Have you checked out MySolutionSpot.com? It’s a site that Network Solutions created to provide small business owners with a place to ask questions & get answers about having their business online. There are also many articles & resources that are very helpful.
In the community someone had asked: “I was wondering how likely is it for a site to become the #1 search result on the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)? What are the most important factors for determining the likelihood of your site being #1? Is this something I should worry about now before launching the site or is it something I can do later? If a site ranks as #1, is it hard to maintain that after you have achieved it?”
Let’s take a look at the first question:
I was wondering how likely is it for a site to become the #1 search result on the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)? This depends on many factors. Some that come to mind are:
Content - how often are you updating your content? Are you using consistent keywords that makes the search engines recognize your site as focused on a topic?
Search Engine Optimized - is your site optimized for search engines? Network Solutions offers this service.
Titles & the first paragraph - I think this is more important than tags. (I don’t tag anything on my personal blog). But a strong succinct title with key words is awesome for catching search engines. I have found titles like Twitter 101 and Blogging 101 to be very effective. Think about what people would search for in your niche then use that. Think like your readers. Ask them what you should write about. And you should also focus your first paragraph on keywords.
Images - hosting your photos in Flickr allows you to add tags & then search engines see those tags also.
Inbound links - how many links are you including to other highly influential sites? You can use a search in Technorati to find blog posts that have a high authority on the topic that you’re writing about. Use one link per paragraph. And if you link to influencers then it may catch their attention & cause them to link to you (which is called back linking)
Back links - When others link to you that also increases your presence online.
Competition - how many people are in your niche? One trick I’ve found that works well is to have a weekly post on a set of links to related articles. I title it ‘community strategy links’. Community strategy was heavily dominated by sites in the UK, but I’ve moved up to the 2nd page on Google search results now.
Common misspellings - My name is commonly misspelled so I did two things. I purchased both domain names: www.conniebensen.com and www.conniebenson.com. But I also had to use Connie Benson in a few blog posts to get the search engines to notice it. (I generally don’t misspell my own name, so for one post I actually blogged about it. But you can blog about something & post it with an earlier date).
Those are my tricks of the trade. So why would anyone want to work so hard? Well if having your business online be successful is important to you, then yes SEO is very important. For me I’ve chosen to have a career of working online. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a conference organizer that found me thru Google. My blog came up & as a result I have a speaking opportunity.
Additional reading:
and Network Solutions offers ongoing webinars & sessions on SEO
It looks like I need to answer the rest of the questions in future posts 
What are your SEO tricks? Please share - I gave you my best!
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