# General Business Category > Marketing Forum >  top 10 SEO tips for your guys!

## watermetersupplier

Here goes top 10 SEO tips i collected and summarized from web pages and forum threads,hope it will help you a lot. I benefited a lot from it. So i am to share it with you guys.

1) Keyword Research

This is one of the most important aspects you could and should look at if you 
are just starting to promote your website online. This process is best done 
before your website goes live but dont worry if you havent done any as yet.
We need to find out what people search for when they are looking for products or services which you sell on your website if you build a website and have keywords which simply no one will search for you will soon see your website drop and you simply wont make sales which could see your business fall on its knees before it has even got off the ground. 

The web is full of useful tools you can look at using if you are trying to find 
out the best keywords for your website campaign. This process should be 
something you spend allot of time on and focus all of your attention to as it 
will be the main thing which will hopefully bring you some sales.

The below are some of the very best tools you could use to help you find the 
best keywords to promote your website with. 

Google Adwords

Keyword Finder Tool

The main reason why this has to be the most important of my top 10 SEO tips is because without this your website could and most probably would fail at its knees. So this has to be the most important thing you do to your website to begin with. 

Keep a list of all the keywords you have come up with as you can use this later on to find out which ones would be ideal for you to target. Keep reading the SEO tips to find out how you can go about doing this.

There are allot of ways you can use your keywords on your website to help 
promote it with SEO but these are too long to include into my top 10 SEO list so if you want to know more simply post in the SEO Information Section and Ill be sure to answer any questions you might have. 

2) Competition Research 

We are not talking about following everything they are doing as in fact that 
will only help to a certain degree we simply mean look at what they are doing 
that you arent and then do it better. We will discuss later in my top 10 SEO 
tips how important it is knowing about the amount of links your competitors have so finding out all of this information un front will give you that extra 
information to try and get your website top for your chosen keywords.
To be able to carry this tip you will need to first know how you can find your 
completion this can be done easily by using tip 1 of my top 10 SEO tips you can now go to Google and type them into the search box see which websites come back top and then note them down.

These will effectively be the websites you now want to follow and work on to make your website better. The below are things you should try and find out about your completion as this will help you promote your website better. 

You will see why some of the below are some important later on in my top 10 SEO tip guide.

1) Positioning in Search Engines for Keywords
2) Amount of Incoming Links
3) Keywords
4) The amount of Keyword Links
5) The Page rank of other linking Pages

Along with this you can use a range of SEO tools and software to help you find out this information but it will not be as effective and can cost you money so I have not bothered to add these in but please feel free to contact me if you want to know more about them.

3) Links

This is probably one of the top 10 SEO tips which will in fact stick with you 
throughout your SEO campaign you will have to mainly focus on this and the 
content to be able to have a good chance of ranking high. People have spoken about links been drained up but this simply wont happen within the near future so you should still focus on this process allot. 

The main process can be done quite well and if done well can have a big impact on your website as discussed earlier in my top 10 SEO tips post you will need to use keywords on your link technique which will help you get the best ranking.

There are loads of link types about but the main one which Google will focus on is back links this is a link which is incoming from different websites. But 
before you run off to make as many back links as you can you need to know that its not all about the amount of links you have as you will soon find out SEO is more about quality and not quantity.

You can get backlinks in range of ways but make sure they are not spammy and they incorporate step 1 of my top 10 SEO tips. You can get back links from participating in popular online business forums, online business directories and blog comments you can literally get backlinks from everywhere on the web.

I have a million and one ways you could build links without been spammy but 
allot of the time it will be down to the industry you want to promote within so please feel free to comment on the SEO information page and I will be happy to advise you on some ways in which you can build links.

4) Optimise Your Pages

Before we start tip 4 of my top 10 SEO tips if you are not very confident with editing html pages or dont know how please contact your web designer or someone on the business forum as if you do this wrong you could end up breaking your website which isnt ideal. This step is really in depth so I have broken it down into short ideas.

You can research each section as you need or simply ask me or another user for information and they should be able to help. 

 Page Titles
 Content 
 H tags
 Alt tags
 Meta Tags & Keywords
 Optimise Images

I can go on for hours with all the ways and information on how you can do this but like I said I want to keep this top 10 SEO list clean so please do feel free to email me for advice or I will try and make a more in-depth list at a later date which should help you find more information about each section.

5) Images

This SEO tip isnt set 100% proven but allot of people have seen some traffic 
come to them through images and it isnt going to take you hours to do this so I say its worth a shot. If you have allot of images or only a few try and save them using your keywords so if you sell cars try and save them like this Ford Fiesta For Sale you get the picture.

The SEO tip isnt confirmed but some people have seen good results from it so its worth having ago but again you might need to contact your web designer as he will be the only one who can update your website using the FTP.

6) Social Networking

Social networking has become one of the biggest ways to promote your company so no matter what company you run you should be taking full advantage of what the web and social networking industry has to offer. We are talking about 1 hour on every site to give you a good profile with some good unique content.

The below are some of the very best social networking sites you could look at adding your business to.

Facebook

Twitter

Be sure to add some social buttons to your website as this will allow users to keep in touch by your profile and will again help you boost your online reputation.

Nearly there and the rest of my top 10 SEO tips are just as important as the previous 5 so don't spend any less time on them.

7) Content

Content has and always be king we are not talking about copying some one else's content we are talking about well written and unique content which is useful the user. The more content you have the better but don't keep it all in one place start by making some content and adding it to your blog which hopefully you will have now you will need to start making some links which we have previously talked about to do this you will need to write some useful and again unique articles which you can then link back to your website from.

Keep the content unique its hard work but it is well worth it and will see your company have a good improvement. You can look at adding your articles to websites like Squidoo, Blogger etc but please keep it unique and do not copy someone else's as it will damage your website.

You can use various sites to write your content on, this sort of idea will help you increase backlinks and also your content on your website. This should be the most important aspect of your website and shouldnt be rushed. You should always ensure you take time with the content and make sure it is not copied. 

8) Sitemaps

Think of this step like making a contents page for a book it will help and allow users to easily navigate through your website using one page. This method will also help Google on your website and can be used with Googles Webmaster tools this is one of my later top 10 SEO tips but is probably one you should do before you start promoting your website. 

The web has allot of tools you could look at using if you want to make a sitemap and also some tools you can use to submit them. 

Making a Sitemap

Sitemap Builder

Make a Sitemap

Free Sitemap Builder

Submit a Sitemap

Google 

Bing

9) Local Optimisation

This is something which is becoming allot more popular, over the coming months allot of people will be optimising your pages for more local search terms, this could be a range of things but will usually be town and then the keyword like Graphic Design Coventry 

Although not as much traffic as a big keyword like Graphic Design they can bring your website some good relative traffic and can be also allot easier to get to than the bigger keywords. Again the main ways to get to local results is using all of the above tips along with some of the new local methods which have come out. 

Google Places is one of the new tools which allows you to add your business and set a target location it can be a great tool if done correctly. It is free to sign up but will take 2-3 weeks for your confirmation card to arrive through the post but is well worth it.

10) Navigation

This top 10 SEO tip should have probably come higher up the list but as said I havent written the list in order of importance, this is one of those things you will need to sit down and think about before you even build your website. Your navigation needs to be clean and easy to do it needs to allow users to navigate around your website easily without having to go onto too many pages.

You should always look at how you can make your website useable how easy is it for people to find there way around etc all of these things will help you make a website which works and which will be used by your customers.

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## Dave A

Man, this looks familiar. Just can't put my finger on where I've read this before...

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## watermetersupplier

yes, i have mentioned in the very beginning. It was not written down by me. I just collected from other channel. I just wanna share this with all of you guys. Hope it can do you some good. that is all.

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## BryanCasson

> Google Places is one of the new tools which allows you to add your business and set a target location it can be a great tool if done correctly. It is free to sign up but will take 2-3 weeks for your confirmation card to arrive through the post but is well worth it.


This is true, however, you can confirm your location by telephone within minutes.

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## BryanCasson

> The below are some of the very best social networking sites you could look at adding your business to.
> Facebook
> Twitter


For South Africans we can define this by mentioning:

1) Myscoop
2) My Chatbox
3) + many great forums like this one

Secondly we cannot forget the location based social networks like:
1) Foursquare
2) Waytag (South African)

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## johnwarner75

very interesting article (who ever wrote it) I wonder which are the top 3 in order of importance when building your SEO campaign

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## BryanCasson

Believe me, there are far more than 10 signals when it comes to order of ranking. Indeed some signals are stronger than others. The strongest ranking signals for onsite SEO are as follows:

1) Keyword in Domain Name
2) Title Optimisation (descriptive titles matching the main topic of the page)
3) Inbound Links to your website from Relevant Sources

As for the below tips, the order of importance cannot be defined as the only tips that actually influences ranking are 7, 3, & 4 (in order of importance) , the rest are enhancers. Google Adwords is a paid service and local search is just another way to make it to the top using a different ranking location (does not affect your organic result though)

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Dave A (12-Jul-11)

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## johnwarner75

Im not totally familiar with the importance of key words (yet). I have a blog that posts on South African business news, my site is called www.sa-businessnews.com so will search engines  see my domain as containing the individual key words "SA" "business" and "news"?

thanks

John

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## Dave A

It certainly should help.

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## Chatmaster

Funny how some people can make SEO sound so simple to do. The reality is that it is becoming more and more complicated. The number of factors that will influence rankings are also growing more and more into individual sciences. All I can say is that since 2003 it is much better to outsource organic SEO to an expert, especially if you target competitive keywords. I would like to talk more old school about SEO and its biggest ranking factors. Contextual deep inbound links and Contextual outbound links would probably be the biggest SEO factors you can get besides the basics everyone seems to mention.

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## BryanCasson

That is the whole problem, everyone KNOWS how to do SEO and everyone THINKS they are the best

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## techfreakd

Good information sharing for me and all seo members. This is a good article.

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## kailashseo368

thanks for sharing this seo tips

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## Pretoria Kitchens

These are great tips and advice and as always sounds like fun. However sitting down and actually starting a campaign makes you see that it is very time consuming and should be very structured. The sweat and tears pays off eventually and the "seo-ritual" becomes fun when you see results

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## workshop

One should try and keep these things as simple as possible. SEO is 90% common sense. And the best advice one can give a web site owner is to figure out how they can make themselves useful, to start thinking outside the confines their own immediate needs. The question that needs to be asked is how are you going to make yourself useful to the businesses who are going to refer their clients to you? How are you going to catch the eye of the the clients who are looking you and the services you offer?

What this translates into, is a strategy where you need to start thinking about the web in terms of a cluster of useful boutique sites that feed traffic and enquiries through to your core business. As an example an interior decorator could set up three or four sites profiling the building industry, the local professional services such as architects, quantity surveyors and civil engineers and the retailers dealing in home accessories. Simple low maintenance web sites which are useful and which in time could grow and develop into very effective self funding advertising platforms.

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## Braden

Haey..
 You have mention these points in your post for good seo



> 1) Keyword Research
> 2) Competition Research 
> 3) Links
> 4) Optimise Your Pages
> 5) Images
> 6) Social Networking
> 7) Content
> 8) Sitemaps
> 9) Local Optimisation
> 10) Navigation


 As far as i think now a days perfect keyword,unique and fresh content and social networking these are most effective..

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## workshop

How does social networking improve a sites ranking on Google? I have never quite understood the tie in. Does social networking help to get a site closer to that coveted first page?

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## Wiz

SEO is all about combination of certain facts which Google uses it into their algorithm. You need to work in every aspect of your site. The list goes on and on but you can work on on-site and off-ste.  Its always better to optimize as well as use search engines for better long term prospects.

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## workshop

This I understand. But what I do not understand is how Facebook or any of the other "social media' sites help your rankings. They are as a rule "no follow". They have to be to try and minimise link spam. Does Facebook help one to rank higher in the search results?

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## Dave A

> Does Facebook help one to rank higher in the search results?


You made me look - and the answer seems to be - probably not.

You probably should bear in mind that Facebook is not the only social media out there (it's "just" the biggest _social network_, which is a subgroup of the social media sphere), and that Facebook and Google aren't exactly bosom buddies.

Also, just to clarify for those who are unsure, because forums are a form of social media, TFSA *is* a social media website.

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## workshop

> ....forums are a form of social media, TFSA *is* a social media website.


In the same sense that a classic car is still a car. But there are those who wouldn't be seen dead standing forlornly next to "their car" with steam pouring from the radiator.

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## tommyosmena

Thanks for this very informative post dude it really help a lot for internet marketing strategy  :Smile:

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## Wiz

> Funny how some people can make SEO sound so simple to do. The reality is that it is becoming more and more complicated. The number of factors that will influence rankings are also growing more and more into individual sciences. All I can say is that since 2003 it is much better to outsource organic SEO to an expert, especially if you target competitive keywords. I would like to talk more old school about SEO and its biggest ranking factors. Contextual deep inbound links and Contextual outbound links would probably be the biggest SEO factors you can get besides the basics everyone seems to mention.


I agree with you mate. Contextual inbound links are very important and a top most factor when it comes to off-page activity. However i believe its a combination of factors which help's a site to rank well on Search engines. You cannot rank without a authority website.

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