If you fancy doing your own SEO, Google has put together a handy startup guide full of best practices.

Download it for free here.

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I’ve written an article at Hubpages about how best to build incoming links for your site.  Read it here!

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If your site runs on Wordpress, this free plugin is a must:

All in One SEO Pack

Amongst other features, it allows you to add unique titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords to each of your pages.  Lots of other options to choose from!

To install on your Wordpress site:

• Ggo into WP Admin, click Plugins then Add New
• Search for “All in one SEO“
• Click on “All in one SEO“, then click “Install“
• Once installed, just click “Activate Plugin” and adjust the settings as required in Settings > All in one SEO
• You’ll find you now have the ability to add unique meta titles, descriptions and keywords in each of your blog posts & pages.

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A question I’m often asked regarding incoming links is what is more important: the PageRank of the link page on a website that’s linking to me, or the PageRank of the homepage of the website that’s linking to me?  The answer is … both, to an extent!

The PageRank of the linking page is ultimately the most important factor.  However, the PageRank of the homepage gives an indication of how the PageRank of the link page could improve with time.  If a website has a high PR homepage and the link page is just one click away, it is likely that the PR of the linking page will also rise within a couple of months.

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PageRank is Google’s way of measuring the relative importance of a page and ranges from 0 to 10.  If you have several websites with high PageRanks linking to you, you too will earn a high PageRank.   This website shows a table of how incoming links with varying PageRanks can affect your own PageRank.

So, how do you find out a website’s PageRank?  There are a couple of popular methods:

1. Download Google Toolbar and enable PageRank after installation.
   After installation, you’ll see an indication of PageRank on each website you visit:
   
2. If you use Firefox, download the SEOQuake extension.
   After installation, you can click on the icon at the bottom of Firefox, then right-click to get the SEO tool’s options:
   

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Building reciprocal link partners is probably of the most time consuming ways to enhance your search engine optimization campaign.  First you need to find relevant websites to swap with (building a reciprocal link exchange between your baby blankets company and a star trek convention site won’t impress Google much!), then you need to make sure the website is well indexed in Google and has a half-decent PageRank … THEN you need to compose a nice email to the webmaster requesting the exchange that doesn’t sound spammy - easier said than done.  More often than not, the emails you send will be deleted before they’re even opened so be prepared to do a LOT of research and send a LOT of emails to achieve just a few links.

Personally, I prefer link baiting.  Link baiting is when you entice other webmasters to link to you simply by writing good content.  These links are even more valuable because they’re one-way (you aren’t linking back to the websites that link to you).

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