Gone are the days of loading up a website or web page with popular keywords (formerly known as keyword stuffing). There used to be many “black hat” tricks that people would use to lure the search engines to their websites. Using high popularity irrelevant keywords, doorway pages and hidden text on pages are all tricks of the past which will actually get you banned by Google if you try it now.

So what do you do now that you’ve  got a great new website and you want people to find it? First, don’t rely entirely on keywords and search engines. Keywords are still important but must be added as relevant page content. Basically, that means you should create a page or website with meaningful content and a reasonable use of keywords…but not too many.

Reciprocal link change rules have changed too. Again, like keywords, links should be relevant and logical. If your website is travel and tourism based, it should link with websites of similar topics. Link with too many unrelated websites and you risk being seen by Google as part of a “link farm” which can also be detrimental to your search engine ranking.

Get a LinkedIn, Twitter and or Facebook account and link any or all of these with your website. Post engaging and interesting content in your social network and drive traffic to your website. Add a blog and keep it fresh with content. Add an optin e-mail newsletter option to keep in touch with your customers. All of these things will help get Google’s attention and improve your visibility.

Much better than stuffing keywords and risking a ban!