Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website in order to acheive higher search engine placement. SEO is not a complicated process, it involves mostly common sense. This article explaines the 4 simple steps that will, if followed correctly greatly improve your search engine rankings and help you gain an inital foothold in the major search engines search results.





1 Compile a keyword list: Target the most frequently used keywords on your page. Begin with around 10 keywords. Also use combinations of keywords for example: If your site sells video games and game systems, a good keyword phrase would be: video games and game systems or video game systems. Optimizing the word video games would be pointless because the competition would be so huge most websites will not be found in the search results, taking into account the age of the domain and the number of backlinks that point to a site, which will also dramatically affect search engine rankings. Most searches made by internet users contain keyword phrases instead of just one keyword.





2 Edit your title, meta description tag and meta keyword tag using the keywords from your newly compiled keyword list. The title should contain no more than 10 or 12 words, the description meta tag should contain no more than 150 characters. and the keyword meta tag should contain no more than 200 characters. Insert the keywords into the title starting with your three main keywords, keep in mind the number of words used, try to stay under 10 or 12. Next, edit your meta description tag using the same keywords, location of each word is crucial. Try to keep the title and meta description as similar as possible, not completly dublicated but as close as possible. It might sound a little strange but it works. This will greatly improve your search engine rankings. Stop words are also a factor than can affect rankings. Words such as: the, and, is, in, are, etc. are words that should not be used if at all possible. Removal of stop words is a guarantee of higher search engine placement. The location of your keywords in the title and meta tags will also affect your placement. Also insert all keywords into your webpage moderatly.





3 Use 4 to 6 anchor text links for each keyword, depending on the size of the webpage. Referring back to video games as an example, when editing your page use anchor text such as video games, game systems and so on as links as close to the beginning and end of the page as possible. Keep in mind search engines read a page header first, then starting on the top left reading down the left side, after reaching the bottom of the page the content is read from the center of the page to the bottom. Then the right side of the page is read ending with the footer.





4 Keyword placement: It is essential that all of your keywords are at the beginning and the end of your webpage. Keywords need to be placed in the first 50 words of a webpage. Keywords also need to be placed into the last 50 words on the page. Start with the header of your webpage, use keywords there first. Then place keywords on the left side of your page. Try not to repeat keywords, and do not stuff images with keywords. One keyword per image. Whenever possible use anchor text instead of images.To place keywords at the end of the page, use keywords in the footer and on the right side of the page. Remember how search engines read a page, header first, then top left reading down, center text reading down, top right reading down and footer last. If these 4 steps are followed exactly you can guarantee yourself excellent search engine placement even #1 on Google.





There are other factors which can improve your search engine rankings such as backlinks. When it comes to linking, reciprocal or one way links both are excellent ways to increase your link popularity. One way links however seem to be the way to go because there is no linkback required by you. Meaning no link pages to set up. Directory and article submissions are an excellent way to build quality one way links. You do not need thousands of useless links to gain high rankings on the search engines. Only a handfull of high quality, relevant links are needed to give you excellent search engine rankings. http://www.submit-site.org

What a gift it would be to see ourselves as others see us. Fortunately, it's easier from an SEO perspective than it is in life outside the internet. Examining the way your website works from an SEO point of view is an extremely useful thing to do if you're thinking of making improvements to try to get onto search engine results pages. Any good search engine optimisation company will provide a detailed and thorough service, but you might want to take a long hard look at the site yourself first. This will give you a good idea of where you might be going wrong, and what exactly you want an SEO agency to do for you.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that it's only publishers whose sites are obviously failing on the results pages that need to improve SEO. However successful your site is, there's a very good chance it could be performing better given some optimization.

If you're wondering what to look for when examining your site for flaws, don't despair. We've put together a list of ways in which you can approach self assessment for SEO.

Have a Look at How You Currently Rank and for Which Keywords
Search for your product or service from all the big name search engines and see where you appear on results pages. If you rank well with one of them and not others, it's a good idea to look at the criteria they have that's different from the others.

Basically any information is useful. Make notes about keywords that are leading people to your site, and potential variations of the words preceding or following them. Thinking with SEO in mind means being open to new ideas and actively using your imagination.

Fresh SEO tools are there at your fingertips if you look closely and use your imagination. It is very likely that acting the part of a user finding your site will reveal ways in which you can improve.

Run Google Analytics for a Couple of Weeks
Don't know what Google Analytics is? It's a range of tools provided by Google to help you learn more about your place on the web. You can track visitors to your site and compile useful statistics. Running Google Analytics can give you an overview of the big picture, and show you where you're succeeding and where you're going wrong.

Read Your Content from a User Perspective
It's well known that we often lose sight of the wood when surrounded by trees. In a similar way, you might be obsessed with the content on your site and still get it completely wrong. One of the best free SEO tools is fresh and original content. How sure are you that it's a description of what you have on your pages? Take some time to access your site from a user perspective and read the material as if it were on another site. If it's impossible to wear the shoes of an objective visitor, find one and study their reactions. You might be surprised by which things you thought were good actually receive a negative response, and vice versa.

Check Your Links
Think about your site with good link building in mind. How many of the links on your pages are unnecessary or irrelevant. Try to think like a user again, and follow the links to see if the sites they lead to are, in fact, any good. You might even find that some of them are no longer valid, and broken links make for a shoddy site.

And Finally, Get a Good Search Engine Optimisation Company to Do Most of the Work for You
Having taken a good look at your site and where you're going wrong in SEO terms, don't try to fix everything yourself. Bear in mind that without the necessary experience you could easily make things worse rather than better, by overfilling pages with new keywords for example.

Remember that good SEO is an investment in future prosperity, and that the returns on that investment can be better than you'd ever imagine. The internet reaches millions of people every day, and search engines are a powerful tool in bringing users to your pages. Without them acting as intermediary, showing the way to pages, you wouldn't receive traffic and without it, no more business. Think big and shoot for the stars. You might be surprised how far you go!