By George Carson

The words “optimize”, “keywords”, “key phrases” and “Title Pages” are used all the time by Search Engine Specialists, and Search Engine Optimization companies.  But what does all this do?  Not much.  Okay, it will help a little when done correctly, but this alone is not going to get your site highly ranked, or found on the first page of Google.

What is the secret? You need a good pr marketing strategy, and yes, a good website.

Most SEO companies will not admit this, or tell you if your site is poorly designed, because they want you to pay for their optimizing service. And when they complete all these great mysterious optimizations, such as I mentioned, they are gone!

Let me give you the truth behind high rankings, on all the search engines. As you may know, Google changed their methods of rankings as did Yahoo and Bing.  It now requires fresh content.  That is nothing new, as in previous years before, “content is still king.” Another secret is inbound links.

In today’s fast pace world of communication, you need to be proactive. Use these four tips to keep content fresh and increase search engine rankings:

1 - Website layout.

Simply said, if your site is difficult to navigate, or has too much on the home page, then your rankings will fall to the bottom.  Why? Because these little bots that scour your site are very sophisticated and know when text is badly written, and when clutter is apparent. This is also true about colors.  Stay away from too many colors on a page.  And do not have text in light colors making it difficult to read.

Every 60 to 90 days update the text on your web site.  No need to re-write all the text, just do about 30% so the search engines see new content.  Remember to re-register the site with directories and SEO’s every four months.

Not everyone thinks this is necessary.  Now more than ever, the bots that do the searching are using sitemaps to see how the site is structured, how the links interact and if you have dead pages, missing links, etc.

This is one of the most critical methods to get fresh content and “inbound links”.  If you do not have a social media program, start one. A strong public relations marketing strategy is to have a solid social media campaign.  This should include a blog site, twitter account and a business Facebook page.  Do not create any of these if you are not serious about maintaining them.  Otherwise it will just hurt your business site and again reduce your rankings.

Just like social media, publicity can be an excellent method to create awareness of your site and generate traffic because the content is fresh.  Make sure the releases and articles are all optimized.  Yes, optimization does happen with this media as well.  Submit your releases through traditional pr distribution sources.  Free services are okay, but will not guarantee placement, nor assure you the links back to your site will be live.  Be sure you submit to the traditional media in your industry as well as all the online news outlets.

Follow these five simple tips and before you know it, you will see your site climb in the rankings.