Consider Social Influences

It is likely that the next step in the evolution of search algorithms is going o take social influences into consideration.

Google made waves when they said that their +1's would start to work their way into the public domain of search results, rather than be restricted to just influencing individual user's results.

The question is whether this type of recommendation will really produce good relevant results or not. Some people think not, while others would argue that the wisdom of the crowd is a powerful factor and should be worked into mainstream search results.

Beware of OTS solutions

When starting up an internet business, perhaps e-commerce or otherwise, you may well consider some of the very good ready made solutions available to create your website with. Whether you are planning to become the next Amazon, or just do a bit of blogging you want to pick a good system.

Comparing the various features and modules, content management systems and transaction processing options available, it is easy to overlook something very simple but equally critical to the successs of your online enterprise, the quality of the mark-up that is generated.

Many OTS solutions spit out some pretty nasty and non-compliant mark-up. Good, semantically correct and web standard compliant code should be a pre-requisite and an important factor when assessing such solutions. The best advice is to take a look at some other websites that use the package, and take a look at their code. A quick look at 'View, Source Code' in your browser will reveal a lot. If you don't know what you're looking for, ask a web developer to take a look for you and assess how good it is.

After all, you want to build your online presence on good foundations. Good compliant code will stand you on an excellent footing for good search results.

Seek High Quality Links

When it comes to promoting your website online, gaining inbound links to your site from others is going to be high on your list of priorities. However, it's easy to make  basic mistakes in strategy here, so here are some key pointers.

Quality, not quantity is most important when it comes to link building and search engine optimisation. A select few high quality links will benefit your website in the search rankings infintely more than a thousand poor ones will.

So, what defines a high quality link? Make sure the link is from a website which is relevant to yours, something complimentary to your own subject matter. Check that the linking website has a PageRank score, and the webpages have been crawled and cached by Google. A link from a page that Google doesn't know exists, is not worth anything. Finally, make sure that the link uses anchor text and a title attribute which are a relevant key phrase for your website.

Structure your content in a logical and clear way

The content on your website is the most valuable part when it comes to search. So often we see badly marked up content, and this will count against you when it comes to ranking highly in the search engine results.

Review your content structure, making sure you have a clear hierarchy of heading tags with good quality written paragraphs beneath them. Limit yourself to one <h1> tag, and use <h2> and <h3> tags for section headings further down.

Ensure that your content is well written, with no spelling mistakes or typing errors. Use gramatically correct sentences, make sure your punctuation is sound and that you have a page that is easily readable. The search engines will appreciate this as much as your readers!