HostGator has partnered with RankSense SEO Tools to give away a free 30-day trial for RankSense and a recurring 20% OFF discount, all with a 90-day money back guarantee. Use coupon code: hostgator and sign up now for the special offer. This offer is valid for all HostGator Web Hosting customers and blog readers.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is all the rage these days. There’s a whole market that has developed around SEO services and tools and a lot of hype and fluff that tends to confuse and complicate things for the average web site owner.

Simply put, SEO is the process of ranking higher in the search engines (Google, MSN Live, Yahoo) to increase traffic. For most websites, increased traffic translates into higher sales, so there is no disputing the importance of practicing good SEO techniques.

Since search engines have secret algorithms that determine where a website ranks in their search results, there are tons of myths and piles of misinformation out there on the ‘net. Time after time, I’ve spoken with customers who are angry and feel misled because an SEO firm or consulting company promised that the customer’s site would rank on page one in Google. Unfortunately, most of the time, this is just not possible, and the majority of these offers and promises should be quickly dismissed.

Even with all of the myths and wrong information out there, there are still some generally accepted rules and tips on how to best optimize your website to rank well. On our SEO Blog, you’ll find many articles discussing some of these proven techniques.

Not everyone can afford a reputable SEO consultant, especially for smaller websites, so most web site owners resort to the DIY methods. …

In October of 2008, Google announced a new feature known as SearchWiki. SearchWiki allows anyone with a Google account to change the order of search results and make notes about each result in Google.

Once logged into a Google account, you’ll notice that the search results have two small icons next to the listings that can be used to promote or remove a result. By promoting a result, you can bring the site above other results on the page.

You can learn more about the SearchWiki by watching the Google SearchWiki team’s video.

Now, this is hardly news to many of you out there. We covered Google’s Promote Feature in early December.

What is interesting though, is the idea that Google’s index of results will be swayed by user input on the SearchWiki. On Google’s Official Blog announcement for SearchWiki,it mentions that: “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” While this is true directly, it’s not hard to imagine that Google will collectively use user input to influence search results and page ranking.

Currently websites are listed in order on Google’s web page according to their super-duper secretive algorithm. Those in the search engine optimization industry have been trying to figure out this algorithm for very obvious reasons. If you can cheat the search engines and get a website listed on the front page for certain keywords, than you are able to get more traffic to your site, which generally equates to more revenue for web site owners and businesses. …