After seeing many posts, concerning acheiving a boost in traffic from google. I thought I would share the knowledge I have learned in the past. All of the information in this post has been compiled from various tutorials, and my own personal knowledge, and from trial and error. Aiming for high rank in google should be number one, google also provides secondary results for yahoo & aol, and other big name search engines.

1: Content Is King - Build well rounded content, Google loves quality content, build a somewhat large site, more listings, more text, better of decent rank.

2: Bold Text - Keeping your primary keyword(at top of page) in bold is important, it has been noted that google seems to give a slight advantage, to bolded keywords. Therefore say your keyword goal is "affordable computer software", you would want that on at least one page in bold context. Or for each page the user clicks on, put the overall topic of the page in bold. ALSO: Headings such as H3, seem to have even a more detailed boost versus bold text, however they awfully ugly.

3: Incoming Links - This is a major part of googles ranking aligorithm. Does this mean submit to FFA pages, no. Try to exchange links with well ranked sites, incoming links from higher ranked sites, will help improve your PR. Also when exchange links, be sure to aim your link exchanging with sites, that contain similar content as yours. ALSO, if possible, put your primary keyword in the link context when exchanging. So instead of having a link on someones page that reads "Johns Site". put "Johns Free Coupons". Whatever your primary keyword may be, include it in your link.

4: Rank Boost - (A) It has been noted that google favors sites listed in the Dmoz.org (open directory). Also google uses Dmoz as their directory listings. I have seen my overall page rank jump from 4/10 to 5/10, just being listed in DMOZ. (B) Getting listed in Yahoo directory is also important, as you would have an incoming link from a site with a 10/10 page rank(or 9/10). (NOTE: when submitting to Dmoz.org, be sure to include your primary keyword in your title on their form)

5: Optimizing Your Site:

Title - Be sure to include your primarily keyword in the title of your index page. And on each page, include a sub-keyword title. So if your index title is "Johns Farm Market - Farmer Market", and then a user clicks on specials use the title "Johns Farm Market - Farmer Market Specials".... etc... Be sure not to 'overdo' your titles, keep them at about 4-6 words.


Keyword Depth - Make sure your primary & sub keywords are found often on your page, google keyword depth should be aimed towards 11-12%, that seems to work best. Also very important that your primary keyword appears in the first setance or first paragraph. Try to keep your most important keywords at the top of your page. My preference is to have at least part of my primary keyword every 20-25 words. What I meant by part of my primary keyword is, split the keyword up. So if my primary keyword is (Online Gaming Arcade). Break it up after you have already used that exact phrase, on a line put "We offer some awesome arcade games". Instead of using that same keyword everytime[which would be hard to write a professional intro page].
USE THIS TOOL TO MONITOR KEYWORD DEPTH -http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/kwda.cgi

Also searchengineworld.com, is an excellent place to expand your knowledge.

6: Getting listed - This is a painless process, usually google will find you. Trade a link or two with sites that are already ranked on google, and most likely the robot will come to you. If not you can try submiting your page to google.
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

This is really all I can think of right now, I am positive this information is correct. I have used it, and approved it :) All of this information is gathered from personal expirience, tutorials, and message forums dedicated to SEO. If someone like JayC, would like to chime in, and add a few comments or other suggestions, that would be great. If anyone has any questions about this, email me at sites@freeplace.net

Thanks,
Anthony

you are awesome :spiny:

thanks for info. :)

1. This is new, the amount of words on a page do not affect your actual placement. However, the likelihood of you having several of your own keywords in your page over a large body of text (and not being considered spamming) is higher.

2. Funny, possible, though I've never seen this published elsewhere, link?

3. Of course, Google's PageRank system is well documented, and this simple view is actually more accurate: One link from a site with a PR of 7 is better than 10 links from sites with PR's of 6. of course, any linkage is better than none.

4. There are many 8-10 sites on the Net. Also, including your keyword in your title in a DMOZ application CAN get you banned.

5. The essence of this is: Include your keywords on your site.

Not trying to be harsh, but perhaps a case study would have been more useful as the information is just about bang on :) Following these tips will result in better than nothing info. This article on SitePoint is much of the same info except more concise:

http://www.promotionbase.com/article/762

Hi Jeremy... To follow up....

1: Google is starting to take this more into consideration, I am just stating this because after the last update, it looks as though content will play an even larger role than it did before.

2: This has been documented several places, one is the highly respected www.apromotionguide.com

3: Agreed, and that was basically my point, as I stated above, its better to exchange with higher ranked sites.

4: Including your actual Index Title on Dmoz.org, will not get you banned. Say you take the title of your site as is "My web site - cool stuff". In dmoz you should input the title exactly the same, it only hurts if you use a different title, purposely over keywording. There are alot of high ranked sites, however getting a link on one is the hard part, your best probability is search engines, easy to get in, but whether or not google cross links with those search engines is another question. I only stated yahoo because google infact cross links with them.

You Stated:
Following these tips will result in better than nothing info.

What do you mean by this? I have used this process on everysite I operate, for everysite my PR climbs slowly, usually jumping 1/10 every month, until I reach 5-6. Freeplace for example, has been online for approx 5 months. started with 0/10 pr, now at 3/10 pr. Thats 1/10 each month, and is excellent.