Legitimate tricks the SEO masters use to optimize their sites and maintain their high ranking

The search engines don't want to be manipulated by marketers. They want to provide the best unbiased results possible for any given search -- or they'll lose users!

That's why they need to change their algorithms so frequently -- to stay ahead of the tricks people use to get top rankings.

That being said, there are still a lot of legitimate ways you can optimize your site without angering the search engines and causing them to drop you from their list.

Here are some of the best things you can to do ensure your site has a high ranking:

1. Ask relevant sites to link to your site

In the past, scoring a high ranking with a search engine was all about positioning your keywords in "prime real estate" positions in your text and site coding. All that has changed, however. These days, links are king!

Search engines place a huge amount of importance on the number of sites that link to yours. But it's not just the quantity of links that matter, it's also the quality. Search engines look at how relevant the links are -- i.e., how much the content of the linking site has in common with the content on your site. The more relevant, the better!

Search engines also look at how "important" the linking site is. What kind of "online presence" does it have? How much traffic does it get? For example, your site will get a higher ranking if it's linked to by sites such as BBC.com or nationalgeographic.com instead of, say, the personal homepage of your friend's neighbour's kid.

2. Pay attention to keyword inclusion and placement

Keywords may no longer be the sole determining factor of a site's ranking, but they're still pretty important. The most useful places to include them are:

In your domain name -- only make sure your keywords are in the root of your URL, not the stem! For example, if your main keyword phrase is "cell phones," try to get a domain name such as "http://www.cell-phones.com/" instead of "www.mobileusa.com/cell-phones.com." Some search engines will actually penalize sites for including key words in the stem of a URL.

In the title tags in your source code In the meta description of your site -- this is much less important than it used to be, but it can't hurt.

In your meta keyword tags HOWEVER: Be sure you only include relevant keywords! Search engines will penalize you if you try to sneak in keywords that have nothing to do with the content of your site.

3. Create content-rich "information pages" to direct traffic to your site

An easy way to boost the number of pages that link to your site is to create some pages yourself!

However, you have to make sure these pages contain valuable contents that provide people with useful information. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add to the number of links pointing to a site.

Be sure the information relates to the content on your site and has your keywords placed in advantageous positions. This will boost the ranking of your pages with the search engines and ensure they get lots of traffic -- which they can then redirect to your site.

4. Submit your site to online directories

Be sure to submit your site to important directories such as Yahoo!, the Open Directory Project, and About.com, as well as smaller directories. Your listing on these directories will help your ranking with the major search engines.

5. Multiply and conquer!

Create a "community" of related sites that link to each other. Why stop at only one information page? The more content-rich sites that point to your site, the better!

You can also boost the number of links that point to your site by dividing it into several separate sites that all link to each other.This works especially well if you sell a number of different products or services.

If you build a different site to focus on each of your products and services, then you can also concentrate the use of specific keyword phrases on each site. That's another great way to boost your search engine ranking.