Search Engines - How to Optimize Your Pages

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the techniques used to improve your website or blog visibility on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. For example the higher your Google page rank the closer you will appear at the top of the list when someone does a Google Search.

Since I began my quest a little over a week ago to maximize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) my page views have more that quadrupled. Not only am I getting more hits, but I also sold my first item through Amazon.com. I know - I know, I'm excited about it too. Some of my web pages are even placing on the first page of Google Search. So as a tribute to my fellow Hubbers (and to drive traffic to myself) I am going to tell you how to use 12 different sites to help raise traffic to your pages.

Well you see, Search Engine Optimization works through links - as the search engine spiders crawl through websites they find and follow links back to our pages. The more links we have on sites with a good rating (all the below sites are rated 7 - 9 on Google) the better our pages will look to search engines. I am doing this because I need your help as much as you need mine.

Although I have created all these different accounts and built backlinks to my pages with them, I am not getting the full benefit because I do not have many friends on these pages yet. By giving you the information you need to optimize your websites I am hoping you will follow the provided links after you create each account and either make me your friend or follow my page - I in turn will follow your sites and we can all be one big SOE family.

Tips

• Remember all the below sites are free to sign up for and use.

• Create your accounts one at a time to avoid confusion.

• Bookmark this page - this process can take several hours

• Make a list of your user names and passwords for quick retrieval.
• Create a Favorites Folder for these SOE websites.

• Use interesting titles when submitting your pages.

I am writing this article on a page called HubPages. Many of you know this as you are fellow hubbers. For those of you who do not, HubPages is a revenue sharing site for writers, but more than that we are a community of writers. You can write articles here and earn income from sites such as Google AdSense and Amazon Associates. You can also meet like minded individuals who share common interest and goals. You can write anything here from product reviews to short fiction and poetry. It is an excellent medium for writers to get their voices heard.

Create a HubPage Account Here

Follow Me Here

Now I want to direct you to is a familiar social network - Facebook. You may already have a Facebook account. What you need to do is create an Official Page for your website - this is separate from but may be connected to an existing Facebook account. I have two pages: one for my fiction writing and one for my HubPages. You will need a standard Facebook account in order to create Official Pages, you can attach your page to an existing account or you can create a new one for your web pages - the choice is yours.

• I recommend you create a page for each unique website you want to promote.

• Post links to your website as you add new content or upgrade it.

• Put links to your Facebook Official Page on your websites.

Create an Official Page on Facebook

My Badd Pages on Facebook - Click [Like] to Follow

Twitter is a high-speed, low-drag social media site and a leader in social networking on.  Users are limited 140 words per post and there messages are instantly delivered to all of their followers and anyone who may be searching for the posted subject at that time.  I have to admit I was intimidated by Twitter's volcano of information, which is why I never attempted to use it in the past.  Now that I have signed up I see it is not the monster I imagined.  It is a quick way to get your information to potentially millions of viewers within seconds of posting it. 

Create a Twitter Account

Follow Me on Twitter

How to Politely Promote with Twitter

Klout is a tool to measure your influence on social media websites. It ranks users from 1 to 100 based on your network and activity on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also earn perks from areas you specialize in if your Klout Score is high enough to qualify you. Even without the perks Klout will help you gauge your influence in the social networking arena.

Join Klout

Follow Me

More About Klout

Digg is one of the most popular social networking book mark website available today.  Digg users vote on submitted content and the more votes the page gets the higher it ranks on the site.  Can you Digg it?

Create a Digg Account

Follow me on Digg

StumbleUpon is the coolest book marking site I have used to date.  When you create your account you choose from a list of interest that pertains to you.  When you hit the popular [Stumble] button your browser stumbles to a page that you may like.  You then rate the page by hitting the thumbs up/down button - then stumble to the next page.  I created this page for SOE but I have added it to my search bar and I play with it daily.  It is a lot of fun and I have stumbled upon some great sites.

As a user you will submit your page to StumbleUpon either through there website or by clicking the [thumbs up] if you have added the StumbleUpon bar to your web browser.  When you do a window will open and you can do a "Quick submit" or "Add a review" - I recommend using the "Add a review" option as it gives you more control over how your page is viewed.  You then enter the related tags as well as a short review of the page you are submitting. 

*Important Note: If you submit too many pages from only one site StumbleUpon will think you are spamming and they will lock out submissions from that site.  So if you are a hubber, a blogger or just have a site you want to submit multiple pages from, make sure you only do about five pages the first day.  Then stumble around and rate other pages from other sites for awhile to balance out your stumbles.  This is a lot easier than it sounds, I only stress it because I found out the hard way and it took me awhile to figure out what was wrong.

Create a StumbleUpon Account

Follow Me on StumbleUpon

Google Buzz is Google's own personal social bookmarking website.  Buzz ties into your GMail account and allows you to share your bookmarks with your mail contacts as well as friends you may make through the Google Buzz website.  In addition to sharing websites you can also share photos and videos, you can even tie into other accounts such as Flicker or Tweeter allowing for automatic updates.

If you do not have a GMail account or if you do not want it connected to this Google Buzz account you will need to create a new one.

Create a GMail Account for Google Buzz

Follow Me on Google Buzz

Delicious is Yahoo's social bookmarking site. Unlike Google Buzz, Delicious does not operate as a direct extension of Yahoo Mail. You do however use an existing Yahoo User Identification to log into your Delicious account. Once in your Delicious account you will see it operates in a similar fashion to Digg.com. You submit your webpages and they are rated by other users.

You can also use Yahoo Pulse with your Delicious/ Yahoo Account. Yahoo Pulse is similar to Google Buzz.

Create a Delicious Account

Follow Me on Delicious

Reddit is another social bookmarking site similar to Digg and HubSpin.  Users post articles or blogs and other readers vote those websites up or down.

Create a Reddit Account

Follow Me on Reddit

Folkd is another social bookmarking site similar to the ones above.  You submit your webpages and they get rated by other users.

Create a Folkd Account

Follow Me on Folkd

Propeller is AOL's social networking site. You can do everything here from creating bookmarks to writing blogs. I use it to bookmark my pages for better SEO. Propeller has banned some of the sites I use such as HubPages - so I used it to link to my other networking sights creating a backdoor to my back links.

Create a Propeller Account

Follow Me on Propeller

Newsvine is a MSNBC revenue sharing site where you can write your own news articles or seed links to other articles. I use it too seed links to my other pages, but I may try writing there eventually to take advantage of the revenue generating potential.

Create a Newsvine Account

Thus ends your training on Search Engine Optimization. All you have to do is follow the above links and attach your pages to the respective sites. Traffic will increase and you will place higher with search engines.

I would like to extend a special thanks to those of you who choose to connect to me through my links. I welcome you to put a link to your Facebook - Official Page in the comments below. I will return the favor and follow you page as well. As for the other bookmarking sites I will be able to see who is following me and follow them in return.

Thank you again for your support.