SEO Basics - Your Search Engine Optimisation Answer

SEO is an abbreviation of "Search Engine Optimisation" and this is a single strategy within Internet Marketing.

Search engine optimisation is the process of increasing your visibility within the search engines using SEO techniques and strategies which can be broken down in to on page optimisation and off page optimisation (something we shall talk about later).

The theory behind SEO is quite simple however the techniques used can be very time consuming and for some are often confusing or difficult to grasp. The theory goes that you select several keywords which are relevant to your website by doing Keyword Research (talked about later) after you have your list of keywords you then add these keywords to your web page in various places (on page optimisation). After you have completed this, you then carry on to build links to your website through a variety of different link building methods (off page optimisation) and with time your website ranks higher and higher for your keywords until it reaches the first place.

Sounds easy right?

It can be. After you have learnt the SEO basics which I shall teach you here it all depends on the keywords you have selected and the time or money you have spare to invest in to your SEO.

This lens has been built for me to take a break writing those big 2,000 word articles that I am so used to writing on my Internet Marketing blog and instead of that I will be writing shorter, more basic and to the point articles for my readers. The idea is that if you want more in depth, fully explained articles that you go to my SEO Blog and take a look. People that just want to learn the SEO basics can hang around here until they get a grasp for SEO and then move on to my SEO Blog.

I hope you enjoy your stay here and please ask questions if you have any.

Now that I have told you what SEO is, you maybe wondering why SEO is important well I shall tell you why.

SEO is a major part of Internet Marketing in many cases it is the main source of traffic and the traffic that clicks through to your website is generally highly targeted and relevant, therefore you are able to maximise income or subscribership through this traffic.

Although SEO can take a long time before you see any return on your time and money when it does start to increase traffic it is generally there for a long amount of time. If not for ever whilst your other search engine rankings grow for other keywords.

Overall SEO can offer you continously targeted traffic which is free (if you do the SEO yourself). Although the rankings on their own may not be worth much when you come to sell your website with those traffic statistics and a high amount of traffic coming from the search engines you should be able to ask for a higher price. Search engine traffic is highly desired due to its potential and the visibility your website receives when ranking for the correct keywords.

Keyword research is the most important part of SEO (I will keep repeating this until people realise). The reason for this is because Keyword research defines the future growth of your website in terms of search engine traffic and this is a potentially large chunk of your overall traffic.

Search engine traffic is desired because of its continously targeted traffic that websites receive when they are ranked on highly searched pages relevant to their market. However if you were to not do any keyword research to go with your instinct or to do very little keyword research you may come to realise that the keywords you are trying to rank for are either not relevant to your website thus people either don't click on to your site at all or when they do they click straight of which just increases your bounce rate.

Therefore you may of wasted a lot of time, energy and money on trying to rank for irrelevant keywords where as if you dedicated a couple more hours to performing keyword research you could have large amounts of relevant traffic clicking through to your website and either subscribing to your blog or buying a product or service.

Right, we have talked about what SEO is in general and why SEO is important but now its time to get in to the thick of it. Within this lens you will notice that I have laid things out in an order. Keyword Research, On page Optimisation and lastly Off page Optimisation this is because this is the way things should be done.

So lets start with what is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research is the most important part of SEO it is the process of researching, analysing and selecting the most relevant, highly searched but low competitive keywords that you can find for your market. You may be wondering, well how long does this take? No one knows its like asking how long is a peice of string? It all depends on the market you are doing your keyword research for how niche it is or how large it is and at what stage your website is currently in.

For example a brand new blog would be insane to try and rank for the keyterm "SEO" as they would never be able to compete. However if they went for something a little less competitive such as "SEO Tutorials" with a couple of months link building and on page optimisation they may be able to achieve a position on the first search page.

Overall Keyword Research takes as long as you want it to take. For me personally Keyword Research is an ongoing process just like SEO. I may change my keywords several times, usually after I have ranked for the current keyword, I will then go and focus on another keyword.

As I have discussed before Keyword Research should be the first task to be completed when you decide to use SEO on your website. After you have a specific market in mind then you can carry on to using the Keyword Research tools listed in the above article to discover the perfect keywords for your website.

The way that I perform keyword research is that I figure out the market that I should be analysing for keywords and open up a couple of my Keyword tool accounts and software as well as opening up word. I then move on to finding some overall keywords for that market after this has been done I carry on to researching these chosen keywords to find keywords related to those keywords and repeat the process here until I find keywords with a high enough amount of searches and low competition that it is worth my time to rank for the keywords.

For example

The market I want to enter is Internet Marketing

I research Internet Marketing and find several interesting keywords that are relevant to my site.

1. Internet Marketing Articles
2. Internet Marketing Tutorials
3. Internet Marketing Blog
4. Tips for Internet Marketing

I then carry on to research each of these keywords and find keywords related to these keywords.

1. Internet Marketing Articles (From the first keyword search)
- Articles on Internet Marketing
- Marketing Articles
- Useful Internet Marketing Articles

I realise that these selected keywords have enough searches and low enough competition to focus on ranking for them.

This is a basic example of how you can do Keyword Research, it can be easier and harder than this but it all depends on your market.

If you want more information on performing Keyword Reseach such as a nice 1,500 word article just dedicated to keyword research then check out my How to perform keyword research article.

On Page Optimisation can be defined as the process of customising your internal pages structure and content in order to improve your websites overall performance in the search engines.

On Page Optimisation are the techniques used to add your keywords chosen from your Keyword Research to your website.

On Page Optimisation takes a look at several different areas of a web pages structure these include:

1. Title Tag
2. Meta Description Tag
3. Meta Keywords Tag
4. Body (Pages content, Images)
5. Footer

These are the 5 basic areas of On page Optimisation and where as there are more such as Domain name, Domain age and Keywords in URL we shall only be focusing on these 5. If you are looking for a more in depth guide then you can take a look at my All in one SEO series.

On page optimisation is as important as any other part of SEO and although this may sound like I am contradicting the previous quote "Keyword research is the most important part of SEO" I am not.

Basically what I mean is that with out all three processes of SEO (Keyword Research, On page Optimisation and Off page Optimisation) you are never going to be full prepared, you will never be able to reach your full potential.

SEO can only be maximised by completing each and every stage of SEO and to the highest standard. Why cut corners on your on page optimisation to only have to make it up with the added time and energy spent waiting and building more backlinks to your website.

It is important that you complete every stage of SEO and that you do each stage as best as you can. Do your Keyword Research even if it takes you a week, complete your On page Optimisation even if it means not going out with your friends, build up the links to your site and spend that extra time seeking those high pageranked web pages and highly respectable websites which you can take advantage of.