Weapons of Mass DistractionSearch Engine Optimization (SEO)

Let's face it, search engines are by far the best way to get traffic to your web site.  The problem is that you aren't the only person in the world with a web page selling fuzzy purple widgets.  Popular keywords on the major search engines are extremely competitive.  If the guy that was #1 sees that you have taken his spot, he declares war on you and does everything he can to get that spot back.  If you aren't familiar with what Google is looking for, you may design your pages completely wrong and upset the search giant.

There are many programs out there that can assist you with optimizing your pages for various search engines.  IBP for example will allow you to compare your page to the top 10 other sites for a chosen keyword.  It will tell you ways to make your page more like theirs, such as keyword density, outgoing links, meta tags, etc.  It will also check for specific problems that you may not even think to look for.  I have tried it out but don't yet know whether it is actually effective or not.  I can't imagine it hurting your search rankings though.  Google does have some ways to detect sites that have been over-optimized, but I'm not sure what particular things they look for.

You can also hire someone to take care of the optimizing for you.  I have never tried this, since i imagine they would just do the same thing I would.. Or they'd just use IBP and charge you enough money that you could've bought the software yourself.

Another thing to keep in mind that different search engines like different types of pages.  Google, MSN, and Yahoo each want different numbers of words on a page, keyword density, etc.  You have to experiment and see what works best for you. Part of the problem is that it takes a long time for the changes you make to show up in the search listings. 

Google is especially slow in showing changes you've made.  It can take 3 months for them to even notice things have changed.  Even if they index your page often (and they will if you make changes all the time), new stuff will not show up in their search results for quite a while.  By the time changes to show up, you've probably made so many changes that you won't know which things you did actually made the difference.  Fortunately every other webmaster out there shares this problem.

I remember back several years ago infoseek would index your page and include it in the search results instantly, which was great for figuring out if changes you made had a positive effect or not.  I think that was actually a bad thing for people that are being honest in their sites, and a great thing for cheaters and spammers.

There are many e-books on the subject that are available for purchase.  Some of them are worth their weight in gold, and others are outdated and useless.  Check back here later and I will try to find and review some good search engine optimization information.

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