Probably the most important single investment any website owner can make is search engine optimization, also known as SEO. Every year the strategies that go into effective SEO become a just a little more advanced and a little more specific. Search engines themselves are constantly refined, responding to user queries more accurately, and recognizing more spam sites. And as search engines evolve, website owners everywhere need to review their SEO strategies every year to make sure they are still the best available.

Once upon a time, in the’90’s, SEO was very simple. You built your website. You added some meta tags. You chose keywords, probably repeating them over and over, hoping to draw traffic. Ten years ago and more, spider technology was relatively new, and users were easier to please. The Internet was sufficiently new that users were satisfied with simple matches that were just “kind of close” to what they were seeking.

Up to and into 2009, search engines have worked tirelessly to make their searches much more accurate, and Google is the best example of that. Their original algorithm gave much more weight to back-link counting and prioritizing. That means that you would get more credit for a link to your website from a well respected website than one that was just created, and that the more links you had of high value, the better you?d perform in search results. Additionally, keyword anchor text for those links would optimize your site for specific keywords through links.

Keyword-rich links from high-value external sites is still the most effective way to raise your page rankings on Google. Nowadays, however, content also counts. Google and the other search engines have been working hard to discern quality content from content that may not be spam, but isn’t original and informative and really worth a visitor’s time. To a certain extent, your website still has to win a popularity contest, because back-links continue to count. But the new natural language filters don’t just differentiate between natural language and spam. They give you increasing credit for increasing readability and originality of your content.

Google and the other search engines have begun to distill word patterns from the news, from books, and online sources to contrast and reject keyword stuffing. This has made the quality of content on your site a lot more important than it used to be. Where website owners once made a point of stuffing a page with 4%, 5%, 6%, or even 7% or more of a keyword, now the optimal percentage is just 3 to 4 keywords per 100 words in text. Google now values natural speech and rejects repetitive use of keywords, even when it falls below the threshold for spam.

The top SEO strategy in 2009 is to make copy that is keyword optimized, but reads naturally. Copy should not just house keywords; it should also be appealing to the reader. Keyword-rich external links, however, are still important, and you still need to keep your keyword density up to 3 or 4%. Maintain a natural flow of meaningful text with just enough keywords and Google with reward you with higher page rankings.

Justin Harrison is a leading Internet Marketing consultant responsible for the Internet Marketing strategies behind some of the biggest online brands including Amazon, BBC, MasterCard and many others.

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