8. Optimise Your 404 Page

The search engines look at traffic in their algorithms to “grade” a page. If you have a complicated URL, one that is commonly misspelled, or do something else that could endanger losing any existing links that are published out on the WWW, this is the landing page the visitor will get sent to. If it has your template and navigation from the rest of the site it will get indexed like a normal page.

Change your title and meta to one of your keyword strings, add an image and relative content that reflects your keywords as well. I avoid placing the actual term “404” on the page.

A simple ,”You have found this page in error, please select from the menu on the left side of this page” will do here, and you will retain more traffic.

9. Google Custom Desktop and Google Alerts for Content

If you are not using Google Customized Desktop, Google Reader, or some type of rss feed reader already, you should definitely start using one. The easiest way to accomplish this for a complete novice (but is actually the way I do it), is with your GMail account. Which is something else you should already be using. For the data storage alone you should be using it. If you need an invitation to open one send me a request and I'll send an invite ( garythescubadiver@gmail.com ). You will need a GMail account to use these tools.

With a GMail account you can go to the Google homepage and login using your email. In the top right corner is a link for “Add stuff”. It allows you to add specific URLs and it will pull the last 1-10 entries from that page and populate your Google Desktop. Here's a snapshot of what mine looks like [images do not show].

Its not the best snapshot but I wanted to show as much as possible. This is actually only about 1/3 of what I have on mine. These are different places that I used to go to individually to find information.

Google Alerts is a fantastic tool. You enter your search term and whenever Google finds your term while crawling the web it will send you and email with a link to it. I have alerts on everything from “google datacenters” to “DMOZ” and “Matt Cutts” to “Danny Sullivan”.
When I look for content, I use these as reference tools. They are not meant to be used to scrape content or plagiarize other websites.

There are many other uses for these if you put your head to it. :o)

10. Press Releases and Syndication

Press Releases are a fantastic way to get natural one-way links, and also attract fresh traffic. If they are done correctly they can be the main source for building traffic, gaining ranking positions and building trust with the search engines.

In the United States I use PRWeb, and in the UK and Europe I use SourceWire to syndicate articles. Both originally started as PR companies before the web came around so they have excellent connections with real syndicated sources. The websites that they send the articles to, will re-syndicate them to even more websites. You will pay between £20-£40/$20-$60 depending on the amount that you send them.
The articles that you syndicate should be authoritative or about something that will attract people to it, like Top 12 SEO Tips for 2007, or Ten Reasons Why.

You should quote trusted authorities and always reference the source when possible. I use Wikipedia or news sources like Google News, BBC, or CNN. I believe this actually adds trust to an article and in 3-6 months when Google pushes out Page Rank, the probation period for giving you full value is reduced.