1) Create a blog. If you don’t already have one, create a blog and attach it to your main website. You can do this using WordPress or any of the other free and easy to use blog creation programs available on the web.

2) Go to Feedburner and burn an RSS feed. Feedburner is the Google feed tool, so it will give you the added benefit of an easy connection to Google Analytics and Adsense. You can even add “Adsense for Feeds” to each of your connected RSS feeds and have an additional source of income. Once the feed is burned, start registering with RSS and blog directories to increase your exposure. Most of them are free and can be found by doing a simple search for “RSS Directories”.

3) Use the “Publicize” tool on Feedburner to connect your RSS feed to a Twitter account. This function can be found under “Socialize”. If you don’t have a Twitter Account, open one up and spend a few dollars on a follower building tool like Hummingbird to build your network. You can also find code for an RSS subscription box on Feedburner. Add it to your website to help build a contact list for future posting. There’s even an email option for subscribers.

4) Connect your Twitter account to Facebook. Once again, if you don’t have a Facebook account, open one. There isn’t an automatic friend builder tool that won’t get you shut down, but Facebook does have a number of social network games where you can build networks quickly. Mafia Wars is one of the most popular. Play for a while and add two or three thousand new friends. You’ll be surprised at how many respond to your blog posts when you make them.

Once the entire network is in place, start writing blog posts on a regular basis or hire a content writing service to do it for you. Every time you publish a post, it will show up on Twitter and Facebook, plus go out as an RSS feed to any RSS directories you register the feed with. If you want to add other social networks, start with Linked In and Digg, then connect to Technorati, Stumble Upon, and Mixx. You’ll find others by connecting the WordPress Plugin called “Sociable” to your blog.

If you connect “Google Webmaster Tools” to your blog, you can track the number of links that you acquire every time you do a blog post. Google Analytics is useful also. It will tell you where your traffic comes from. This may sound like a lot, but it’s not difficult to do. SEO companies charge hundreds of dollars for these services. If you follow the directions above and do a little a research of your own, you won’t have to pay anything.

Today, that has all changed. Search Engine Optimization is not rocket science. Even the more technical aspects of the process can be handled with plug-ins on your Word Press site or by learning some basic HTML code. Most search engines don’t even look at meta tags anymore as an accurate depiction of a website. They’re too easy to alter. The quality and accuracy of your content are the primary variables in the formulas used to assign page position.

If you want to appear at the top of Search Engine Page One for your industry keywords, you will need links going back to your site, and not just any links. They need to come from sites that are credible and have legitimate page rank themselves. If you link to sites that have lower rankings than you do, they will bring you down. Think of it as climbing a ladder. You always want to reach for the rung just above you, not the one you just passed. Look carefully at the Alexa and PR rankings of a directory or link trade partner before you attach yourself to them.

Another powerful SEO tool that web-based businesses should utilize more often is the blog. If you write consistently in a blog, or have a content writing service do it for you, you will be providing the search engine spiders that index websites a steady flow of dynamic content which they will continually need to come back for. Use deep linking and anchor text in your posts and you’ll see your link count increase exponentially almost overnight.

The final item on the list of simple Search Engine Optimization tools is the press release. Don’t discount the power of the press, even if you use one of those free press release services. A press release can provide you links and traffic from the moment it’s published until weeks and sometimes months later. Set a few of them up, start writing in your blog, and pay attention to who you’re linking to. You’ll achieve high page rank in no time.

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This morning, something occurred that caused me to re-evaluate my efforts in another area – social media. I received an email from a prospective service provider who had found me on Facebook. This was particularly interesting because I don’t really use my Facebook account for business. I’m a “Mafia Wars” junkie and have eight hundred friends who mainly help me collect the items I need to Level Up in New York, Bangkok, Cuba and Moscow. This woman who contacted me didn’t seem to be connected to me, so I pulled out my toolbox and started tinkering.

As it turned out, I could have found the answer without using my SEO rank-checkers and real-time analytics gadgets. It was right in front of me on Google the whole time. Scrolling down a search page for the keyword “content writing“, where I have sat comfortably in the two position for almost a year now, I noticed a listing that read “Related Links in Your Social Circle”. There, staring me in the face, was my picture and business URL, which I have listed in my profile. I found out later on that the woman who contacted me had found me in a similar manner. One of her friends was a Mafia Wars buddy of mine.

Two years ago I was asked to ghostwrite a book for a colleague of mine on the impact of social media marketing. I used the Obama Presidential campaign as a model for how you can direct market with social media, but I also emphasized a point about indirect marketing. Your “friends” on Facebook don’t want to be solicited. They want to socialize. If they’re looking for the services you provide they’ll search for them in the traditional fashion, not through the network.

Facebook has been under fire recently for being the “Big Brother” of our generation, not only watching everything we do, but allowing others access to that data. Personally, I don’t put a whole lot of information on my Facebook account. My profile has my name, where I’m from, some pictures I share with friends, and my business URL along with a description of what I do for a work. It was that piece that secured me a new content provider this morning. Others can bail on Facebook is they like, but I think I’ll work on increasing the size of my Mafia this weekend.

“Linking” isn’t the only game in town any more. Backed up by the entity that has already taken over the number two position with Alexa, “Liking” might just be the wave of the future. Millions are on Facebook every day and what they like counts for a whole lot. If service providers and retailers don’t pay attention to those numbers, they will soon be on the outside looking in, no matter what Google search rankings tell them.

Of course, the “Like” data won’t be available to the general public, yet, but you can bet that the entrepreneurial spirit at Facebook will be in high gear; can you see the steam rising from Zuckerbergs forehead? On the Facebook executive profiles page it actually looks like Chanath is feeling, I don’t know, smug. I’m thinking I would be too if I developed the weapon that could slay Goliath.

Google may be a giant, but Facebook is no David. They are a many-headed monster led by some of the best minds on the planet. The past five years have been a time of huge growth for them and they have made all the right decisions on where to go next. This newest development is no surprise to anyone, including Google. Do I smell a potential collaboration?

Add the “Like Button” to your website and track the results with your analytics program, which is probably a Google tool (Hmm). In the meantime, don’t forget to keep up your link building and SEO. It’s not obsolete yet and those backlinks will always count for something, regardless of what the buzz on the net says.

Most importantly, remember that content is key. It doesn’t matter where your traffic comes from or how it’s being tracked. The content your visitors see when they get to your landing page is what will determine whether you make sales, get sign-ups, or find people who legitimately “like” you.

That may sound like a simplistic view but if you look at MySpace you will see a lot of flashy images, some cool apps, some great music, and nothing anywhere that actually has anything to say about the merits of the site itself. The most writing you’ll see at MySpace is the “warning” you get when you try to click an outside link.

Compare this to Facebook, the number two most visited site on the internet. Facebook has content. Those who use it post real sentences structured into real paragraphs because that is what the site encourages. Just look at the descriptions when you go to the Alexa Top 500 page. MySpace simply says “social network”. Facebook says “A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos”.

If you look at the Alexa Top Ten today you’ll see websites and search engines that have quality content. This is not the Google algorithm. Alexa is an independent service that ranks sites according to number of visits. Users determine who is on top and who slips down to obscurity. MySpace is quickly dropping off the charts because people simply are not using it.

As a writer and an intelligent consumer I get insulted when someone tries to use a sensationalist headline and no substance to get my attention. Rupert Murdoch has been doing this for years with his newspapers and built a multi-billion dollar empire. I hope he saved his money, because those tactics aren’t working anymore, at least not on the internet. MySpace is pretty but I, like most internet users these days, prefer substance.

Last week, my friends at Yahoo were kind enough to headline an article about Google developing real time indexing. The Omnipotent Higher Power of Search has already upgraded to a new Search 2.0 that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages. Adding real time indexing to that capability will make them virtually untouchable by their competitors. I guess that 72.11% US market share last year wasn’t enough for them.

So, let’s put this into perspective. I already have a Web 2.0 set-up of my own using Twitter and Facebook to re-broadcast any postings I make on my company blog. I also have a plug-in on my site called “Sociable” which provides little buttons at the bottom of every blog post which readers can click on to “Digg” one of my submissions or get others to “Stumble-Upon” my articles. I even have an RSS feed going into my Linked-in account so those who are already doing business with me can read about what I’m up to.

Now, I’m being told that Google will soon have the capability to index my new content in real time, immediately, as soon as I publish it? That’s awesome. It makes me want to write more often, as if I’m not doing it twenty-four hours a day now. I’m also thinking that this new technology will bring content and article writers like me an awful lot of new business. Real time indexing will change search page rankings almost daily, so those on top will need to keep publishing to stay on top. The newbies that are just starting the climb will have to work twice as hard to gain ground.

Will the new system create a web world where once again big business has a stranglehold on the top search positions or will it open up an opportunity for small businesses to compete for industry keywords? It could go either way. EzineArticles is proving once again why they are the best by introducing a tool that helps level the playing field. As for guys like me, I can’t see any way that this cannot be a good thing for us. Get ready my fellow scribes. Google is about to open the floodgates again.

Ezine Articles, the highest ranking article directory site according to Alexa, bans any author who tries to submit duplicate content. They also don’t allow submissions that are obviously self-promoting pieces of spam. To maintain their status as number one they need to have a higher standard than anyone else. They also use human editing, not robots, which gives a link from them heavier weight in search engine algorithms.

Hub Pages, Constant Content, Helium, and Squidoo are power sites where article submissions are worthwhile. When you do an analysis of your site a month after submitting to any of them the links will actually show up. There’s a general rule of thumb when it comes to article submissions, “If Google can’t see it you are wasting your time.” Connect your website to Google Webmaster tools and run analytics regularly. They may have some competition out there now but they are still the king of search and the authority on quality backlinks.

There has been some debate recently regarding the duplicate content penalty that is assessed by the search engines. Does it really exist? Is it temporary and if it is, how long does it last? If you want to know about duplicate content, check your website rank and then run a few articles through an auto-submitter or spinner. Your rank will not go up, it might go down, and the chances of any of those links showing up for analytics are pretty slim. Don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself.

If you want to see some real results from article marketing, have one of our writers from Content and Article Writing put a few articles together for you and let us submit them somewhere manually where you’ll get some good out of them. Ezine links last forever and keep bringing you traffic long after you’ve posted the original article. Squidoo is a PR8 site where you can use articles to build lenses, Helium is PR6, Constant Content and Hub Pages are both PR5. That’s the kind of power rating you need to climb the search rankings to Page One, not a link from obscure directories that will accept any piece of junk that’s submitted. Contact us for more info about article writing any time.

The importance of content development for SEO cannot be over-emphasized. The number of backlinks you have will be a major factor in the assignment of page rank but if your content is not relevant you won’t climb to the top of your industry. There are plenty of companies out there who have the same number or more links than you do, so how do the search engines separate them? The answer is content. The search engine algorithms change often and are shrouded in secrecy but one thing that is known about them is that relevance and quality count pretty heavily.

Content is also directly related to your conversion rate. Being seen by consumers who want what you have to offer will bring you traffic. As you climb closer to search engine Page One you will see an increase in the number of visitors you have. Will your site convert when they get there? All of the traffic in the world does nothing for you if no one is buying anything. Once again, your content should be addressed first. Don’t build a boat that won’t float when you put the cargo on board.

As the web has expanded in the past decade the quality of the content has declined. When the search engines were growing up they ranked sites by the number of links they had without taking into account the quality of those links and the pages they led to. That has changed. Google and those that compete with them are battling for control of a multi-billion dollar search industry where the technology of size is no longer the most potent weapon available. Quality and relevance are leading the way with the more highly educated and informed consumers of today.

Content and Article Writing is a company that is dedicated to the improvement of content on the internet, not just for our clients but for everyone. As the competition for search traffic increases, the smaller players like Bing and Cuil are cutting into Google’s market share by offering more comprehensive and relevant content on their top pages. Links still count but the landing page they go to had better have something to say or you will end up lost in the depths of search engine obscurity.

So, what exactly is custom blog posting? Custom blog posting is professional writing done for your blog by the internet marketing expert scribes here at Content and Article Writing. Our writers know how to structure a blog post so that it is relevant content to both your human readers and the search engine robot spiders that review it. Keyword density is a big part of that formula and proper scheduling is another.

For most of our clients, we write a batch of eight to ten posts at a time and schedule them through the content management admin site of their blog to publish on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. The frequency and amount of posts we create are determined by the client. We also offer single posts, static content pages, and press releases to promote the blog, all composed using keywords that are targeted to the client’s specific industry.

As of February 1, 2010, Content and Article Writing is also offering free social media and RSS directory connections as part of our custom blog posting service for new clients. Connecting your blog to Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and Delicious will bring you the type of attention you need to be successful. We’ll also burn RSS feeds for you at Google Feedburner and post an icon on your blog so your customers can subscribe and hear what you have to say when you want to say it.

If you don’t have a blog attached to your website, use our Contact Us page and request more information about having us create one for you. You might also want to subscribe to this blog so you can stay current on everything we and our SEO partners are doing in the world of content development, article writing, and internet marketing.

Press releases are easy to write but require a fair bit of research if you want them done right. I read the client’s entire website before I write a word, then I pick out an offer or product that seems newsworthy and make a headline out of it. Clearance sales and new product lines are great for this. Sometimes the company itself is unique enough to make news. Regardless of the subject matter, the title and first sentence are critical to the success of the press release.

The body of content that follows that headline needs to be compact and filled with facts, figures and interesting reasons why someone would want to go to the website I am promoting. The word count is typically lower than in an article because I’m describing a product, service, or special offer, not trying to present a complete body of information. There should be at least one “call-to-action” command in there like “Go to www.thissiteisgreat.com right now for more information”. That may sound cheesy but you’d be surprised how much traffic a simple line like that will drive to a website.

That’s pretty much it. I put some contact info at the bottom and a FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE at the top and the press release is good to go. If you’re looking to give this service a try click here Contact Us About Press Releases