Greetings DaniWeb community. For those interested in SEO/SES that could not make it to SearchEngineWatch.com's conference in New York last week, here is a mini-recap of the latest SEO advice and stats from Danny Sullivan, Editor for SearchEngineWatch.com, and moderator of the Search Engine Strategies conference:

Quotes:

1. "While you efforts may help improve your free listings, there are no guarantees. Want guarantees? Buy an ad!"

2. "Ideally, have a page ir section with "real" content for each search term."

3. "Hit's for less important terms add up. Consider your site as a pyramid with the most trafficked keywords at the top."

4. "You need pages that are rich in text. Be creative with HTML annd font tags, don't just reach for Photoshop. Your human visitors may appreciate it too."

5. "Title tags are your secret weapon. Every page should have a unique title. Keep it short, attractive, and enticing."

6. "Search engines prefer big, dumb ugly pages. Design issues can impact ranking, particullary splash pages, frames, and dynamic delivery..."

Advice on backlinking and link quality:

It's more than just numbers. Few links from high quality, good sites are better than hundreds from bad sites. It's a major component of Google, and used by nearly every other engine, to some degree.

How do you find the quality sites? Query an engine and examine the top results. Those are the sites that the engine considers most important! Ignore the PR meter.

Get links from sites whose audience is similar to yours. Request links, and lure the site owner with a benefit. BUY links if and only if the link itself will justify the cost.

A word about link directories: Helps crawlers find your site easily and quickly and "may" provide a ranking boost.

The latest STATS courtesy of comScore, Cecember 2004:

Share of US Searches:
Google: 35%
Yahoo!: 35%
]MSN: 16%
AOL: 9%
Ask: 2%
Others: 6%

Search Provider Share:
Google: 44%
Yahoo!: 32%
MSN: 16%
AOL: 0%
Ask: 2%
Others: 6%

Hope the data in this post helps my fellow SEO/SES people who could not make it out to the Big Apple.

Stay tuned for more,

Avi Wilensky