2. Measure your rankings - Before trying to improve your page rankings, you must find out where your pages currently rank for keywords and keyphrases that you are focusing on. If you worked through step 1, you should now have a solid list of relevant keywords and keyphrases that potential customers are typing into search engines. Again, there are several pieces of software out there that can help you run these queries in a timely fashion.

3. Page Creation and Optimization - Get ready to roll up your sleeves and really get to work on your pages. This step makes all difference in your ability to compete effectively with other search engine marketers. You may ask, “what is web page optimization?” Basically, it is process of building a page that contains all of content that a search engine needs to rank it highly in its index for a particular keyword or keyphrase. One of easiest ways to determine what search engine is looking for is to study pages already ranking in top 10 for your particular keyword. Then you will try to imitate key aspects of those pages on your own site, including keyword counts, link popularity, word counts, prominence and several other criteria.

This may sound like rocket science, but fortunately there are software programs that can help you struggle your way through. By analyzing keywords and content on your page and your competition’s pages, software can make specific recommendations for improvement. These recommendations vary for each search engine. The key to success here is to stay on top of industry by reading everything you can get your hands on relating to SEO. Subscribe to SEO newsletters and attend seminars when they become available.

4. Submission - Submitting your pages to various search engines can be done by hand or through a software submission tool. Be careful not to over-submit as some search engines will consider you to be a spammer and your site will become blacklisted. Some sites, such as Google and Yahoo!, will “spider” your website on a periodic basis, and you may not have to resubmit to these indexes.

Regardless, SEO is a daunting task and is not recommended for novice. If you feel that your business is in need of search engine marketing and currently does not have resources to accomplish a successful go at it, feel free to contact EarthQuake Studios to begin a comprehensive SEO campaign.

Relevant Links: But, attaining optimal link popularity is not as easy as simply obtaining as many links as possible to your website. The quality and relevancy of sites linking to your site holds more "weight" than quantity of sites linking to your site. Since Yahoo is most frequently visited site on web, a link from Yahoo to your website carries far more "weight" than a link from a smaller, less visited site.

Here's what Google Developer Matt Cutts has to say about links...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Thematic incoming links from authority sites carry more weight than on-page optimization." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Top 4 Strategies for Acquiring Links to Your Web Site:

Below are four critical steps for achieving high rankings by acquiring text links to your web site...

1) Get a higher Google PageRank score than your competition For any given keyword, there is a minimum PageRank required to rank at Google. In order to see what this minimum PageRank number is, search Google for your keyword and look at PageRank of your competition's web sites that are ranked in top 10 of Search Engine Results Page (SERP). An easy way to view PageRank scores of your competition is to use Google Toolbar http://toolbar.google.com or SEOChat PageRank Search tool. http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/

2) Get more relevant links than your competition All links are not created equal. The best links are "relevant" links from web pages related to your keyword.

3) Get more links on more different web sites than your competition Getting links on a variety of different web sites on different networks is crucial for high rankings.

4) Use keywords you want to high rankings in search engines as anchor text of your in-bound links. "Anchor text" is visible text within a hyperlink. Text links and anchor text are two most important criteria for how Google and other top Search Engines rank web sites.

Here is an example of a link containing keyword phrase "ERP Software" within anchor text...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ F*R*E*E [ERP Software] white paper shows how to increase profitability and reduce inventory. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relevant Links and PageRank are critical to achieving high search engine rankings. Want proof? Do a search at Google for highly competitive keyword "computers" and you'll find Apple and Dell computers rank numbers 1 and 2 in Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Now, click through to Apple and Dell web pages and look for word "computers" in their web page text. What did you find? Neither www.apple.com or www.dell.com have word "computers" in their text, yet they're ranking #1 and #2 at Google.

Relevant Links and PageRank Win! The sites with most relevant links and highest Google PageRank win every time and rank highest at top search engines. There are many methods you can use to acquire text links including buying links from a broker, Internet directories, reciprocal linking, Internet publicity, and others.