Here are some SEO 101 rules you should always follow:

1. Keywords – Identifying keywords is most likely going to be the first step with anything you do. I always hear from people that they already know their keywords and then generate a list for me that have 10 or so relevant keywords. I then take that list and generate a few hundred or so. Don’t assume you know your keywords because there are always different variations that people are using and if you miss out on those words you could end up missing out on a lot of valuable traffic. And ALWAYS make sure the keywords you select to target on each page of your website are 100% RELATED to the great content you have written for that page.

2. Patience – If you are looking for results tomorrow I wouldn’t even try to attempt search engine optimization for your business. SEO is something that requires a great deal of time and effort. Results are carefully monitored over a certain period of time. Generally it takes 6 months of aggressive search engine marketing efforts to start seeing some sort of positive results. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying or trying to pull a fast over you.

3. Rankings are Not Everything – Sure the end game for your SEO is to get your website ranking for your popular industry search terms but don’t be discouraged when your website is not number 1 in the search results. Rankings are not the only byproduct from search engine optimization. There are many other positive things that occur from conducting search engine marketing efforts. You want people to bump into your articles and press releases and not just your website.

4. Don’t Cut Corners – If you think that an effort you might be doing might raise an eyebrow with Google or any of the other major search engines avoid doing it at all costs. General rule of thumb is that if you think it might jeopardize your website’s rankings it could very well affect you down the road so you are better off just avoiding the situation.

5. Content, content and more content – Content is probably one of the most important factors when it comes to SEO. Good content will always go a long way. Whether it is content in an article, press release or even a profile it is always important to put 100% into any content you are writing.

These are just the basic SEO 101 rules to really always keep in the back of your mind. As your business grows you will learn other basics that you will end up carrying throughout the lifespan of your search engine marketing campaign. And remember there is NO crystal ball out there to solve all of your SEO challenges!

Here is a great video that I found about viral video by Mark Apsolon:

Viral marketing expert Mark Apsolon holds a YouTube channel where he offers free information and tips on how to promote a viral video the right way. Mark has years of experience promoting videos and knows just how to do it correctly. Putting a catchy video together surrounding your business could lead to massive amounts of targeted traffic landing on your website. As other bloggers and websites start to write about your video you start to create a viral energy spooling around the video and before you know it you have a successful viral marketing campaign that is really helping your search engine optimization efforts in a tremendous way. Mark Apsolon states that short quick bursts of information really getting to the point as quickly as possible is the way to go. Most people start to lose attention at a certain point so it is important to get to the point very quickly. Take a look at some of Mark’s past episodes to understand even more on how viral marketing can really help your business grow in a whole new direction.

Always put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and ask yourself if you would like that experience if you came to a website. If the answer is no than you might want to re-think your approach a little bit.

The following are some low cost personal online branding resources to consider:

1. LinkedIn – If you have a LinkedIn account but haven’t touched it in many years now might be the time to get in there and really beef it up. If you don’t have one make the effort and launch one. Make it nice and robust by filling it up with every bit of information you can that will directly reflect your business. Utilize keywords that people might be using in the search engines for things like titles and descriptions. This will give you an opportunity to start ranking in search results.

2. Facebook – A Facebook account is a must. They often times rank extremely well in search engines so make sure it is appropriate and relevant to your business. Fill in as many fields as you can in order to make it clear on what type of service it is that you offer. Understand that if you are using your Facebook account for personal purposes, try creating two different accounts, one for business and personal. And whatever you do, please be careful of the types of things you post to your account if you are only using one account…everyone can see it


3. Twitter – Twitter will be a great place to not only be visible but bring in some new possible business as well. Same principals apply, launch an account and fill it out completely and start following people that are following your competition. This will get you on the map in front of your audience and over time they will start following you as well.

4. Blog – Launch a blog and start writing about your industry and your area of expertise. Once you start writing you will then be able to leverage your blog posts through the social media channels list above. Over time you will build a loyal following of readers and eventually some of those readers could turn into clients.

5. Profile Image – Make sure to use the same profile image throughout all your profiles. This way you can brand yourself even more for when people bump into your other profiles. They will be able to make the connection almost immediately if you keep your image consistent. Your face will be the logo of your business with social media.

5. Profile Links – Make sure you consistently add your company website (or cross link your other social networking profiles) throughout all of your profiles. Also, some social networking sites allow links of your RSS feeds, please be sure to add this in as it will help generate more visitors to your blog and website overall.

6. Portfolio - Depending on what type of business you have you should keep some sort of portfolio to showcase your work for other potential clients to see.

These are just some of the things you can do to market yourself online and help your online personal brand. Most don’t even cost any money they just require time and patience.

These are all questions you should be asking yourself before you take on a new search engine optimization client. If you don’t take the time prior you could find yourself loosing valuable resources down the road. Go over the project with your team. Get their input to make sure this is a client that could fit well with the culture of the company. There are plenty of firms out there that will take on the client if you can’t. The client will most likely appreciate your truthfulness and you never know what it could lead into down the road. If you take on a client that is clearly not right for you than you could end up with a reputation management issue for yourself down the road. We all know all know how difficult those can be to take care of once they have started to snowball.

1. Online Press Release Marketing:
Goal #1: To have as many credible news sites pick up your material in order to increase your link building goals from the embedded links in your press release.
Goal #2: To have other industry bloggers use the material on the press release to write about you in their blog and have other news sources contact you for things like interviews to speak on behalf of your industry.

2. Article Marketing:
Goal #1: To have other industry resources pick up your article in order to spread the links that might be embedded in your author section and help your SEO efforts to get your website ranking in search results.
Goal #2: To position yourself as an expert in the industry and slowly start to look like an authority figure in your industry while having your website become the industry go to source due to your expert credibility.

3. Social Media Marketing:
Goal #1: To increase your link building efforts and show the search engines a variety of new inbound links pointing to your website so they understand you are a business and not just a fly by night.
Goal #2: To have your audience find your profile and actually communicate with you and over time channel over to your website using your profile. You also have the potential of having your profile appear in the search results for your specific audience when built correctly.

4. Video Marketing:
Goal #1: To push that video through all the video sharing sites in order to increase your link building efforts so that search engines see you are a business trying to grow and also increase rankings from diversifying your link building efforts.
Goal #2: To have your video spread through viral marketing techniques. If you make you’re video the right way you will have other bloggers writing about helping you increase your website visitors.

This is just scratching the surface but I think you get the idea. Everything you do with your search engine optimization efforts should always have multiple goals in mind. Your only goal should not be to just increase rankings. Rankings are important but they are not the only thing needed to grow a business. There are other important voids that every search engine marketing effort should always attempt to fill. Use this strategy in mind when marketing your business online and see a new door of opportunities open.

Below are some helpful Blog SEO tips to consider when writing a blog post
(they are not in any particular order, but are all important):

1. Content – Content is going to be the most important aspect of your blog posts. Your content has to not only be good but compelling. It needs to give readers a reason to want to keep reading and to also come back to see what else you got for them. You always want to sprinkle some keywords throughout your text as well. This will get your post climbing in search results.

2. Title – The title of your post is very important. Depending on how your blog is set up will determine whether your title is being pulled into your meta information of your posts. There is a thin line between having a cute title and an SEO title that will actually work to your advantage over time.

3. Post Ending – Don’t be scared to leave your post open ended. Ask a question in the end to trigger some heavy comment action. The comments will only help with the blog posts rankings. It’s kind of like pouring fuel on the fire.

4. Use Lists – Using lists has been known to significantly increase the strength of a blog post. Try making a post that requires a lengthy list in the body and you will see over time that post move around in search results.

5. Paragraphs – Use smaller paragraphs frequently, this keeps the readers attention into a manageable thoughts.

6. Images – Incorporate some images throughout the post. This tremendously helps the user experience.

7. Videos – If you can please locate and include videos that are related to your blog post, sometimes this helps keep visitors longer on your website.

8. Link Building – Yes, you need to promote your blog posts, through your Twitter, Facebook accounts and any of the many good social bookmarking sites out there. Not only will they help spread the word about your great content, drive visitors to your blog, but will also provide a nice link to your blog post.

9. URL of Post – The URL of each post should be short and should reflect the content contained withing the blog post. Keep your blog post URLs short and relevant.

These are just a few main areas you should always consider when writing blog posts. SEO doesn’t just apply to websites but to blogs as well so if you want traffic apply these efforts to your posts once in a while.

Here are few tips below to keep in mind when to always try to get the most out of your SEO campaign:

1. Find and Know your Audience – I know this might sound crazy but you have to make sure you are not spinning your wheels where your audience does not exist. Whenever you decide to focus on spending time on a specific website you have to truly put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself if your audience is there. If you sell insurance and you just randomly follow people on Twitter you might not be hitting your target quite right. Find the follower of major insurance companies and follow them. You have to put this thought process into every website you decide to target when marketing yourself.

2. Title Everything! – Titles for almost anything you do online is a great way to get your social networking profile, article or press release ranking. I know that sometimes you might want to put a more cutesy type title but you have to ask yourself the purpose of you effort. You want people to find it right? So incorporating some keywords you might be interested in targeting in your title is very important to get that specific marketing effort ranking. Cute titles work once you have a large brand built and visitors look for you regardless. If you are just starting off and getting going it will be important to do anything you can to get search engine traffic to find you naturally.

3. Use Everything at Your Fingertips – If you are under the impression that something might not work don’t be. The name of the game is to have as many connecting points or links pointing to your website through a variety of different sources. You might think that launching a video for your business and pushing it through all the social networking websites might not work for you but the truth is that it will. Every effort has the potential of being found by your audience. This is why it is important to have as much lingering out there as possible.

These are just a few important tips when ever executing your ongoing search engine optimization efforts for your business or website. Each little improvement can make a very big difference when it comes to your websites long term SEO.

1. Fly by Nights – With the economy the way it is right now you are going to see more of these random “SEO” websites popping in the search results. It doesn’t take much to get a website up and running. Don’t let some trust badge or Google logo on their website fool you. Many are taking one day training courses maybe a webinar and all of a sudden they are an expert. Search for their name and see what you find online. Are they good at marketing themselves? They should be. Do you they have some sort of client list or resume? If someone is classifying themselves as an expert they will be more than happy to go over their resume with you if it is a matter of getting you as a client.

2. Web Designers – Many web designers are starting to offer SEO on their websites but that doesn’t mean they know search engine optimization. Web design and SEO are two very different things. That is not to say that every web designer out there is not capable of properly executing search engine marketing efforts but it is a different type of animal that requires a different type of experience. A web design company that decided to throw up an SEO page during slow economic times should not be your first choice unless they clearly have a department that knows what they are doing and is established.

3. Software – Software does not grow a business. I cannot stress this enough. A large portion of SEO is marketing which requires some sort of human element or touch. You need to be able to put yourself into the shoes of your audience and no a software program. There are some programs that can shed light on certain holes in your marketing approach but that is most likely the extent of how the data should be used. There is no magic pill or easy way out with SEO. It takes time and patience along with human brain monitoring and executing all efforts.

4. Offshore – It is ok to work with someone offshore if your website is targeting the audience where that person exists. Why would you want to hire someone to conduct SEO in a foreign country for your business if you are targeting the U.S and they have English as maybe a second or third language? There will be some disconnect on what types of words should be used when conducting keyword research and optimizing your website. You want to work with someone that is English speaking if you are targeting a U.S audience. Yes the inexpensive prices of going with someone oversees can be very appealing but you will pay for it in the long run.

5. Experts – These are the individuals and firms that have been around for quite a while. They have a generous amount of visible clients, come with years of experience, and clearly offer a healthy organic approach to search engine optimization and marketing. These are the entities that clearly offer their resume for potential clients to view along with client references that have nothing but good things to say about them. They also know how to market themselves. Have you seen them in multiple areas online? Are the search results for their name filled with nice juicy related content? Is their address clearly visible portraying that all work is done on U.S soil? These are the individuals and companies that stand out and very well should from the above type of SEO’s.

It is important to take the time and analyze what type of SEO person you might be speaking with. Make sure you get it right the first time because the last thing you want to do is have to switch vendors six months down the road when it could have just been avoided right from the start.

Here is the Google Search Predictions Video by Matt Cutts:

Predictions for Google stem mostly around speed and relevancy. Google is always on the prowl to really keep their search results clean and relevant so users are completely satisfied with the end results. Google will also be making the distinction between black hat and white techniques much clearer and really focusing on eliminating anybody who attempts to take a black hat technique when marketing a website. Google is always strengthening and improving their search tool. It seems like each year Google makes a very strong effort to eliminate all the bad apples in the SEO industry. If you teeter on black and white hat SEO techniques I would make it a 2010 new year’s resolution to persuade yourself to land in the white hat territory. Yes, it takes longer, but when it works it is well worth the wait!