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The hardest part about learning search engine optimization is sifting through all of the garbage to find something that is actually useful.  This took me several months to do and I am finally seeing some of the benefits of my work.  I am writing this article to warn others about the scams and programs that are a waste of time.

Whether you know it or not, you have started search engine optimization already.  If you are reading this article then you are most likely trying to promote some of your online work, whether it be writing, websites or a blog.  The first thing that you should focus on is your content and keyword concentration.

Let’s start with content. Google looks for new, unique content to better service the people using their search engines.  So don’t just use a lot of syndicated articles on your website because it can actually hurt your search engine ranking.  Google looks for duplicate content to tell if you are trying to “cheat the system”.  This is not to say that you cannot have some duplicate content.  For instance, I always like to supplement my websites with a page buried within the site that just focuses on interesting articles I have found that support my website.  This is good because I am not overdoing it an it is deep enough in the website that Google won’t penalize my whole site because of it.

Keyword selection is also important when setting up a website, blog, or article.  This is what the search engine uses to determine whether your site is a good match for certain searches.  For example, this article uses the phrases “search engine” and “search engine optimization” a lot.  This will tell Google that this article focuses on search engine optimization.  If I were to try and replace all of my keywords with synonyms, then that would severely hurt Google’s chances of properly relating my site to relevant searches.  It is, however, important not to stuff your writing with too many keywords.  This was a tactic used in the ‘90s to trick the search engines into listing your website higher, but now it will just get you blacklisted.

After you have created your content in full and tested your entire work for errors, it is time to start promoting your site.  You will hear a lot of people trying to convince you that you should post your work on social networking sites, but this will only get a few initial views. These sites do not provide good backlinks either.  Your goal in promotion isn’t to attract immediate viewers, but to convince Google that it should give your site a higher rating.  You can do this by getting “good natural backlinks”.  Natural backlinks means not using a submission service.  Google knows about these and if you suddenly go from 0 backlinks to 100, they will blacklist you for unethical self promotion.  It is very hard to get back on the Google map after you have been blacklisted.  You will need to write articles on the many article websites and submit links to high quality websites like the Yahoo directory or DMOZ to get a better listing on Google.

Directory submission can still help your Google ranking but only if you do it naturally and you only submit, and get accepted, to high quality directories.  The directory submission services that you have to pay for will not help you.  They do not receive enough traffic to really make you money considering you have to pay a yearly fee.  The high quality directories are free, but very hard to get in to.  It does cost $300 to get a review for your website from the Yahoo directory, and this doesn’t even guarantee that you will get in.

Another way to get good traffic and boost your sites ranking is to post in forums and comment on articles with relevant links.  Do not spam or you will be reported but if your website or article can really help out, then your comment will be embraced and you will gain clout in the community and gain more traffic.

Following these steps will help to get your work found on Google.  There are some other things that you can do, but you should focus on the above to get a good start.  This article is a good example of what you should do if you want to promote your work as I have written other articles that relate to search engine optimization.