Search engine optimization can be split into two categoies, on page and off page optimization. Although on page optimization is important for you to understand, it is the off page optimization that will really propel your website to the top of the list.

Although there are many different things that you can do in order to improve your search engine rankings, the most popular and most effective is through obtaining inbound links to your website. These links can take on a variety of different forms and they can come from a number of different areas but some of them are much more effective than others. Let's start at the bottom of the list of links that you can obtain and work our way up to the most effective.

Several years ago, it was very common for individuals to exchange links to their websites. This was a process that is known as reciprocal linking and it helped many people to be able to gain SEO ground within the various search engines. Unfortunately, this pattern of linking was also very easy to exploit and many websites overdid the process until it became almost the useless. Today, the search engines put very little value on a reciprocal link but that doesn't mean that it has no value whatsoever. It should still hold a position in your SEO efforts, just make sure you don't focus entirely on this type of link.

Another type of link is a one-way link that comes from efforts that you make to get listed on a variety of different websites. These can include directory links, links from articles that you have written and links in forum posts that you have made. One of the most popular of these is article marketing where you write articles on topic, post them to the various article directories around the Internet and include a link back to your website. This can help you to gain some ground in the search engines if it is done properly and persistently.

The holy grail of links, however, is a one-way link from a well-established, on topic website. Unfortunately, these are very difficult to obtain as many of these websites will not link out to other sites. If you make your content compelling enough, however, you may get some natural links from these websites. You can also offer to write original content for their website in exchange for a link. What ever it takes to get your link on their site, it is well worth the effort as this will help to propel you to the top.

One of the easiest forms of linking that exists is that which is found in directory submissions. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of directories for you to choose from on the Internet where you can post a link to your website. Some of these directories are free to post links and others charge a fee, either a one time fee or a recurring fee. It is up to you to decide if it is worth the effort to post to the free directories and if it is worth the cost to post to some of the paid directories.

Some of the paid directories are very important for you to be listed in, regardless of what the price is. This is especially the case if you are a little bit experienced with search engine optimization and are fairly confident in your ability to get your website listed well on the search engines from your efforts. Some of the paid directories that you want to make sure you're part of include Yahoo and Joeant.com. Yahoo is fairly expensive at $299 a year but by having a link in the Yahoo Directory, you will be giving your SEO efforts of major shot in the arm. Popular directories such as Joeant are an excellent way for you to position yourself with some back links as well.

Submitting your website to the free directories is also an excellent way to give yourself a boost in the SERPS as well as getting yourself listed on the search engines initially. Google does not necessarily give as much weight to these free search engine submissions but remember, Google is not the only kid on the block. Yahoo also has the ability to send you a massive amount of traffic if you're positioned well in their search engine results and MSN can send you traffic as well. Each of these lesser search engines will place a lot of weight on many incoming links from these free directories.

All in all, submitting to directories, whether free or paid is an excellent way to set yourself up for success in your search engine optimization efforts. Make sure, however, that you don't stop with just a few simple directory submissions. Make it a part of your overall efforts to continue improving on your rankings in the search engines.

Although these search engines place more value on the off page factors of SEO, it is still important for you to pay attention to the on page factors as well. Here are some of the things that you can do to help you to get to the top and some that you should avoid.

There are several different things that you can do to your webpage in order to help it to rank well for certain keywords. First of all, you should really try to optimize your pages for a maximum of three keywords each although you may add any number of keywords into the mix naturally. Choose a main keyword and 2 sub-keywords at the most and then weave those into the page naturally. Some people like to keep a certain percentage of keyword use on their webpages but if you use them naturally, the search engines will pick up on the fact that you are using them.

There are also some other places that you can use on page search engine optimization, such as in the title tag, meta tags and toward the top of the page, perhaps in an H1 tag. These are all ways to assist your page in ranking well for a particular keyword but they are becoming less and less important as time goes by. This is because of something that the search engines are now using that is called latent semantic indexing, or LSI for short. This is simply a way that search engines are now ranking pages, not only for the specific keywords that are present on the webpages themselves but also for any related keywords that may be included in the page.

Along with things that you should do in order to help your page to rank well, there are also some things that you should avoid which may end up getting your page penalized. Although these particular things may have worked several years ago, they are now considered to be spam by the search engines and may get your pages reduced in rank or even remove from the SERPS altogether. The things that you should avoid include keyword stuffing, the practice of repeating the key word over and over on the page and over use of alt image tags or hidden tags within the webpage.

As long as you follow some general guidelines as far as what you should and should not include on your pages, they should end up fairly optimized for your general keywords. If you practice this on a regular basis along with some off page search engine optimization, you will move to the top of the results for your efforts.