Many of our clients don’t have time for SEO and won’t spend the money to hire a professional. If you find yourself in a similar position, we’ve created a list of the top five factors with the greatest return on SEO. By focusing on just these five areas, you’ll limit the time invested and get the best results.

The top 5 factors for effective SEO:

1. Keyword Research
   SEO begins with keyword research. Take the time to do it correctly and identify the search phrases that produce quality traffic. Use the tools provided by Google as a start and keep spreadsheets on your results.
2. Optimized Content
   Web visitors come to your site for original content, but what separates the top listings from those on page 2 is proper optimization. Your content needs to please both the human reader and the robotic crawler.
   Typically, you should identify the keywords for a page and keep the density to 2% – 5%. That means using two to three keywords per page and repeating them a few times. Placement of the most important keyword at the beginning and end is important.
3. Optimized Web Pages
   Search engine Web crawlers read the coding portions of your Web site, so it must be properly coded in order to guide the crawler to the content areas of your Web pages.
   1. Place the keywords in the page title.
   2. Place keywords in the description
   3. List related keywords in the keyword meta tags
   4. Use H1 to H6 designations
   5. Tag images with alt tags.
4. Article Syndication
   Write articles and create press releases about your Web site, your products and services and anything of interest that might happen for your firm. If you win an award, write about it. Submit the articles and press releases to major press release websites. Strategically place anchor texts to draw readers to your Web site as well.This practice is easy and very effective and helps you develop content for your site and social media too. It helps the Web site gets crawled by the search engines within two days which reinforces the natural ranking of the Web site. If you leave anchor texts for the internal pages as well, then you can expect to get your Web site’s internal pages cached, which will further boost the Web site’s presence.
5. Social Bookmarking
   It is important to be active in social bookmarking and to participate with sites like dig, delicious and others. Bookmark your own articles and press release, make new friends online and share your bookmarks with them.

This is a guest post to the Graphics Unleashed Blog by Doug Dickson. Doug Dickson is President and Chief Energizing Officer of Print Source One, one of the Arizona’s leading printing companies. His clientele includes all of America’s largest financial and insurance companies, celebrities, as well as top professionals in the medical, plastic surgery dental and orthodontic specialties. Mr. Dickson is well known for his ability to analyze Web sites and help them achieve front page listings in Google, a process known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). He is an industry expert and has been recognized by Google as a Certified Adwords Partner.