SEO for Newbies – A Brief 101

SEO, or search engine optimization, is actually not as hard as people make it out to be. Yes, you have to spend some time doing research, preferably before you create a website, but once you have done that, it should take you no time at all to get started with attracting traffic. Below is a quick 101 on search engine optimization for complete newbies.

Know Your Market

You have to start by knowing who you want to come to your website. This will ensure you can start looking for targeted traffic as well. Targeted traffic will increase your rankings, because it comes not from accidental visitors, but from those who actually need the products or services that you offer. As such, it will increase your profitability as well.

Know Your Keywords

Once you know who you want to target, you have to think about how, which is done through keywords. Think about what sort of search terms someone would look for if they wanted to find a product or service that you offer. Cross reference this with keyword research tools in order to find out which ones you should stick to.

Learn about SEO

SEO is a very complex part of online marketing. While there are plenty of things that you can do yourself, understanding all of it takes a real expert. It is also for this reason that their fees are often quite high. While you will always see better results if you do hire and expert, that is not to say that there aren’t a few things that you can learn and implement yourself.

Optimize Your Website

Now that you know at least a little bit about SEO, it is time to start optimizing. Be armed with the keywords you selected previously and ensure that each page only has three different keyword terms, so that it looks and reads naturally. You need to do this for each individual page, and you should also perform A to B testing, so that you can see whether or not your work made a difference.

Submit Your Site

There are two camps in the world of SEO. Some say that the best thing to do is wait to get found by search engine spiders, as this means you are good enough to be found. Others say that you should actively submit your site to the various search engines. Most veer towards this option because it means that you are guaranteed to be found. There are a number of different websites where you can submit your website, including Google, MSN/Inktomi, MSN, Yahoo, Alexa, and Exacsteek, which cover most of the internet. A few things to know, however:

• Alexa is part of Google, which means this is the most important one.
• Read the information on the different submission websites so that you do things properly.
• Start building quality content as soon as your site is submitted.

The above is a fantastic way to improve your SEO. Best of all, you can repeat it across multiple sites at the same time as each other as well.