).
If the PR (PageRank) boost is only temporary, why bother?
You should try to boost your PR (PageRank) even if temporary, because when Google sends Googlebot, its indexing robot, to spider your website, the bot is instructed not to crawl your site too deep unless it has a reasonable amount of PR (PageRank). But in order to increase your overall PR (PageRank) and, in order to have all your keywords from all your pages available for searches, you need Google to look at all of your pages, because the number of pages and the internal links affect PR (PageRank). But Google will not see your internal links and your keywords if only few pages are indexed, so you see, it's catch 22 and the best way to win this is to start working on your incoming links as early in the game as possible.

To see which pages from your website are actually indexed by the search engines, you can use the following search with the major three (Google, MSN and Yahoo!): site:www.yourdomain.com, where www.yourdomain.com is the full address of your site. There is no space between site: and the address, otherwise you are actually searching for the words site: and www.yourdomain.com.
To get a glimpse of your site's Link Popularity, use the following search with Google and MSN: link:www.yourdomain.com. Again, there is no space between link: and the address. There is a common misconception regarding this. People think that the correct format is with the space, as it might produce a lot more results. It is incorrect, as the format with the space merely looks for www.yourdomain.com and the word link:, but will not actually show you who really links to you.

Please note that Google might not display all the links to your site that are stored into its database. Don't panic. It has been reported that this is reminiscence from Google's paranoia days, when the search engine's execs did not want competitors to figure out the way they track Link Popularity.

As a word of caution, please do not waste your money on submitting your sites to "hundreds of FAA sites". Free-For-All sites are not considered quality links today. This approach might have worked years ago, but search engines are constantly trying to stop any activity they consider as spamming, designed to artificially inflate numbers. This is actually a great thing, as it keeps the internet a fair and happy place.

Two more words of caution:

1. If you read SEO (Search Engine Optimization) related articles, please make sure you read stuff as recent as possible, as things change.

2. Major search engines, especially Google, keep their algorithms (rules) in deep secret. Therefore, you'll probably wonder why you are reading so many different opinions, sometimes conflicting. The answer is simple, because little is actually known to the public about the deep inner workings of a search engine.
In general, there's no need for the average site to obsess over link popularity. Contrary to popular belief, link popularity constitutes only a portion of most search engines' ranking algorithms. Arguably, Google places more emphasis than most other engines on incoming links at this point in time. How much these actually boost a site's ranking is debatable and truly depends on the site. It also depends on the words that are placed in the anchor text (the clickable portion of a text link). From my personal experience, just a few highly relevant links with strong anchor text can go a long way towards link popularity for many sites.

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