I have heard it said that your Page Rank is the most important aspect of your website SEO optimisation that gets you a high listing in the Search Engines. That gives me a problem! The first problem I have with that is why should Yahoo, MSN and ASK care about Google PageRank. PageRank is correctly written since it is a trademarked term. These search engines do not use Google PageRank as part of their listing criteria, or if they do, they are keeping it close to their chest. The second problem I have with that is that I know, but cannot prove, that I have had websites listed in the top 10 in the Google listings for competitive keywords without any links other than those received through one article submitted to one article directory. The reason my web pages (not websites, since true search engines do not list domains) earned such a high listing is that they were optimized for the keywords that each page was built upon, taking into account the fact that a high listing is the result of the culmination of many SEO techniques used on each page. Keep in mind that Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp and MSNBot use a large number of different aspects of your web page in determining the position of your page in the index for any particular search term a customer has used. The way to get a high listing is to pay attention to every one of these. If you ignore even one, you will probably not rank as highly in relevance for that search term as web pages like mine that ignore nothing. Don’t believe them when they tell you that Meta tags don’t count, because they could. It does you no harm to use them, so use them! In fact, use every aspect of SEO that you can, and do not take notice of anybody that tells you not to. I use to listen to others who knew best until I noticed that my web pages were listed higher that theirs for their keywords. I am just a simple article ghost writer, yet I can get my websites listed immediately on Google, and listed higher that many SEO experts – self proclaimed! I don’t care if your website is listed high or not, or if it is listed within 2 days or 2 months. However, if YOU care, then you should listen to people who have done it, and not those who want to tell you how to do what they can’t do for their own web pages! What credibility can they have if they have to pay for their advertising? I don’t. Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips: First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank as possible for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it. Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. It is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’. SEO, search engine optimization, Page Rank and any other term you can think of. Forget them up to a point. Write natural content, and then use on-page SEO techniques as much as you can, then on-site and external links to raise your Google Page Rank as high as possible, and you might get a high listing for a specific web page that is optimized for a specific keyword. Every one of these has equal importance in my view, and it works for me. One last thought. If PageRank relied on back-links, how is that so many links are to pages on your site with zero PageRank? Surely they should have the Page Rank and not your home page? Look at your own website and do your own SEO. Don’t pay hundreds of dollars for what you can do yourself. Then, your free search engine advertising through high index listings becomes not so free after all. Here are two SEO tips: First, look to your internal links. You should make sure that you use these to lead spiders or robots to where you want them to go. You also use them to gain as high an internal PageRank for the page in your website of your choice that you want to be highest ranked. This is possible if you know how to do it. Secondly, look to your use of keywords and language. Google, especially, no longer looks so much for keywords, but for words that would normally be associated with that keyword in normal speech and writing. IT is what is loosely termed latent semantic indexing (LSI), yet it is neither ‘latent’ nor ‘indexing’. More ‘apparent’ and ‘analysis’. SEO, search engine optimization, Page Rank and any other term you can think of. Forget them up to a point. Write natural content, and then use on-page SEO techniques as much as you can, then on-site and external links to raise your Google Page Rank as high as possible, and you might get a high listing for a specific web page that is optimized for a specific keyword. Every one of these has equal importance in my view, and it works for me. One last thought. If PageRank relied on back-links, how is that so many links are to pages on your site with zero PageRank? Surely they should have the Page Rank and not your home page?