SEO Introduction

You have often heard of search engine optimization or SEO, but what exactly is it?  Very simply, it is the ability to obtain a high search engine ranking by performing keyword research.  In order to do this you need to modify your HTML code to reflect your keywords.  This will help you build relationships with other websites in order to promote your own website through a linking campaign.  SEO has more to do with marketing rather than programming.

For those of you who are creating a website and you want your website to get listed in the various search engines (SE), then this information is for you.

There are four basic ways to accomplish this:

• Using paid advertisements such as banners and buying keywords
• Hire a SEO specialist or company to do this job for you
• The use of self serve or organic SEO
• Use a combination of all of the above

Keywords and How to Find Them
Before you perform any SEO, you must find out what keywords your buyers will usually search for within your industry.  You have a couple of different available options when it comes to researching keywords:

• Wordtracker – This tool is a fee based service.  It enables you to choose the right keywords that will aid in your search engine ranking and placement.

• Overture – A free Search Term Suggestion Tool.  When you have put together your keywords, then you want to rank them in order from most often searched to the least likely searched.

Do-it-Yourself vs. Hiring a Specialis
If you are trying to decide whether to perform your own SEO or hire a specialist for this job, a few factors should be considered.  The biggest factor to consider is that the rulebook on good vs. bad SEO is somewhat unwritten. Although guidelines are provided by the search engines, not every rule is stipulated.  You may, as a beginner, inadvertently break a rule and find that your site is banned or may get dropped from the search engines.  All of your efforts would have been for nothing!  Another factor to consider is that your time may be better utilized doing something else within your company.

SEO is broken down into on-page and off-page components.  On-page components will include the following:

1. Title tag
2. Meta tag description
3. Meta tag keywords
4. Heading tag
5. Keyword density
6. Alt tags
7. Page name or URL structure
8. Internal linking

The off-page components consist of the following:

1. Content relation
2. Links
3. PageRank®
4. Page traffic
5. Content donation
6. Linking or anchor text

Choosing Links
How do you go about getting links?  You can acquire them in four main ways:

1. DMOZ – This is also referred to as the Open Directory Project and is maintained by a group of more than 60,000 volunteer editors.  If you are able to get a link in this directory it may prove to be very valuable, but it may take quite a long time to get one.  The main reason for this is that the DMOZ is staffed by volunteers that are in short supply.  This directory has many categories and some of them have no editors.  DMOZ also powers the Google directory in addition to other sites.

2. Reciprocal links – This means that the links have been traded between different website.  You have all seen companies out in the world that refer customers to another business when they do not have what the customer wants.  You are not able to communicate with customers as you would in the world so you must let your website do the talking for you.  The easiest way to trade links is to create a kind of directory and have your website promote it.

3. Purchasing links – You are able to buy links in some directories like the Yahoo Directory.

4. Content donations – In order to gain high quality links, your website should contain valuable content.  You should allow other web owners to use your articles provided that their website provides a link to your web page.

Successful Linking Campaign and Good Search Engine Ranking
If you want to obtain good ranking in the search engines, then links are  necessary tools although they take a lot of hard work.  Many times websites may try to gyp you out of a link.  It would be a good idea to use a reciprocal link checking service such as Links Manager to monitor your links on other websites.  It will also help you to set up and edit your links and will make that process much easier.

If you want your linking campaign to be a success, then you should stick to setting up your links with related sites.  You should also make use of anchor or linking text.  Depending upon the type of business you are in, you may need to set up between 50 to 5,000 links in order to achieve your desired ranking.

In conclusion, there are just no hard and fast rules to good or bad SEO.  Just when you think you have everything just right, you ranking disappears.  In the end, experts, no matter how practiced at SEO they may be, may or may not know what exactly has to be done in order to obtain good search engine rankings.