Some people spend thousands of dollars, and expend months of effort to increase their page rank. Could questionable search engine optimization techniques lead to URL penalization? Absolutely yes! Artificially boosting your ranking at the search engines is really a poor strategy. Remember, with search engine optimization, there are no short cuts. If you do employ shortcuts, ask yourself these questions? Will your strategy make it easier for those seeking your website content? What is your goal? Will your strategy enhance your site and add value? When the content on your site is of the highest quality though, search engines will reward your efforts. You need content writers who know how to research and who know what they are talking about. Build your site solidly and simply. It must be easily navigated. Your URL, page titles and headings should be search engine friendly. Use simple text which describes the content of your page. Use good, original content. Update it regularly and continue to do so. This provides your readers with the incentive to refer your site to others. They will also visit you on a regular basis. Best of all, doing this attracts the search engine spiders. The sites with regular, fresh, high quality content will get increased visits from the search spiders. On certain sites they are known to come back by as much as one to three times per day. Search bots will only do this if they see fresh content. There is a point at which the bots will and will not come back and crawl. They will not if they do not see fresh content. If they do find fresh content they will continue to navigate throughout your site. We all know that fresh content throughout your entire site is costly and time consuming. We also know that it will separate you and elevate you from the rest. Inbound links to your site from relevant and trusted sites will always provide you with a boost. Search engines do not only check the number of links pointing to your site, but they also check whether those referred links contain content which is related to yours. Some of the strongest referrers are below: - Links from pages with a higher PR 4+ and less than 50 outbound links. - Links from pages with a lower PR and less than 10-25 outbound links. - Forums, blogs or Viral Marketing. - This must be a permanent, ongoing project. - The links should be in place for at least 12 to 18 months to make a difference. - Getting 100 or 1000 this month, then dropping to just a few next month is a sure flag for search engines. - A steady link building scheme is required to earn top rankings. Absolutely no link farms. In a continuing effort at better service, Google is always manipulating their search engine algorithm. The goalposts are being shifted all the time. Delivering accurate, relevant and quality content is what they are after. It is better to work along with them rather than attempting short cuts.