One of the things that has become perfectly clear is that decent website content will stand the test of time. Take the opportunity to write decent articles and syndicate them through RSS feeds, online press release and free article syndication websites. You may also want to write articles in the area of your expertise that can be submitted to print magazines and other offline professional mediums. Sometimes magazines have an online version.

I cannot overstate the value of good article writing and what it can do for your website traffic over time.

You see, the primary off-page factor which will increase your position on the search engines is inbound links, or back-links.

When Google sees that you have several high ranking web pages pointed to your website, it will begin to perceive YOUR website as a SME. (subject matter expert).

The name of the SEO game is to get high ranking websites pointed to your website using anchor text.

Anchortext is when you hyperlink a word or phrase to point back to a given website instead of just using the old fashioned http://www.yourwebsite.com method. For example if I was to link back to keyword university, my primary keyword term is "keyword research" so I would anchortext this keyword phrase like this: "Please visit keyword university for all of your keyword research needs".

Brad Callen, creator of the SEO ELITE (seo elite) software made the comment that he is "shocked and amazed" by how many people fail to understand this simple technique. They may have acquired hundreds of inbound links coming to their website, but they forget to use "keyword rich" anchor text when they were building these link relationships. Sometimes it is only a matter of reminding your fans and link partners to do this.

For example, when you have people linking back to your website, all you need to do is ASK them to use the anchortext keyword instead of the http://www.yourdomain.com method. When you are purchasing an add on a vertical market portal or website that allows you to use text, be sure to anchortext your primary keywords.

Discovering which keyword phrase is the right one to use for your anchortext is what expert keyword research is all about. Please look at the keyword research tools on this website.

Collecting High PR inbound links:

If you are not a writer you can outsource your writing to college students or Guru.com. If you use reputable writers overseas, you can pay as little as 5.00 dollars per article. If you choose, you may rewrite the article that you have outsourced to meet your purposes.

If you have a large organization with large amounts of content you can ask you staff writers to choose a few of their articles and proceed with method 1 below.

If you are a decent writer yourself, you may start to build "content equity" for your website right away. Don't ever doubt that your articles are useful and relevant. Try to use your primary keywords in your writing once you have figured out what these keywords are. Once you know your keywords, you can generate high quality inbound links in the following ways:

Method 1. Article Syndication Sites:

These are websites where you may give away your article with your bio and a link back to your website. Amazingly, you can use many of these sites for free. If you upgrade to the paid level you may be able to use anchor text on some of these article submission sites, which will help you even more. These article submission websites include:

isnare.com
goArticles.com - See Alexa Ranking
ArticleCity.com - See Alexa Ranking
hotlib.com - See Alexa Ranking
jogena.com - See Alexa Ranking
FreeZineSite.com - See Alexa Ranking
digital-women.com - See Alexa Ranking
writingcareer.com - See Alexa Ranking
ebooksnbytes.com - See Alexa Ranking
articlepoint.com - See Alexa Ranking
simplysearch4it.com - See Alexa Ranking
webpronews.com - See Alexa Ranking
articleshaven.com - See Alexa Ranking
article-emporium.com - See Alexa Ranking
article-dir.com - See Alexa Ranking
connectionteam.com - See Alexa Ranking
smallbusinesshowto.com - See Alexa Ranking
uniterra.com - See Alexa Ranking
my-biz.net - See Alexa Ranking
article-directory.net - See Alexa Ranking
biz-ewomen.com - See Alexa Ranking
netterweb.com - See Alexa Ranking

You also may want to take a look at Article Announcer. Be sure to take a look at the Article Announcer Video.

It is important to note that isnare will automatically submit you to all of these article websites, and I believe you need to have a paid membership to syndicate to multiple sites via a single submission.

Method 2.

Using search engine optimized "Press Release" is the only way I know that you can target several aspects of search engine optimization all at the same time:

Optimized Content Copy

A keyword optimized Press Release contains copy that is readable by humans and search engine robots.

Optimized Anchor Text

The keywords in the body of your Press Release are linked to powerful keywords that will increase your ranking on the search engine for carefully selected keywords.

Optimized Inbound Link Structure

Due to the massive media distribution network to which you may submit your press release, your inbound link ranking will increase, which stabilizes further your keyword ranking for selected keyword terms.

When I started studying the methods put forth by Marc Harty of PR Traffic , I discovered rather quickly that online press release is the best way to get high quality inbound links that stand the test of time, while at the same time getting "click-thru" equity and ranking at the same time. Most people don't know that Google is able to use the toolbar on peoples computers (when it is installed) in order to track actual traffic to a website. Actual traffic does play a role on your search engine ranking.

The subject of online press release is covered in detail on the prweb section of this site. Please stay tuned for further updates.

Method 3.

Guest Books

A little known method for getting inbound links is to use "guest books" from high ranking sites, and point these pages back to your own website. For example if you go to http://www.azlyrics.com you can go to their guestbook and add a link when you leave your comments. This is a perfectly acceptable way to acquire links, although it most certainly will NOT give you much surgically targeted traffic.

Method 4.

Link Text Brokers and Buying Ads

You can pay a monthly fee to have a link back to your website from a high ranking site. The primary reason to do this is to get a new website spidered very quickly. I don't necessarily recommend that you rent links on an ongoing basis unless you have a huge budget. Brad Callen of SEO ELITE recommends that you do this "just to get the ball rolling". I have links to some link text brokers in the free tools area of keyword university.

I DO recommend that you place vertical market text ads if you are running a real offline business. Find an industry specific portal and place a paid text ad on the website. Before you pay a lot of money, make sure the vertical market website (portal) is going to drive target industry traffic to your website, and that it also has a high page rank. You can check the page rank of a website by downloading the Google toolbar and enabling the PR function.