Beginners Guide to SEO

Ready, Set, Go! It’s Time for SEO!

In this post I’m going to give you the basics of SEO so that next time you’re chatting it up with some Internet folk you have something to say.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” and that is exactly what SEO experts try to do, optimize an online search engine, like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Live, Ask, or AOL for search. But what exact do they mean by optimize for search? This means that SEO experts are trying to make your website appear higher on the search engine results page when people search for terms related to your site. We call these terms keywords.

How to Optimize your Site for Search Engines

Now that we’ve gotten the definition out of the way, we can tell you the main ways that SEO experts get your website to rank high in these engines.

Keywords

Keywords are terms that help people find your website. By placing keywords on the pages of your website, you will give search engines a better idea of what you want to rank for. For instance, if you are a law firm in San Diego, you may want to optimize your site for “lawyers San Diego.” This phrase gets approximately 40,000 searches a month. Wouldn’t it be nice to get all those searchers going to your site? Think of the business you could get!

Before you pick your keywords make sure you properly research them. You want to know what your competition looks like and the amount of people searching for those keywords each month.

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords are the same keywords you are placing within the text of your webpage. However, there is one difference. These keywords are placed in the code of your website. The actual code should be placed right beneath your title tag and these keywords should be separated with commas.

Links and Anchor Text

One of the most difficult parts of SEO is getting other websites to link to your site. This is important because search engines rank you higher if you have more links pointing to your site. But it is not just the links that matter, that would be too easy. The links should have anchor text, which means text that is linked to your site with keywords. The more sites that link to you with the keywords you are optimizing for, the higher you will rank for those keywords when people search for them.

Keep in mind your competitors are doing the same thing. So if they have more links pointing to their site with anchor text you are both optimizing for, they will be ranked higher.

Fresh, Quality Content

The more content the better! Each piece of new content is recognized by search engines, and they like it. But it’s not just about quantity; it’s also about quality. If you produce quality content people will enjoy it. If the enjoy it, they will link to it and stay on your page longer. Both great things from a search engine standpoint.

SEO Summary

SEO experts really know what they are doing. We are just scratching the surface in this post. There are many more advanced items to consider such as link juice, internal linking, SEO tools, page titles, site maps, no follow links, using robots.txt, understanding analytics, etc.

Keep your eyes pealed. We’ll be commenting on advanced SEO topics in future posts.

Thanks for stopping by,

John E Lincoln
jline creative