I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 18 years 2 months 7 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
When I took my first Search Engine Workshop class with John Alexander and Robin Nobles, Ginette Degner taught a session of the class. Since then, each time I’ve returned to SEW, I learned something insightful from her.
She’s written a great article here called “10 ways to increase traffic and sales” that you might need to read as a reminder.
Besides wanting to point out a great article, I wanted to add an 11th item to her list…
11. Write and post usefull articles and information on your own website that is so good, that people will link to you because they want to.
There’s no substitute for great content, because once you have it, links will come and so will ranking.
Once all is said and done, and the site is structurally sound, it’s being spidered regularly, it has decent analytics, visitor statistics etc. then it’s all about one thing… Making it the single best resource on the planet for your chosen search phrase.
That’s it, there’s not much left to say!