SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an ever changing world. Each time the search engines (mainly Google) changes their algorithm, the SEO book is re written. The recent change in Google’s algorithm with the addition of Panda has once again put the ball of change in motion. So here are 5 tips to help you stay ahead of the SEO game and keep pace with the ever changing search engines.

1. Make sure you have the keywords that you want to represent your web site and its pages. Though Google does not pay attention to the META keyword tag anymore, it still indexes the pages of your web site according to the relevance, uniqueness, and authority your pages have with the targeted keywords you’ve chosen. Bing and Yahoo (the other two search engine giants) still recognize the META keyword tag, but also pays attention to how relevant your web pages content are to the keywords your web pages target.

2. Choose the web pages that are most important to your web sites online presence and optimize those pages accordingly. Make sure those pages not only show the proper density of the keyword(s) that are targeted, but also make sure that the pages META tags and title/alt tags are properly optimized with those keywords as well. Creating an XML Sitemap and giving the highest priority to your most important web pages helps as well. Submit it to the Google, Yahoo and Bing for quicker inclusion into their databases.

3. Links leading to your web pages from outside sources, as well as links that are on your web site should be optimized with the keywords of the page the link is pointing to. That means that the anchor text should include a keyword as well as the links alt and/or title tag. For the best exterior linking results, make sure your outside links are placed on authority sites that have similar content to your own web site. Search engine crawlers follow links when they crawl your web site.

4. DO NOT create any duplicate content on your web site. Content on each web page has to be at least 40% different from the other content on your web site as well as other web sites that are similar to your own. Duplicate content is frowned upon by the search engines (especially Google) and may lead to your exclusion from the search engines all together.

5. Utilize social network and social media web sites create powerful backlinks and attention to your web site. Creating blog posts, articles, press releases and even videos help to boost traffic and search engine presence since.

These five tips are vital to your web sites online presence and search engine position. This will put you on the right path to increasing traffic and page rank bringing the attention to your web site that you need.