FREE Advice section on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
I have some free search engine optimization (SEO) advice. Whether or not you bid on my auctions, I would like you to consider what I have to say, and hope it benefits you

1. I heard of a trick which gets you a number one position on Google, I want to try it out.
   Some unethical tricks exist, but these are only temporary, and may result in getting your site banned. This would be devestating, and it is very hard to get a site restored once a search engine has banned it.
   
2. I heard that I can list links to my web site in guest books and blog posts thereby get more traffic.
   Most search engines are aware of this, and actively ban web sites which use these techniques
   
3. Some company has promised me a Number 1 listing for my site
   No company can ethically promise this. It's impossible to guarantee a listing for any site or keyword, far less a number one listing. While it is true a site can get you a number one listing for a rare keyword (eg. you sell cotten socks, they might be able to get you a number one listing for "blue cotton socks for 3 year old boys in Idaho" - such a positioning may not help you as most visitors will search for cotton socks, or blue cotton socks at most!)
   
4. I hear that using tiny text with keywords would help my ranking
   DON'T do this! if the search engine catches you, you will be banned.
   
5. I heard that submitting my site to an FFA (Free for all links) page will get me massive traffic and inbound links (so improve my position)
   BE CAREFUL of FFA pages. Search engines are very vary of most of them as they are considered spam, and having inbound links from them can negatively affect your site. Besides, FFA inbound links carry a very low pagerank with them, and the link you have to give back to them could also give a bad impression of your site, as supporting the FFA site.
   

Aside from the above, there are some simple things you can do to ensure your site is easy for search engines to access/understand - this will automatically help its ranking.

FREE Ethical SEO Site Design Tips

1. Use descriptive text - i.e. if you are selling a product, think of what terms a user would use to search for that product.
2. USE ALT tags - if you use an image, give that image an ALT tag, this enables visually handicapped people to know what the image represents, AND ALSO HELPS THE SEARCH ENGINE INDEX YOUR PAGE!!!
3. Consider exchanging links carefully and responsibly with a few selected sites- by this I mean, say for example you sell a particular widget. Search for other sites or directories which list companies that sell that widget and send a polite request to consider your site for inclusion. This is a legal, ethical and accepted means of promoting your site. Please do NOT send unrelated sites requests for links to you, e.g. if you are selling childrens socks dont ask a company selling pizza to link to you as that is spam!
4. Use link titles (TITLE tag)- i.e. if you are making an href tag, use the title link to specify the title of that link - this helps visually handicapped people and search engines, like ALT tags.
   Consider adding a blog to your website - this could be an informal discussion about your products. Why is this cool? Blogs get syndicated easier, and show up on search engines easily, and can have a positive effect on your company.
5. Deep linking/interlinking - have links to sub pages and sections on your main page - this helps search engines find and index inner pages easily.
   Use a sitemap - the details of using a sitemap are beyond the scope of this simple ebay auction of mine but I can try to help you set up one, depending on the design of your site.
6. Keywords and meta tags - these are, to quote the a former colleague of mine, depreciated. Despite not being particularly important for big search enignes, many smaller engines or crawlers do use them. By all means, use them, but within reason and restraint.

Thank you for taking the time to read this page, I hope it benefitted you. please consider me for your next web design project/freelance work. Please also see my existing auctions for domains, web design, hosting, seo and other offers.