5 SEO Internet Marketing Tips Including Google Caffeine Updates
By Scott Moir, SEO founder, Irbtrax

Studies are showing a large number of companies still aren't applying best practices. This appears to be occurring because there's a significant amount of poor or outdated information. This is the fault of SEO marketing companies that are grounded in best practice techniques. They just aren't doing a good enough job of educating decision makers.

The following four tips are for improving the results of your SEO and marketing techniques

1. Enhance and update website content.
Content should be relevant to a site's core message, products, or services. It's also important if this content is unique or presented in an original manner. Vague content or content containing graphic images make a site difficult to properly index. A hard-to-index site will yield poor Search Engine Results Pages (SERP's). This results in missed business opportunities. Additionally, it is very important to upgrade your content to keep it fresh. Fresh and updated content reflect a site that's not stagnant. Search Engine Crawlers (SEC’s) take notice of this activity. Search trends change so it's important to monitor them and change your content to reflect this. Failure to do so will leave the door open for your competition to gain higher SERP's.

2. Check your Meta Title and Description Tags (MTDT)
Your MTDT are very important, due to search relevancy and accuracy of site indexing. Clear, concise, and informative Meta Tags can help produce higher ranking SERP's. Also, be sure to check your sub MTDT to ensure they are accurate and relevant. You can accomplish this by clicking on the cache stored below your homepage. Accurate, effective, and relevant sub MTDT can often rank higher than your primary Meta Tags.

3. Analyze and improve your site/page download times
While it's not yet clear how much emphasis Google Caffeine is placing on site download times, what is clear is the following: Google engineers have hinted that despite all things being equal, faster downloading sites have an advantage. This could be because slow-loading websites frustrate visitors and they will look elsewhere for their needs. They will either back click or close the search altogether, and then visit your competition—resulting in a poor conversion rate and lost revenue or leads for you.

4. Include only quality outbound links in your website
There are high quality and low quality outbound links. Indications are that search engines have been giving better weight to high quality outbound links for some time now. High quality outbound links are links that are relevant to your website's core subject or service. Your website should contain high quality outbound links that educate or persuade your visitors. This will increase their time on site and lead to more conversions. Avoid cross-linking with sites that don't enhance your online presence.

---Source: Scott Moir is the SEO founder of Irbtrax (http://www.irbtrax.com). You can reach him at smoir@irbtrax.com. This article was originally published on Feb. 16, 2010 on http://www.onlineprnews.com.