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KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Hey, I’m only quoting, no invective intended.

But, we should all remind ourselves that we are less bright, when we complexify what would otherwise be simple. If we’re trying to build an online web business, or perhaps a home business that runs on the web, we’re likely running on a limited budget. We need to get the most for our time. Acquire more free web traffic, per hour of marketing effort.

Simple Web Marketing Rules

The simple fact is that following only a few simple rules will generate more unique visitors than any other way to spend our time (or money). You don’t need fancy and complicated tricks and techniques. Build a good web page. Google and your visitors will love it. Prime the pump with a few press releases, articles, internal links and basic good page-design-html rules. The water (visitor traffic) will flow… freely.

The Old Google PageRank vs. the New Simpler Google Algorithm

Google has recently (May 20, 2008) introduced a new way of evaluating the web. The Google V.P. of Engineering in charge of Search Quality is Udi Manber, who wrote an article on the Official Google Blog describing the new and simpler approach Introduction to Google Search Quality. You should read his article when you have time. Read it carefully and you’ll note some interesting changes to the way they do business, technically. However, it’s basically a more simple approach. “Simpler is better,” says Udi. Google’s Page-Rank algorithm is now simpler, and so should be our marketing and SEO strategy. Google has recently refined their technology that analyzes web pages. They don’t tell us exactly what they did, but they do confess that they have reduced its previous complexity. This will mean that they will now be able to index, crawl and inter-relate your on-page content better than ever before. Write better pages and they will know it.

Avoid Grey and Black Hat SEO Complexity

Instead of constantly rewriting existing pages, and killing ourselves with bizarre and complicated marketing strategies (often called grey or black-hat SEO) aimed at acquiring external backlinks and endless multilevel layered referral technologies, why not simply build good pages, and more of them?

Building good pages is what the web is all about. At the end of the day, if we design simple, content rich, unique pages that give something to the web, the web will give us traffic to them.

How can we do that? Here’s how to get the most for your SEO efforts:

Building Successful Organic Search Engine Traffic:

1. Focus on one simple topic per page. Your page will be “about” this subject. We will write the page in an unusual order. If you organize your work in the order, building successful web traffic will be easier.
2. Divide that topic into 4 or 5 main ideas.
3. Make each of those ideas a sub-heading.
4. Write a good topical sentence in the first paragraph under each sub-head.
5. Write at least 2 or 3 more paragraphs of 50 or more words under that first paragraph.
6. Go back to the top of the page and write a introduction paragraph that reflects,but doesn’t repeat what each of the sub-heading/paragraphs will state below.
7. Go to the end of the page and write a very short summary of what the page has discussed. Do NOT repeat the top paragraph that you just wrote as the introduction.
8. Add 4 or 5 outbound links to sites that discuss the topics and ideas discussed on your page. In these links, make the link around 2 or 3 main keywords thatthe page is “about” inside each link.
9. Link this page to several other pages inside your own site which discuss your main keywords. Placing these links inside some of your paragraphs is better than doing it in a sidebar or footer. Sidebar links and footer links are detected and discounted by Google and some other engines. Make these links around relatively unique wording if possible.
10. Now go to the TITLE tag of your page and write a unique, human readable and short heading that starts with your main keyword or idea, and mentions one or two more. This should not be exactly the same as your H1 tag, but similar.
11. Now go to the META “Description” tag and write a nice short (150-160 character)summary of the page that is a brief version of the INTRO paragraph or SUMMARY paragraph in the page content. This is what Google may show to describe the page for many searches.
12. Now go to the META “Keyword” tag and write 8-10 keywords and phrases that are the main phrases from your heading and sub-heads, separating them with commas. Don’t over do this. Shorter may be better for most searches.
13. Then go to your graphics library and name one or two images something using the keywords that are your main content ideas. Something like “keyword1_keyword2.jpg”.Place a normal language description of the image in the image tag ALT and TITLE tags.Make this short and relate to the real content of the image, and the page.
14. Save this new page to your server using a name that uses 2 or 3 different keywords,separated by dashes. You could use up to 5 or 6 if needed. Make the most important keyword first in the list. Doesn’t have to be sensible or grammatical.
15. Now go elsewhere on your site and make 4 or 5 links on different pages, one link per page, pointing into this new page you are creating.
16. If you have time, then go to some social networking or bookmarking sites, discussion forum sites (find them by Googling your subject’s main keyword, plus “forum”), hub page or free WordPress blog sites and add a link or two to this new page from those sites, using keywords and short descriptions. Make sure these links are on pages that actually are about a similar topic to this new page.

That’s it! Pretty simple. No black hat or grey hat. Just plain good web content building.

If you do that, Google and the other guys will reward you. You’ll have built a 100% unique, all-new content page that nobody else has online, that is valued as being unique by the search engines, that others may want to link to, and that will bring high levels of free, organic, real-world traffic and maybe even business or profits for your site.

If you don’t follow these simple web marketing and search engine optimization rules, the search engines won’t refer free traffic to you. It IS that simple. Really.

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