11 Tips for Top SEO Billing

Author: Lena West

Every entrepreneur wants to rank high in the search engines for the word or phrase she wants to "own" in the mind of the target market.

But landing the top position in search results is like owning beachfront property: If you ever get it, you better hold onto it because no one is making any more beachfront. Similarly, only one company can occupy the No. 1 slot.

And any time you have a scarce resource--like beachfront property or top search engine rankings--the hucksters usually aren't far behind.

So what's a business owner to do? You want top billing, but you don't want any wooden nickels.

Some companies are so committed to achieving and maintaining their search results that they hire a full-time employee just to manage their company's search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. SEO is such a mass of moving parts, variables, tactics and strategies that hiring someone full-time isn't a half-bad idea for companies that can afford the expense. The employee would certainly have lots to do.

However, there are some tasks and tactics you can handle on your own:

1. Text trumps graphics. It's great to have a slick-looking website with pictures of smiling people on the homepage and Flash animation that gyrates to up-tempo "business beat" Musak--but that does squat for your website's SEO. Make sure that your homepage and all the other pages on your website have plenty of natural--not forced--flowing text. And, speaking of forced text . . .

2. Don't phrase cram. Perhaps you've seen websites that shove in the company's coveted marketing term so often you wonder whether you're reading the same paragraph over and over. This is known as SEO cramming, and the more you try to game the system, the more your website's ranking decreases. Search engine robots are programmed to spot SEO gaming.