It looks like it depends.

Reading Cutts’ reply, it looks like you are probably OK using or not using an underlined link at your own discretion. It comes down to how the links are interpreted by Google. If you are doing something on your site that seems sketchy and a competitor turns your page or site in for a spam review, a manual review may occur. There was a Google Spam Grader PDF over at Search Bistro (site no longer available) that was of interest. A newer version was mentioned more recently over at Search Engine Land and at SEOBook. I would imagine that some of the points in those documents, whether the docs are real or not, would indeed cause some concern (i.e. a seemingly benign URL in the search result forwards you to an adult URL, hidden text on a page, etc.)

I know some will want to “hide” a few extra links on a page for marketing reasons (i.e. link trades and exchanges). I know that others may have their own design aesthetic that may warrant not using visible links at all. For example, I’ve seen some ARGs and interesting graphic designer portfolios, rock band websites, etc. that choose not to underline all links in their pages so as to force visitors to hunt and peck through their site. Visitors who scour such a site are often rewarded with “easter eggs” – materials such as free ring tones, free wall papers, and the like which are not available from the normal navigation of the site but may be hinted at.

From Goldenberg’s conversation with Cutts, it seems that intent is the key. If there is any doubt that Google may misinterpret your intent, just use normal linking.

Google says that they now, keep important emails in their WebMaster Tools area. It may seem like no big deal but if your site was hacked, then serving up a virus or other malware… and Googlebot caught on, you might find that your site now sported a Google malware warning once users clicked on your link in the Google search results.

While Google reps might have previously attempted to send an email to you, to warn you that they’ve detected malware on your site, or if there were other issues… Many web masters close the typical addresses that Google and others might try to use like abuse@, webmaster@, admin@, administrator@, etc. in order to avoid spam.

In some cases, people were even spoofing Google WebMaster emails in order to scare other web masters, gain logins, etc.

If you find that you are getting a Google malware warning or you have a notice about a penalty, while Google can warn you, they really don’t do much to clarify where or what malware that they found. And they may or may not tell you if your site was indeed penalized. (In some cases even Google may not know that they’re penalizing you.) At least not yet. But you might turn to Google groups, review your prior SEO activities, or look for a company that specializes in malware detection.

Internet marketers often focus on trends in order to divine which keywords and phrases should be the focus when buying pay per click advertisements or building new site content. If you’ve been around the web or if you’ve been watching TV, you’ve probably heard that the World of Warcraft video game is one of the biggest games online with an online tidal wave of approximately 9 million subscribers. While I’m a former player myself, news about the game still piques my interest from time to time.

9 million. It boggles the mind. Even a slice of such a large customer base would make the day of most internet companies. On December 11th, 2007 a Warcraft licensed third party site opened called Figureprints. This site essentially makes a mini-statue of a player’s character for about $115. I’m sure that if even a slice of the WOW customer base purchases a figure print, this site will be quite successful.

In relation to SEO, the Figureprints site had about 1,800 reported links in Yahoo Site Explorer when it launched. After 16 days, they now have over 3,000. (I’m not sure why Google still reports zero links. /sigh ) While I’m not in a related industry, my mind buzzes with related topics that various industries could write about.

I see a bootstrap opportunity here where sites related to 3D printers and printing, model making, custom action figures, character statues, games, comic book blogs, and many others can improve or create rankings. Two examples that come to mind:

Printing: While you may not be able to become a Warcraft licensee, you may be able to bootstrap your rankings by explaining how the 3D printing process works. If your company has a CAD/rapid prototype/3D printer you have just about all you need to create and print up a non-Warcraft monster or hero, but from the same fantasy genre of trolls, knights and goblins. While doing this you can take pictures, capture some video on a camera phone or camcorder, and write up some color commentary about the process. This has the potential to build out to several pages of interesting text and imagery that could rank quite well over time. If you don’t have access to this type of printer, now is a great time to grab the yellow pages or start searching for a company to partner with.

Action Figures and Collectibles: There were mass produced Warcraft action figures that came before and after Figureprints. While it has been written that Warcraft has brought many first timers to the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game genre, will this have a similar affect on the niche action figure industry? There have been several companies that have produced custom action figures before. Any speculation on how this might change their outlook? There are also thousands of hobby sites where they creatively mash up legs, arms, torsos, sculpty and bits of plastic, in order to create custom made action figures. (Also know as action figure mods.) Any connections to explore there?

The idea of bootstrapping your SEO effort by hitching onto a related site or company’s idea can be quite powerful. The social aspect of talking about the subject in various forums, answering questions, and encouraging discussion around your videos, can create a positive buzz and links to both your site and the sites you discuss. If you are knowledgeable it can create legitimacy and trust in your site or service as well. While creating content around Figureprints and Warcraft may not be everyone’s cup of tea, there are certainly opportunities in other industries and around other topics if you keep an open mind. Good luck in maximizing your online marketing efforts!

The page that was normally well ranked for most MP3 related terms is: www.apple.com/itunes. However just about any of the sub pages from this section including www.apple.com/ipod/ipod.html would potentially make good pages to attempt to rank for MP3 related terms.

When you look at the source code for their iTunes page or just check the cached text in Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. you find that they do not use the keywords “MP3″ or “player” any where on this page. Even thought they have used that term in the past.

On the other hand, Apple’s pages still rank well in Yahoo and MSN as these engines still place a high relevance rating on inbound links. But even in these engines, the textual content can make a difference. (Ask.com, appears to be taking a route more akin to Google.) Should this concern Apple? It should. According to a quick search of the Wordtracker.com service, Google has about 47% of all search engine traffic. I’ve seen other estimates that say Google is 60-80% of all search traffic.

I thought links were all we need for Google rankings?

If you still think that links alone can support your site in Google, consider the following Google rankings for the keyword phrase MP3 player:

680,000+ inbound links from non Apple.com pages is nothing to scoff at. Even if you think that perhaps Google might be devaluing some of the potentially paid or off topic links that point to the iTunes page, take out even 200,000 links and you still have a linking juggernaut. Discount all of those links and a single link from their main page to the iTunes page could push a lot of Page Rank weight to the iTunes page. But… again, for the keyword phrases related to “MP3″, Apple just doesn’t use the term and so, they are essentially telling Google through their optimization or specific lack of optimization, ‘we don’t sell MP3 Players and we don’t want to rank for them’.

There is a hole in your chart/theory! Or is there?

I know that some of you will say, “but Scott, look at number 8. Musicmatch.com doesn’t even use the keyword!”. That would be true, but Google considers “jukebox” to be a keyword that is similar to MP3. Really? Yep, that is semantic indexing at work. However the strength of this association is quite weak.

Here you see keywords in bold that have strong relationships to “jukebox” such as MP3 Player, MP3, and player.

Below you see keywords that have a strong relationship to “MP3“. But you will notice that the term jukebox is not highlighted by Google in bold. Thus indicating that the relationship between the two keywords is not all that strong.

And some of you will say “Why do I see MP3 in some of my Yahoo searches for this Apple page?”

It is because they use Yahoo’s paid Search Submit service. Essentially they have a bit more control over what text appears in the Yahoo search results, faster indexing and refreshes from Yahoo, and a few other perks. However it does not directly improve their rankings in Yahoo and does nothing for their rankings in Google.

Does Apple play MP3 files? Who cares. Should they use “MP3″ on their web pages?

Speaking to some of my evangelical Mac friends, it is true that a Mac does not technically “play” MP3s. However they do convert MP3 based music files, CDs, etc. into a format called AAC that can be used on Mac’s iPod hardware players. I know from personal experience that their iTunes software player either converts or plays MP3s as well. However whether it is converting them or playing them directly, to me, doesn’t matter. I can play them. The average person is in a similar situation online. They are looking for an “MP3 player” in Google, not an “AAC player”.

There may be some technical or licensing considerations preventing Apple from using the ubiquitous “MP3″ term on their site. Maybe they are trying to subtly encourage new/non-techie iPod owners to only use the iTunes music store by remaining a bit silent on the word MP3 and the ability to convert MP3s to something usable by their players. On their iPod and iTunes promotional pages they always use more general terms like “music files”, “music library”, etc. rather than talking about song formats. Even their help pages don’t really help you to understand if your existing MP3 library works with iPod or iTunes. I doubt that they simply forgot to use the term.

Lets go back to Wordtracker for a second. The keywords MP3 player and MP3 players are estimated to have 900 to 1600 searches in a 24 hour period. While I think this value is a bit low, what is potentially at stake? Lets combine the keywords and figure that 900 people could hit Apple.com in one day from a combined “MP3 player” and “MP3 players” search. Over the course of a month, that could mean 27,900 visitors to their site or roughly 328,500 visitors a year. What if 1% of those visitors ended up buying the average iPod at $199? That is an additional $55,521 a month in revenue or more than $600,000 over the course of the year. While this is all “in theory”, remember that there are also various other MP3 related searches that they are missing out on as well.

Summary and Suggestions…

Apple.com probably should consider their rankings loss for MP3 player and similar terms. They have one of the most popular music players on the planet and it can use MP3 songs, convert them to AAC, or whatever needs to happen. As some one who thinks in terms of search engines though, their pages are -not- optimized for MP3 or MP3 related terms. And that side of me thinks that they have a great opportunity to re-gain their Google rankings. No, they don’t have to go out of their way and start talking about “MP3″ all over the place. It would be easy enough to just add a sentence or two at the bottom of their iTunes page where it reads:

“Cars available on iTunes in selected countries. © Disney and Pixar. No celebrity endorsement implied. iPod games will not play on Apple TV. All rights reserved. TM & Copyright © 2007 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.”

Perhaps just a quick sentence/phrase/slogan like “Your MP3 tunes work on iTunes and the iPod music player.” Or add a short paragraph that talks about Steve Job’s recent announcement on DRM free music. Do you have recording of his speech? Um, podcast anyone? Post a descriptive text link that points to a free AAC copy of the speech as well as an MP3 copy. This will provide another instance of “MP3″ for your page. Certainly there is a creative, yet valid and logical way to squeeze MP3 onto your page in order to regain the MP3 related Google rankings.

For the rest of us, it will take more than just a few mentions of MP3 and a few links to rank on this term or others. There are literally hundreds of search engine factors to consider when optimizing a site to rank well. But when you are strictly focusing on the linking side of things, dealing with hundreds of thousands of legitimate links, a trusted domain, etc. many of those other factors can fade into the back ground. However whether you are a behemoth computer industry site or a mom and pop trying to rank on a few terms, some of the more fundamental SEO considerations are considerations that every site should keep in the forefront of the web and content design decisions.

Is .COM Considered An International Domain?

The .com domain is typically the most sought after and well known of all domain types. While a .us top level domain does exist for US companies to register, it is thought that search engines consider a .com address as related primarily to US based websites or often used by sites that are not typically country specific. If your site is based in the UK, you might still consider a .com domain as it is easy for customers to remember, but if you are focusing primarily on UK search engines, register a .co.uk domain. If your site is in Ireland, an .ie domain should be considered, .fr for France, .in for India, .ca for Canada, and so on.

If you have both a regional and .com domain, the next question is do you use both or do you use only one and forward visitors from one URL to the other? If you have the resources to maintain both web sites, it is not a bad idea to keep both URLs up and running. If you do this and they are both in the same language, make sure that each has its own unique content to avoid duplication penalties. You may even link between the two domains to provide some link popularity between the domains but don’t over do it. There is an line drawn between what some engines consider a “articifical linking network” and simply two or more sites that link to one another. On the other side, if one site is one language and you have another URL that has roughly the same content but in another language like say Italian, search engines generally do not penalize for duplicated content in different languages.

International Hosting

Like a domain name, where your site is hosted can play a role in rankings. In real life, if you spoke with an accent, this non-verbal clue may help someone to identify where you were born or grew up. Similarly, if you are a UK or Scottish company, the IP address can be a give away. Does your site have pages served from a fairly local server in Edinburgh, Scotland or is it served from a location like Dallas, Texas? Search engines can use this information to further identify your site for regional or international rankings.

If the hosting company you use tells you that their offices are in the UK or they use a .co.uk domain for their site’s URL, be aware that they could be a reseller for another company in another country. In some cases, they may use a co-location service to host or manage web hosting servers in another country rather than in the country that their domain would seem to specify. Get in touch with your current or potential web hosting service to see where they host from. You may find that you will need to seek other hosting options or you may need to simply ask them to move your site to a server that they manage in the same target country.

If you are already online, you may be able to check where your site is being hosted from on your own. There are various tools online like those at DNS Stuff and Canvas Dreams’ Web Host Locator which can check on your URL and give you the data that you need.

Don’t Hide Your International Address, Phone Number, Etc.

Have a local or international phone number (a non-800/888 number)? Do you have an international business address? While it may seem like over-kill on some sites, depending on the design/style of the site, it’s not a bad idea to keep this type of information readily available on many or all of your web site’s pages. There are both SEO and non-SEO reasons for this.

SEO reasons: Niche keyword searches. While there are many keywords which are very difficult to rank on such as mortgage, real estate, realtor, etc., some searchers use a combination of items like a postal or zip code, a partial street address, a partial phone number, or other information along with a keyword or two during their search in order to narrow down general searches to something more specific. Since many of these combinations provide only a few hits per month, many companies ignore trying to optimize for these keyword combinations, and thus improve your chances of appearing with the addition of your contact info on the page or some basic optimization.

Customer Service reasons: Customers generally should not have to dig through your site’s architecture in order to contact you if you have a high contact or regional specific company such as in real estate, mortgages, building supplies, local groceries, etc. While you generally want customers to read through your site in order to answer most of their questions before they contact you, every one reads/understands information in a different manner and they may not know or understand that they should click the ‘contact us’, ‘about us’, or a similar page for such information.

Directions To Your Location

Although I think you should keep your contact information on most your pages, this doesn’t mean that you should remove or forget to use some type of ‘contact us’, ‘about us’, or a similar page on your site. When you create this page, do use words that represent your country, regional naming conventions, states, zones, and other words that describe your location. If you have any abbreviations, spell them out as well. After all “St.” could reference a street, a suite, or a saint.

Give driving directions from a few well known locations rather than simply relying on external services. The content on your site helps you for SEO reasons and helps your customers to find you. If you want to also place links to an external mapping/driving directions service in order to give your visitors a means of double checking directions, go for it, but these external links normally do not play a direct part in helping you to obtain higher rankings.

Localized Language

Even if you speak the same language as the country and international site that you are attempting to get ranked, there may be regional or local spelling differences, slightly different terms to use, grammar differences, or other challenges to take into consideration. Although I speak US based English, it makes a difference if I am trying to SEO pages for boot repair parts and trunk repair parts in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. A boot is a type of shoe in most of these areas but outside of the US it can also indicate the storage compartment of a car. In the US we would call this area a trunk where as both in the US and elsewhere, a trunk usually indicates the main portion of a tree or a large container for storing items.

In Mexico and Span the way that one would optimize for mortgage lending services differs as well. The term “bienes raices” in commonly used in Mexico and in the Spanish speaking areas of the US and roughly means “real estate” or literally “root assets”. In Spain you would use a term like “inmobiliaria” to describe real estate. In Mexico and the US you would use the term “prestamista” for a lender such as a mortgage broker or loan officer where as in Spain this term is often used for dishonest or questionable lenders such as “loan sharks“. So you would not necessarily use the same terms in the same language to optimize for different countries that have a common language.

I love tools like Babel Fish and search engine based translation systems, but I would not put complete trust in them to accurately and meaningfully translate any web site for strict business and SEO purposes due to language nuances. Because of factors like these, a good translator or regional copy writer is a must.

Summary

SEOs are constantly working to improve website rankings but international and regional web sites often need a few extra tweaks to help them rank well. If you are attempting to improve a web site’s ranking in an international engine, there are some basic steps that can take to increase the odds of ranking well. Use a domain that relates to your target country rather than a general domain like .com. If you use both a regional domain and a .com, provide unique content on both sites. Obtain hosting services from an IP address/host that is actually located in the country that you are targeting. Be obvious about your company contact information by placing it on all or many pages of your site so that it is easy for customers to find and easy for search engines to index. Even if you have basic contact information on many pages of your site, do have a “contact us” or similar page. Do research your target market’s keywords and language style, if you are not native to the target country, and consider hiring some one to translate or regionalize the text for you. While these ideas may not cause your site to rocket to the top rankings in a international search engine over night, taken as a whole (along with traditional linking and SEO strategies), they can give you an edge toward improved rankings.

Keyword Research
The first step in SEO is to identify the search terms for which you would like your web site to rank well on search engines. We might believe that we know these terms already, but our intuition is often incorrect about how popular or competitive search keywords actually are in reality. People use all kinds of variations of phrases as they are searching for information on the internet. It’s important to identify these terms and use them in your site content exactly as people type them into search engines. To discover what these search terms are, a keyword research tool should be used. There are several free tools available, such as the Keyword Selector provided by Overture, but most of the robust keyword research tools are subscription based. For more information on how to start compiling a good keyword list, read How to Research and Utilize Valuable Search Keywords.

Web Site Optimization
You now have your well researched keyword list in hand, and are ready to use the keywords in your web site content. How should these search terms be integrated into your web pages? How often should the phrases be used, and in what sections of the pages? Those are excellent questions and the answers are not known exactly because they depend on the algorithms used by search engines. However, it is generally agreed upon that search engines look at several different sections of a page when evaluating its content:

• Title tag
• Heading tag
• Meta Keyword and Meta Description tags
• Text within the Body area
• Link text and Link URL
• ALT attribute for Image tags (the ALT tag may be less significant than other areas of the page)

Search engines look at the various sections of the document for repeating patterns of keywords or phrases. For this reason, it’s important to have a keyword density within a specific range. What should that keyword density be? Software tools like WebPosition’s Page Critic can help to answer that question. The Page Critic works by looking at the keyword density (and other statistics) of pages that are already ranking well on search engines. Since the search engines keep the details of how their algorithms work a secret, a reasonable strategy is to emulate pages that are well positioned.

Web Site Design
Aesthetics and user friendliness are important elements of web site design, but there are a number of other things to consider to ensure a web site will be as friendly to search engines as possible.

• HTML Validation
  It’s important to ensure that the HTML code that makes up a web page is correctly formatted. If there are errors in the code, then search engine spiders may have difficulty indexing the page’s content. Use a HTML Validator to check the formatting of HTML code, and read this article for more information on why this is important.
• Site Map
  It’s always a good idea to create a site map to make it easy for search engine spiders to index the site’s content. Link to every page on the web site that has relevant content, and place a link to the site map on the site’s home page. It may also help to sign up for the Google Sitemaps program to help ensure your content is indexed by Google.
• Develop a Site Theme
  One aspect of web site design that is often overlooked is theme development. If possible, organize your content so that particular themes are reinforced. Read Reinforcing Ideas and Improving Relevance to Gain Better Rankings for ideas to consider when organizing your site content.
• Avoid Duplicate Content
  It’s important to avoid duplicating content on the web site. Read Duplicate Content: How Does it Affect Your Rankings? for more information on how to avoid penalties associated with duplicate content.

Comply with Search Engines’ Terms of Service
There are several practices to avoid to stay on good terms with search engines. Techniques like cloaking, hidden text, or spamming, for example, violate search engines’ terms of service. If a site is found to be using these types of blackhat techniques, it will typically be removed from the search engine’s index. Read this article for more information about practices to avoid.

Build Link Popularity
The Link Popularity of a page is a term that refers to the number of other web sites that link to that page. Search engines typically consider how many other sites link to a page as a factor in determining that page’s ranking. The idea behind this is that if others link to a page, then they must consider that page’s content to be valuable in some way. However, all links are not weighted equally and it’s therefore important to try to encourage high quality web sites within your own theme area to link to your site. For a good overview of these concepts, read Link Popularity Considerations, and for some ideas about how to start building links read A Review of Link Building Strategies.

Monitor Performance
Once your optimized web site is online, you’ll want to monitor its performance on the search engines. If the site is brand new, it should of course be submitted to the search engines, or perhaps resubmitted if necessary. Monitor the site’s positions on search engines for keywords of interest to identify areas where the site is performing well and areas that can be improved. An excellent tool designed for this is WebPosition’s Reporter feature. It creates formatted reports featuring graphs of positions over time, as well as useful parameters like the Keyword Visibility Index.

A web site that is positioned well in search engines should start receiving a significant number of visitors. To monitor traffic and other useful web site statistics, a web analytics solution such as WebTrends is recommended. Read Measuring Web Site Statistics as Part of Your SEO Strategy for more information about the benefits of web analytics.

Conclusion
The art of SEO is a set of skills that can be learned and implemented by anybody who manages a web site. However, proper optimization and maintenance of the site requires time and effort, and the fundamental elements of SEO discussed above must be put into practice. Those who find they do not have the time or desire to implement their own SEO program, read Outsourcing a SEO Program for some advice on how to best seek out professionals that can help.

Organic describes a search that returns results by indexing pages based on content and keyword relevancy. This is in contrast to listings ranked based on who paid the most money to appear at the top such as those on Overture.com. Sometimes this is called “pure” or “natural search” as it is supposed to be “untainted” by commercial payments or bids.

Historically, Google has led the way in championing the virtues of natural or organic search. Its primary focus has always been to return fast, highly relevant results based on the content of the page, the relevancy of links pointing to that page, and other “objective” criteria. Sponsored listings have always been clearly separated from the organic search results on Google. However, many other engines have experimented with mixing the two types of search without clearly labeling which is which. This has been followed by public outcries, and at least one cautionary set of statements issued by the FTC in 2002.

Pros and Cons of Organic Search vs Paid Search

Unlike organic foods at your local grocery store, you aren’t required to pay extra to reap the healthy benefits of “organic” search. So what are the benefits of organic over paid search?

Pros:

1. Greater Click-throughs: People trust “organically grown” search results more than they do sponsored results. While the engines business is supported by paid ads, many consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices. Therefore, while paid ads can play an important part in your marketing strategy, ultimately it is the organic search results that will more likely yield the greater click-through rates when all other things are equal. Therefore, it’s this type of listing that will maximize the traffic to your site whenever you climb to the top.

2. Power of Branding: More and more large corporations are investing resources into organic search to gain the marketing benefits of promoting their brand. For example, most consumers would expect to find Dell.com in a search for computers. If your company does not show up for the keyword results in which you’d expect to appear it can be embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as important as they once were if they don’t even show up in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in the top search results can give the impression that your company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can give the impression of big business importance by securing aa better position in organic search than their larger rivals.

3. Greater Trust Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially motivated and may not always be the most relevant product or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the company that was able to spend the most money to get their message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do offer the best products, but there’s no guarantee. There’s certainly not the same level of trust that we see from visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can, of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent survey shows that people tend to trust organic results compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should see more visitors from organic search converting to sales, assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give you the high ROI you’re looking for or your boss is demanding.

4. Organic is Free: After all these years, it’s still free to submit to Google, arguably the most popular of the organic search engines right now. Google has always been adamant about not charging for inclusion in its index of 4.2 billion pages. Most other organic engines will also index you for free, although some like Yahoo do have paid inclusion options. Paid inclusion simply guarantees your page will get indexed quickly and stay indexed for as long as you maintain your subscription, but does not promise a particular ranking. However, if you have a Web site with good quality content and links from third party sites, paid inclusion is “nice-to-have”. It can be very useful in getting pages indexed or re-indexed quickly. This allows you to quickly test various page designs and to feed news and other time-sensitive content to the search engine as quickly as possible.

Cons:

1. Organic Rankings are Not Automatic: With organic listings, you cannot simply hand over a certain amount of money and be guaranteed to quickly and automatically achieve any ranking you desire. Instead, achieving positions in organic search requires the proper technology, skill, and know-how. There has always been a cloud of mystery around the process of achieving top rankings. How’s it done? Where do I start? That’s why resources like this newsletter and products like WebPosition are essential to a business’s success in search engine marketing.

2. Organic Rankings Require an Investment in Time: The age-old adage of “nothing worthwhile in life ever comes easy” rings true with organic rankings. While they are monetarily free, simply submitting your pages to the search engines is not enough to bring in a flood of new visitors to your Web site. Far too many businesses have been fooled into spending $49 or $99 to submit their site to “thousands” of sites, 99% of which are obscure names you’ve probably never heard of. The key is that someone doing a search on a major search engine must be able to easily find your Web site.

If your site is buried at the bottom of the list, or simply fails to appear in the first few pages of search results, you can kiss your chances of being found good-bye. The key is to use responsible best practices to create pages that are highly relevant to the keywords that apply to your Web site and the products or solutions you have to offer. In other words, optimize your pages for search engine visibility and see how fast your position improves. To do this, you simply need to know what each search engine needs for maximum visibility. Then tweak your Web page’s content while paying attention to off-page factors like the number and type of links coming to your page. Tune the pages of your site to the preferences of the major search engines and then watch your rankings and traffic climb.

While optimizing your Web site to rank well for organic searches takes more effort than simply buying an ad, it can provide your business with one of the highest ROI results that you’re likely to find. Numerous studies have placed search engine optimization at the top of the list of the most effective forms of online marketing. Its low cost, high relevancy, and high conversion rates make it an ideal marketing vehicle for almost any business.

The catch? As with any area of marketing, SEO is a competitive field. Arming yourself with the best technology and knowledge is key to gaining a competitive advantage. Long-time readers of MarketPosition know that WebPosition was the first product on the market to track a Web site’s rankings on the search engines and to help improve those rankings. That early lead has given WebPosition more time for its technology to grow and mature than any of its competition. WebPosition’s Page Critic module contains a wealth of advice and statistics designed to move your site to the top of the organic search results. Not only that, it also tracks your rankings and gives you advice on how to achieve the best results in both organic and pay-per-click search engines as well. Therefore, you can capitalize on the best of both worlds.

This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from WebTrends, the makers of WebPosition. WebPosition helped define the SEO industry by being the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition 4 is available from WebTrends.