These are some of the things I do for a client’s websites.

SEO

1.Utilize KeyWordDiscovery.com to find the best keywords for my niche.
2.I always use a sitemap on the index page to allow different SE bots (especially Google) to “crawl” the pages more effectively.
3.The two major keywords or keyword phrases is used 5% of the whole content. I don’t go above 5% since Google could consider it spam and will penalize the website.
4.I use keywords in the title tag, the headers (), meta description tag, meta keywords tag (even though Google ignores this anymore, but other SE’s may not), and sometimes put my keywords in bold text so the bots can spot them much easier and may get the site ranked higher.
5.I do internal links with keyword anchor texts from page to page (again – helping the Google bot or “spider” to index pages more efficient).
6.Always put alt tags on all pictures within the site.
7.Believe in the philosophy that “content is king”. The more pages that I have on a certain subject, the more “authoritative” my site may become in Google’s eyes.
8.Analyze traffic logs and see what my bounce rate is. The objective is to make your site “sticky”, in other words, make the site interesting enough where the user will go to other pages within the site.
9.I am a strong believer that a good SEO Specialist positions his site where traffic isn’t just going to the index page, but to the internal pages as well. In other words, I try to rank most of my internal pages within my niche in the top five or ten on the first page of a niche. For an example, if my website is about cars and a section of my site is devoted to classic cars, I would want my internal pages of this “sub-category” to rank high in the classic cars niche where users are not entering my main page, but through the classic cars pages. I’ve done this many times before where I would purposely get my internal pages to rank high in their own niche, that users would enter there first instead of the main page. I’ve found through my logs that people were curious about the site and would make their way to the home (index) page.
10.Analyze my competitors websites. Whoever is ranked higher than me, I do a “keyword density” check to see what keywords they are using and how often. There were times however, that my competition’s websites were years older than mine, and sometimes ranked higher than mine in the SERPs – Google really gives these old sites a higher ranking.

Link Building (One Way Links or Backlinking)

1.When building or leaving links in forums (or blogs), I make sure that the forum is “DoFollow”. I have a tool I installed on my laptop where it shows “NoFollow” links in red. This saves me a lot of time, because I don’t have to view the source code of the forum and can go onto the next forum or blog if it is “NoFollow”. Though recently, I am making it a habit by looking at the code anyway to make sure the devoloper didn’t put a meta tag in there that tells the bots not to follow the links.
2.I try to stay “on-topic” when I go to blogs or forums. If I had a real estate site and I go to a computer blog to post a comment and leave my signature link, Google will not count this link as much as if I went to a real estate blog. I still would get some “link-juice” by posting in a different topic blog or forum, but it’s best to go to blogs or forums that are related to your site.
3.When I leave a signature link, I use “text anchors”. For an example, my new website that I’m currently building, when I go to a SEO blog – I would put my comment pertaining about the subject, and then leave a sig link like, “SEO Services – Columbus, Ohio”. When I go to another blog, I would change my anchor text to maybe, “Professional SEO”. I never want to leave the same sig link too often, Google will get the wrong idea that I might be spamming and may not count the links at all.
4.When anaylizing how many links are pointing back to my site, the old conventional way is to go to the Search Engine text box and type in “Link:www.mydomain.com”. The only problem with that is at least with Google, it will only show you some of the links. Yahoo may show you all. But if you are trying to see what Google is doing – I go to www.Google.com/webmasters and sign in. Here, I have an account that will show me all the links pointing back to my site. However, Google is pretty slow, so if you posted a backlink today, it probably won’t show up until a few weeks.
5. Social Bookmarking Sites. In the past I have used Digg and StumbleUpon to bookmark my sites – therefore, creating a link back to my site. Now I stay away from these sites since they are “NoFollow”. I use high Page Ranking Bookmarking sites such as DZone.com (PR is 6), BackFlip.com (PR is 6), and other high PR Dofollow BM sites. Don’t get me wrong though, I may use StumbleUpon to get a burst of traffic which sometimes works. But I usually use High PR forums, blogs, Social Bookmarking sites that are doFollows because they give quality links.
6.Article submission sites. These sites are great backlinks where you write an article about a specific subject, then at the end of the article, you leave a link there (always an anchor text link). My favorite is EZineArticles.com. Also, I make sure that if I put an article on an article based site, that I don’t have the same article on my site. Google hates duplication and will penalize your site for that.
7.I try to post backlinks on government or educational sites (anything with .gov or .edu). This creates a great quality backlink and will give your site a boost in the rankings. Google has officially recognized these type of sites greater value than any other business or personal sites and will reward you greatly if you get a link posted on these type of sites. The only trick is that it has to be “on topic” – in other words, if you have a website about the space shuttle and you post your comment and sig link on NASA.gov blog, the moderator of the blog will accept it. However, if you post a link to a site that is about candy – the moderator will not accept it and you are basically wasting your time.
8. I do from time to time post my comments with sig link on “NoFollow” blogs – if I see that it will generate some direct traffic, I don’t see the problem with it. But, I don’t make it a habit.
9.I’ve posted in a couple of directories so far but I do not take these seriously anymore. The word going around the SEO world is that Google doesn’t count these as quality one way links and it is a waste of time. I will only post a site within a directory if requested.
10.Swapping Links with another site. Not the greatest thing to do, but I have done it. There are rumors out there that Google doesn’t like reciprical links and they will even penalize both sites. If I do this, it will be upon request. But I will also take some time out to swap with a blog, but put a “noFollow” attribute within the link so that the Google bot will not follow it.

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