Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of optimizing a website to get high rankings in search engines for a particular keyword. High rankings on search engines means huge amounts of free and highly targeted traffic for your website.

There are thousands of books and resources out there on SEO. The subject is extremely wide and is a highly specialized skill where some companies pay tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands dollars for consultants to optimize their website.

As every great building begins with a humble brick, there are some basic SEO tips that you can use for you website or blog. You need to have some basic knowledge in making websites and creating blogs before you start on your first SEO endeavor.

The rule of thumb of SEO is that 'Content is King'. The first step is to know how search engines view and rank websites. Google, for example have a page rank system where the higher your page rank, the more 'important' you website is. Bigger and more relevant websites generally rank better than others. If you consistently update your website with high quality, unique and relevant content, the higher your page rank will be.

For beginners, it would be quite a challenge to try to optimize your site for popular keywords like 'dieting' and 'cars'. Popular keywords such as these are usually highly competitive with thousands of established competitors. Beginners should instead try to optimize for highly specialized, or 'long tail keywords' where there are less competitors. Examples of such keywords are 'synthetic biodegradable seatbelts' or 'Mediterranean seaweed chlorophyll diet pills'. Such keywords may be less popular but it is a great place to start.

After you have selected your keyword, try to insert them in your domain name URL, website title and description. Search engines pay a lot of attention to those areas so it is best to have the keywords in those fields. You should also insert a META tag in to your site's html as they 'tell' the search engines what you site is all about. The H1 and H2 tags on your web page should also contain the keywords that you are trying to optimize for.

The next step is to optimize your site's content based on the keywords that you have selected. Generally, the more pages you have on your website the better. Many search engines like Google and Yahoo give more credit to bigger websites. Each of your web page should have at least 400-500 words of relevant content. Search engine cannot view images, so having tones of relevant images on your website would not greatly improve your rankings.

When writing the content for your site, the keyword density on each page is at least 1.5 to 2.5 percent. For example if you are writing a 400 word article for the keyword 'synthetic biodegradable seatbelts', make sure the keyword is repeated 6 to 8 times throughout the article.

Backlinks are another important element in SEO. Backlinks are links of your website found on other websites. The more backlinks the better. If you are keen and serious on getting good search engine rankings, you have to work on getting as many backlinks as possible. By 'many' we are referring to hundreds if not thousands of backlinks. This is important especially if you are in a competitive niche.