Learn Search Engine Optimization Basics for Newbies

This is basically an SEO starter guide for beginners, but it may help seasoned pros also. We will show you what you can do to prepare your website for search engine crawlers. You now know they are going to visit your website, so it's best to be prepared ahead of time, right? Right!

In this checklist we will show you factors that impact your rankings on sites such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. They also affect your rankings on

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the smaller search engines too. Keep in mind, it's best to get traffic from any quality website we can!

We are mainly focusing on how we can gain a better rank in Google, but this seo checklist will help with the other search engines as well. Some things included in the checklist are keywords, backlinks, meta tags and content. All of these things play a huge role in the placement of your site in search results.

Also, keep in mind that Google rolls out new updates constantly to weed out any spammy looking sites. The Google Panda update shocked many people and now they rolled out another update targeting sites that are OVER optimized on site.

Keywords in Title Tag
It is very important to include your primary keywords of the page you are promoting in your title tags. Whatever you place in this meta tag is what will show up on in search engines as your pages title.

Keywords in URL
If you include your main keywords in your URL, search engines can get a better feel of what your page is about. Make sure the keywords in your URL are relevant to the content you have written on the page otherwise this step is worthless.

Keyword Density of Content
Do not stuff a bunch of keywords in your written content. Search engines view this as manipulating them. Write your text naturally and you will not have to even worry about the density. However, if you are still concerned about it, keep the density between 3 - 7%.

Keywords in Anchor Text
Each link pointing to your page text is considered a vote. You get higher votes from inbound links from other websites. Be sure you include your keywords in your anchor text when creating backlinks. The more backlinks, the more votes you get for those keywords. It's one big popularity contest!

Keywords in Heading Tags
Any kind of text that sticks out from all the other text on a page is noticeable to people visiting your site, right? Well, the same thing applies to search engine crawlers. A good way to get them to pickup on your page theme is to place your keywords on H1, H2 or H3 heading tags.

Keyword Placement in Body Text
Ideally, try to include your keywords in the first paragraph and last paragraph on your page. By doing this, you are flashing a keyword sign at the search engines when they start crawling your text and when they finish crawling it.

Keywords in Image ALT Tags
It is a good practice to place at least one image on each of your web pages. Visitors find the page more engaging with visuals. Plus it's another way to point out to search engines what your page is about. They do not crawl the images themselves, but they do scan the ALT tags.

Keywords in Meta Tags
We already discussed the title tag. The other tags we do not need to stress about. However, still be sure to include your meta description and keyword tags.

Anchor Text of All Links
All of your inbound, outbound and internal links should have anchor text connected to them. This sets up a proper linking structure for crawlers to follow.

Inbound Links
Inbound links play a HUGE factor in where you will rank. Unfortunately these days getting a high ranking requires the search engines to believe your content is more popular than the next site and all other competitors. If 100 sites are pointing to yours, it looks very good. If 1000 sites are pointing to yours, that's 900 more votes. Now, if you have 100 links from just any site, it's okay. But if you have 100 links from reputable sites, the search engines will eat it up. Try to focus on quality over quantity, but keep building every day. Also, it's a plus if the sites that link to yours are relevant.

Links in Content
If you are building backlinks, try to get some in-content links with text before and after your anchor-text-link. This gives the backlink a little more weight. The easiest way to do this is write articles and submit them to article directories.

Outbound Links
Try not to over do it when adding links to other sites on your blog. It is good practice to include resources when building a website. However, keep it to 20 or less per page and make sure you give descriptions of the links. Also, do not link to spammy looking sites.

Internal Links
Internal linking is great for helping your visitors navigate your site. It is also great for backlinking. Spiders can easily follow links to other content.

Uniqueness
Search engines DO NOT like duplicate content. It is highly frowned upon. When writing your articles, pretend like you are talking to someone and the words will flow naturally. They do not like a copycat, but they do love fresh, unique articles.

Relevancy
What you write on your pages should match the title of that page. Keep all pages relevant and on-topic.

Font Size
To give search crawlers a better idea of what your page is about, make sure your primary keywords are in your title tags. Also, use bold, italic and bigger fonts to emphasize those keywords in your paragraphs. I must emphasize that while it's a good idea to use bigger fonts, don't over do it.

Regular Updates
Keep your blog updated regularly with fresh content. If something changes with an existing article, make changes and the search engines will note them. Write new articles often.

For more tips on improving on-page and off-page optimization, visit ImproveSeoRank.com.