First I will talk briefly about what not to do.

1. Do not submit to 1000′s of search engines. There are only 3 that count, Google, Yahoo and MSN. All other search engines get their information from the mentioned search engines.
2. Do not continually submit to them. It’s not necessary. Once you are in you are in. It won’t improve your position.
3. Do not use keyword spamming.

Now here is what to do.

1. Have great content and update it on a regular basis.
2. Add new features and pages.
3. Have great content.

…

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A big one, especially in Google’s mind, is having multiple websites with same content. Why do business waste time and money on having duplicate websites, but with different domain names? You should always focus on one domain versus scattering your effort, including the advertising budget.

There is nothing wrong with registering different versions of your domain name, and redirect one, but no more than two to the active domain. It is not necessary to have have hosting for a domain name. You can register as many as you want.

Another …

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I absolutely abhor SEO spamming techniques. It is unethical and does not work in the long term.

Recently a website that I have been working on (not my client but under a subcontract) had been contracted out to an SEO firm. When the files were returned the DOCTYPE was missing from all of the pages. When I contacted the firm as to why they had been removed they told me that they always remove anything that has nothing to do with improving SEO. Groan.

The DOCTYPE is just HTML, but …

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Register your domain name as long as you possibly can.

Use appropriate search terms in the œtitle tag of images to appropriately describe the photo or image. Example: The website is a hotel site. You could use the following in the alt tag: œHotel Meridien is a luxury 4-star hotel near Central Park in New York City”.

The œtitle tag in links. Example: <a href=”directions.html title=”To find directions to the Hotel Meridien from La Guardia and Kennedy Airports click here”>Directions</a>

As I previously mentioned the importance of using a more …

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By Jill Whalen

There are so many SEO/SEM firms cropping up that talk a good game but don’t deliver results. This is in part because there’s so much information that is freely available about search engine optimization. On the surface, SEO sounds easy “ and it really is “ once you’ve had a number of sites to experiment with. What’s even easier than SEO, however, is discussing SEO as if you know what you’re actually doing (when you don’t)!

Here are 10 signs to watch out for that may very …

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Do not select a host until you have discussed your website with web designer. My personal recommendation is to stay away from Yahoo, MSN or similar hosts. Many have proprietary features and if you need to add something you can’t or you need to hire someone to implement it (and generally someone that can work with the later charge quite a bit of money).

A good to excellent host is:
Flexible and makes it easy to manage the account information
Numerous features
Install software applications (shopping cart, blog, CMS)
Setup …

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Right-click disabled. I love to use it to open new windows or tabs or to search on a key phrases or other information. If you really don’t want something taken don’t put it on the web.

Music or Sound: Unless you are in the business of selling music I hate seeing it on your website. I finally got so tired of it that I now browse without the speakers on. If you have to have it give us the option to listen to it.

Sites that fall apart: You know …

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Not using a business email address that contains your domain name and then checking the email account is not a good practice. Also, don’t have your email forwarded to an ISP or other provider such as Yahoo, MSN or Yahoo. It doesn’t take anymore time to login into your web mail for your domain. Besides it looks unprofessional not to use an email address with your domain name in it.

If your domain or a client’s has been blacklisted by one of the big boys you’re not going to receive …

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I am going to be very blunt here (like I’m not already). Selling on-line has its responsibilities and tasks you have to do and if you just want to sit back and expect money to just come in don’t sell on-line.

All carts have problems with abandonment. That’s when a customer goes through your site adding items to purchase, but does not complete the order by paying for it. If there is a great deal of abandonment then it may be something wrong about the checkout process. It may be …

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The moment to start planning the œwhen and how your website will be found is before one line of code is written, a design is created, or even before you select a domain name. It should never be an afterthought.

Let’s just say I have seen first hand very poorly executed websites that were home grown because of the œit won’t cost me anything if I do it myself to the œmy friend, kid, relative¦fill in the blank.. did it for me”. Then they wonder why one can find them, …

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