For years Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been characterized by the effort to trick the seach engines with shadow networks or the more benign practice of trading links.  Google has implemented a new system called Jagger that now finally makes all this futile.  We have finally arrived at the age where the ranking of a site will be based on that site's content and the quality of that content.  If you want to get a high rank, start doing the real things that should improve your rank, namely publish relevant content, write articles with links back to your site, actually participate in online discussions about the topics you wish to be well ranked for...

This is actually good news (as you should be able to tell by my tone) since we are finally beyond the "get rich quick" mania that has been the mainstay of SEO since it's inception years ago during the Dot Com boom.

Write and encourage your community to write in your forums.  Do the things that will make your site worth visiting and the traffic will come.  A long hard road, but a fair one.

A key part to the success of any website is content.  If you are basing the business on traffic then the more content the better.  You can write that content yourself, buy it or you can design a site that causes your users to provide the content for you.

You have likely visited many sites yourself where you are welcome to share and contribute.  Each time someone does, whether it is to vent, rant or console, the site benefits by the addition of more content.  A big factor in all search engine ranking is the number of pages in the site.  If you can leverage the work of others, it can make the difference between having dozens of pages (or hundreds if you are prolific) and having thousands of pages.

Ultimately unless it is completely out of place, think about putting forums on your site.  It is the best way to get contributions without having to invent a new paradigm.  If you are hosting on a dedicated server then you likely have to find the software yourself, but on most shared hosting providers there is already software in place for you to leverage.

In searching the web sometimes you find a really comprehensive source and today we have a link that fits our seach engine optimization goal.  The company is in Australia and seems to always have a clear opinion on everything from coding standards to search engine optimization.

Check out what SSW has to say about the subject of Better Google Ranking.

When you setup a website you will undoubtedly get a web hosting plan that includes not only a set amount of hard drive space for your pages, but also a budget of bandwidth that your site can utilize.  This number can be anything from 100 Megabytes (MB) per month to thousands of Gigabytes (GB) per month.  Often this vital statistic is ignored as people are looking forward to the problem of having too much traffic.  While most web sites that are created don't consume massive bandwidth, don't plan for your own failure by completely ignoring this factor when you sign up with a web hosting company.  At least ensure you get a reasonable amount of bandwidth based on what your site will be doing.  For instance if you are hosting home videos for a large group you may find that even 10 GB per month is not enough.  If on the other hand you have a modestly designed site that leverages background colors more than graphics you may find that 100 MB is more than enough even once you get the site to your desired user community.

The bottom line is to factor in all the relevant areas so you don't find yourself regretting your choices.