If there's one question I get more than any other from new Clients, it's this one: "Will my new website be search engine-optimized?"

Fifteen years ago, a ‘search engine-optimized' website may have been enough to get you ranking well on search engines. Now-a-days though, a ‘search engine-optimized' website is only your ticket to the game. It is the bare minimum you can and should do to rank well in search engines.

Informal studies have been done on search engines and it's believed that only 20% of your ranking is determined by how well your website is optimized. This means including keywords and using them in the right places, making sure your URLs are search-engine-friendly, etc only account for 20% of your ranking!

What makes up the other 80%? You guessed it! Backlinking!

Backlinking is the process of getting links from relevant, high-quality websites back to your website. Once you've finished some basic, search engine optimization of your website's content, backlinking is the best investment of your time and money if improving your website's ranking in Google is your goal.

Let's say you invest 10 hours of your time in excruciating detail making sure your homepage is perfectly optimized. Your competitor spends only 2 hours doing the most basic SEO but also spends a couple hours getting one or two backlinks. Who's site will rank higher? Your competitor's hands-down!

Without further ado, here's 7 easy, free places to get decent backlinks to your website.

• WordPress
• Tumblr
• Live Journal
• Blogger
• TypePad
• Squidoo
• HubPages

The above are all very popular FREE blogging websites. Why list there? The answer is bit technical, but when you create a new blog on those websites, it has a "Page Rank" of 0 (the lowest) but it's also under the wordpress.com/tumblr.com domains which have Page Ranks of 8 or 9 (the highest.)

Now here's the backlinking process and what you need to do:

• Write an article relevant to your field, containing your keywords. At the top and bottom of your article, be sure to include a link back to your website. Also, make sure that link contains your keywords in the text. For example, in your link, don't say something bland and general like, "Click here to visit our site". Instead, say something inclusive of your keywords like, "Toronto website design services offered here."
• Create 7 different versions of the article above making sure to change titles, link text, most of the body text, etc. You can use a tool like http://thebestspinner.com/ or http://www.jetspinner.com/ (the latter has a free version) to create these new versions or you can do it manually. An even better approach of course is to use 7 completely different articles if you happen to have some unused articles lying around.
• Go to each of the seven websites listed above
• Sign up with each and create your free blog
• Paste a different version of the article in each of the 7 blogs.
• You're done!

Be sure to check your ranking in search engines before and then a month after trying this to so you can track your improvement in ranking.

Good luck!

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Once your website is live on the internet it can seem like your work is done – your content is out there and people will start visiting your site – all you need to do is sit back and watch. However instead of relishing in the preliminary traffic what you should be doing is preparing content for the future.

You must ask yourself what will make those first visitors come back a second time, or spread the word about your wonderful website? The answer is content – let your visitors know that you will be updating the website on a regular basis and follow through with that promise. You don’t have to be a professional writer for people to enjoy reading your website, just make sure to be mindful of the fundamentals of writing on the web.

1. Have your message in mind. Always write with a goal, whether it’s to get your visitors to buy from your online store or to contact you for a booking, your content should tell your visitors what you expect them to do next, either explicitly or implicitly.
2. Speak to your audience. Your website is most likely not trying to appeal to each and every person on the planet – figure out what type of person you’re trying to appeal to and choose your topics, words, and tone of voice based on what they’d expect.
3. Don’t lose momentum. Keep your readers reading by leading their eyes to the next section and maintaining their interest. Big blocks of text tend to scare readers away so you should divide your content with eye-catching subheadings, by using short and to-the-point lists, and by emphasizing important words using bolding or colored text.
4. Brush up on the basics (or use grammar and spelling checking). The quickest way to lose professionalism, credibility, and to distract your readers is for them to see glaring mistakes. Reread your content multiple times before publishing it to make sure you spot errors before your readers do.
5. Choose your topics wisely and stay focused. If you’re going to be updating your site on a regular basis you don’t have to squeeze all of your thoughts into one article. Choose topics that your visitors will care about and keep on-topic during that post. If your thoughts stray to a tangent save it for later and turn it into a whole new post.

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Once your website is optimized for your keywords, getting links from relevant, high-ranking, quality websites is the next step in dominating search results.

Why's that you may ask? Because the more websites that link to your website, the more credible search engines assume your website must be. Of course, the websites that link to your website have to themselves be credible!

I was watching the clip below over at Web Marketing Today. In it, Aaron Wall from SEO Book (an excellent resources website containing lots of useful SEO tools) explains seven ways you can get people to link to your website.

Here's the seven ways he mentioned in the clip:

1. Offer discounts or coupons as benefits to non-profits.
2. Write original, useful content in a blog on your domain.
3. Redirect affiliate links using 301 redirects.
4. Have a contest where people vote on something they're passionate about.
5. Use offline networking opportunities.
6. Write guest columns or articles.
7. Attract journalists who may cite you on a topic.

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If you've done a search on Google for a particular service in Toronto, you may have "Local Business Results" at the top of the search results:

Wouldn't it be nice if your business was listed on here to? (for the appropriate search of course)

Not only is getting your business listed on Google's Local Business Center free, but the "Local Business Results" appear above the normal search listing! There is one slight potential drawback: the map centers in the center of a city. Businesses located on the edges of a city may get reduced exposure.

Sound good? Simply follow the steps below to list your business:

Step 1: Go to Google's Local Business Center website and login or create an account as necessary. After you're logged in, click the button labeled “Add New Business”.

Note: if you don't see the “Add new business” button, click the link “Add new listing”. You'll see "Add new listing" rather than "Add new business" if you've already created a Google Local Business Center account in the past with your email address.

Step 2: Enter your business's basic information.

You'll notice once you've added your address the map on the right will zoom to your location. Click next when you're ready to proceed.

Step 3 (Optional): If your listing already exists, you may see the screen listed below. Click “Claim Listing”. This will allow you to change the listing details.

You may now edit your listing information or suspend the listing.

Step 4: Enter detailed information about your business including your businesses category, services or products offered (using either the Categories or Additional Details areas), hours of operation, accepted payment methods, your logo under the Photos section and more. You may also associate a video with your listing if you've uploaded a video about your business to Youtube.

Step 5:After submitting your business information, Google will now ask you to verify your listing. You have three options:

• phone
• sms
• mail (snail mail)

I find the phone option to be the easiest and most convenient.

Step 6: Using the phone option, Google will call you using an automated message service. You have the option of being called now or in five minutes. Click whatever option suits you. Google will then display a PIN (personal identification number) on screen. You will be asked to enter that PIN on your phone's touchtone pad when Google calls. If you selected “Call Me Now”, you may expect to be called very promptly – usually within 10 seconds. Answer the phone, push 1 and then enter your PIN followed by the pound sign (#).

Step 7: Congratulations! Upon successful completion of the call, your business should be listed on Google Maps within 1 business day.

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Want to have an unending, high-volume stream of traffic coming to your website? Simply be first on a Google search of a popular keyword! I kid of course - being first on Google for a popular keyword is not an easy task. Here's some tips to help you get there:

1. While not as important as it once was, ensuring your website has appropriate meta tags is still worthwhile. Identifying no more than 7-10 keywords per page in the keyword meta tag is preferable to letting the search engines decide what keywords are important for your page. Also, the description meta tag will allow you to control what piece of text search engines display from your website on search listings.
2. For each page of your website, your keywords should make up 2-3% of the words. If they do not then search engines assume your pages are not related to your keywords - this is bad!
3. Research your keywords using tools such as Google's Keyword Research Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) or WordTracker (available at SEOBook's website - http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/). There's little to gain by optimizing your website for a next-to-no volume keyword. Conversely, discovering a high-volume keyword related to your industry (and that your potential clients use) that your competitors aren't optimizing for can be a great advantage!
4. Link building (putting links to your website throughout the web) is the most important factor that affects your search engine ranking. This is something we'll need to work on with your website once we clarify the keywords you'll be optimizing your site for.

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