| By :
Derek J
Search engine optimization (SEO), refers to the fine art of optimizing your website (or websites) in order to make them more search-engine "friendly". The result thereof is higher rankings in the search engines, and of course, more traffic to your website! But how exactly does one get started in the complex world of SEO with so many different opinions and "quick-fixes" on the table? The first step in the SEO process is deciding on what keywords or phrases you want to optimize your website for. In other words, what keywords or phrases do you want your website to be ranked for? Although this sounds simple enough, there is an art to it. Ideally what you want to do is find keywords that are getting a large number of searches each month, but that have few results (in other words, low competition!). The easiest way to get this sort of information is by using Google's keyword tool (just type "Keyword Tool" into Google). This tool will give you all the popular keyword's search information, which you can then go stick into the normal Google search engine to assess the number of results (competition). Ideally, you want to narrow down 3-5 keywords for each page of your website. Don't stress if you can't find that many, just do what you can to start with! Once you have these keywords, you can begin optimizing your website's pages for the relevant keywords. You will do this use title tags, meta tags and header tags. If this sounds like gibberish to you, just ask your website designer to plug them in - they should understand the "lingo"! Once that's done, it's time to get started on content. Content is the heart of your website, and the more fresh, original content you can update your website with on a regular basis, the more "search engine love" you can expect - search engines are content hungry things... Then it's on to the processing of "off-site optimization". Don't be intimidated by the big phrase - what this refers to is everything that is not "on" your actual website. The main element of off-site optimization is link-building. You need to commit to building the number of links that point to your site over time. How on earth do you do that? Well, it's quite easy: - Write articles and submit them to article directories - Get involved in forums and put your website address in your signature - Give constructive feedback on blogs and include your link - Provide something useful (an ebook, podcast, etc) and get people talking about your site (and linking to it) NB... There are hundreds of things you can do to build links, but I'm just covering the essential basics here. And that is SEO in a nutshell (a very basic, simplistic nutshell). The topic of SEO is huge and ever-expanding, and so the best investment that you can make is taking the time to learn about it - don't hold back - it's worth it!
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