SEO is more important in 2009 than ever before. SEO has been around since the birth of the internet. However, as the internet has progressed and grown, so has the competition. The competitiveness on the internet is the fiercest in the world. There is no other market as dog eat dog as the internet.

There are billions of web pages, all competing for the top spots in the search engine results pages for their specific industry or market. So how do you make sure that you have the competitive edge as far as SEO tactics go for 2009? You follow some advice and tips for how best to preserve good SEO efforts for your website.

Tags and text

Tags are very important as a part of SEO. Title tags are by far not a new concept, yet they are extremely effective. It is vital to your SEO success that you make sure you use a unique and well thought out title tag. Your title tag will contain important words that are necessary to kick your page off with. You need good anchor text too.

What is anchor text? This is the text that appears visibly as the text of a link. Inbound links, and all links, are vital for increasing SEO. The only problem is that not all links were created with equal standing. Using generic and clichéd words in your anchor text is not a great idea. This out of the box and be more creative with the wording of anchor text.

Linking up and social interaction

Linking up with other websites, specifically for the purpose of inbound links, is very important for any website. Inbound links serve to show the engines the popularity of your website and thus increase your popularity with them. Search engines like popular websites. It proves to them that people like the website and that it has something to offer visitors. But what went wrong when you have more inbound links than a competitor but they rank better? The simple answer is that the quality and uniqueness of the links count too, long gone are the days of manipulating link SEO by having loads of inbound links from all sorts of websites.

You now need links from quality websites and relevant websites to boot. Vary the sources of your inbound links so that they come from different domains. Social media websites are great for creating inbound links. They are also perfect for generating direct traffic from those websites, straight to yours. Another good reason to get involved socially is that social networking websites offer you fantastic exposure.

Keywords

Yes, content is still king. However, keywords are less important than they were decades ago. Keyword density is becoming less and less important by the day. Far too many websites have tried to manipulate their way to the top through keyword stuffing. Search engines have wised up to this and you will fall horribly short if you try to pull it off. Position your keywords thoughtfully, strategically and use them in moderation, even sparingly.