21 – Use a unique IP address for your web site

It is very important that your web site be associated with a single, unequivocal IP address. There are two reasons for this:

a) If you use a shared IP address and another web site with that IP address gets a Google penalty, your web site will also suffer;

b) Google will take your web site a lot more seriously if it has a unique IP address.

Having a unique IP address for your web site will cost you a few extra rupees a month but it is undoubtedly worth it.

22 – Use a quality web host

You cannot develop a successful web site without using a reputable, high-quality web host. You should also make sure that you have a top-notch traffic statistics program that will display detailed data regarding your traffic and search engine referrals.

23 – Get inbound links

Inbound links are the kingpin of the Google algorithm. Google revolutionized online search by introducing a simple but very effective answer to a complicated question: "If a user performs a search for widgets, and there are one million web pages about widgets, how do we decide the order in which these web pages should be presented in the search results? In other words, how do we rank them?"

The answer provided by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was simple: pages that have more links pointing to them are more likely to be useful than pages with fewer links pointing to them. Google considers inbound links as votes in favor of a particular web page.

It is therefore absolutely imperative to obtain inbound links that point to your web site and to content pages within your web site. The links that are most beneficial are one-way inbound links: links that point to your web site without your web site linking back. Google considers these the most genuine endorsements and therefore the most reliable indicator of a page's objective usefulness.

How much weight Google will give to a link depends on the page's PageRank and on whether the link's target page is related to the content on the linking page. In other words, a link pointing to a page about PRINTING is worth more if is in a page about PRINTING; if the link is on a page about cars, it will be less beneficial.

24 – Link anchor text is important

The anchor text of links is extremely important, because it answers Google's all-important question: what do users think this page is about? The more relevant the inbound link's anchor text is to the target page, the more the page will benefit. The most beneficial links for SEO purposes are one-way inbound links with relevant anchor text. If you manage to get a one-way inbound link with a anchor text that contains the words in the target page's h1 tag, to Google this is an independent third party confirming the topic and usefulness of your page, and your ranking will go through the roof. Such links are worth pursuing.

This is not to say that other links are useless. Getting inbound links from pages with a high PageRank, even if the links are reciprocated, will still be beneficial. Links with "click here" as the anchor text should be avoided as they do not tell Google what the linker thinks the target page is about.

Probably the only way to start out with links is to start e-mailing webmasters, once you have produced some quality content, and ask to trade links. Most will decline, but some will say yes, and this will get you started. Remember that no decent web site will link to you unless it has free useful content. Part of the point of writing excellent content is to obtain natural, unsolicited one-way inbound links. For this reason, such content is sometimes referred to as link bait.

25 – Use advertising to generate some traffic

A web site's traffic should grow exponentially once a certain critical level of traffic is reached, because the more people visit your web site, the more incoming links you will get, the higher your ranking will be, which in turn will bring in more traffic - assuming, of course, that your web site offers value to its visitors. Posting a cool video is an excellent way to gain exposure.

Precisely because traffic breeds more traffic, you might want to consider spending a small amount of money on advertising at the beginning. Although advertising does not have a search engine benefit, the extra visitors it brings might link to your useful content, which will have an SEO benefit. Google's Adsense is a cool program for this sort of thing.

26 – Post in forums

An excellent way of getting one-way inbound links is to post in forums and place contextual links pointing to pages on your web site, in addition to a link to your homepage in your signature. Of course this is only acceptable (and beneficial) if the forum's topic is the same as your web site's.

Make sure all such links have anchor text that is a highly focused on the target page's content. Not all forums make this possible, but I have seen several that publish posts as HTML pages and that allow links. Of course, make sure that you write quality posts that add value to the forum, or your posts will be considered spam. Also, the outbound links will be worth more if they are embedded within a good chunk of quality text.

27 – Use press releases to obtain backlinks

A great way to obtain one-way inbound links is to broadcast a press release through an online service. Make sure that your press release is well-written and interesting, and of course make sure that it has a link to your web site.

28 – Do not link to bad web sites

If you link to a web site that Google has penalized or that for some other reason Google considers to be a bad web site, your web site will be penalised. Google will not penalise you if a bad web site links to you, but it will penalise you if you link to a bad web site. For this reason you should only link to the best web sites, and you should check those links frequently to ensure that the web site does not have a new, spammy owner (it can happen).

You should avoid so-called bad neighborhoods. Bad neighborhoods are clusters of interlinked web sites that are suffering a Google penalty (maybe without even realising it). If you link to a web site which in turn links to a penalised web site, you are part of a bad neighborhood. Avoid this like the plague.

29 – Produce link bait

One-way inbound links are essential to SEO. The only reason anyone will ever link to you is if you have something useful or interesting on your web site. I have already stressed the importance of writing great content.

30 – Staying on the right side of Google

The third vital element in search engine optimisation is avoiding anything that is even remotely spammy or unethical. You should follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines scrupulously. If you do any of the things banned by the Google Webmaster Guidelines, sooner or later Google will find out and penalise your web site.

SEO tips (cont'd.):
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