SEO Basics & Tips

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy or technique used to get your website(s) placed highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) so that you can drive more traffic from search engines to your sites.

Backlinks

Google revolutionized searching the web by becoming the first search engine to place emphasis on backlinks.  In the early days, you could put up a spammy website stuffed with keywords and get on the results pages for various search terms.  The way to eliminate these spammy sites from top search results was to place a much greater emphasis on backlinks.

Backlinks serve as votes across the world wide web.  If you have sites linking to you, there must be something worthwhile there.  The more backlinks a site has, the more popular the site is and the more authority the site likely has on its specific topic.  By weighing backlinks with keywords and other factors, Google and other search engines can easily find high quality websites that have authority on millions of keywords that are searched for every single day on the internet.

First Steps: Getting Online & Getting Indexed

Before you even worry about SEO, you should worry about getting your quality website on the internet and getting indexed in the major search engines. Either hire a designer or put the site on the web yourself.

Once you're up and running online, you need to make sure you're indexed in Google and other search engines (Google is the most important). You can submit your site directly to be crawled by Google using their submission form, or you can try to get indexed naturally by having another site link to you. In my opinion, it is much better to have Google find you naturally. Since your web presence is a long term project, there is no harm in being patient and letting it happen naturally. The benefits down the road are worth the wait.

If you have another website already indexed, you can use it to link to your new one, or find a website willing to link to a page on your site. That should do the trick.

Three High Level Important Factors

Next, there are a few important things you need to make sure you've checked off on your path to search engine dominance.

1. Clean HTML & Coding - Make sure your website has quality, clean coding. Make sure the standard coding conventions are followed and that Google will not frown upon trying to read your site and determine what it is all about.
2. Continuous Updates - I think that Google prefers sites that are dynamic and are constantly updated with quality content. Now, make sure you realize that I'm not saying you need to add content every day. It might not be every week. But, over time, you want Google to continue to find updated and new content on your website. This will tell Google to repeatedly index your site which is a good thing.
   
3. Clean, Direct Page Titles - Your page titles are absolutely crucial for SEO. Make sure your page titles include the keywords you want included, and keep them direct and concise. Don't feel the need to add more information other than the page title itself (for example, many people will add the website name after the page title - it's not necessary).

Getting Backlinks

If you've taken care of the above steps, it's time to kick your SEO into overdrive.  The focus here is backlinks.  In order to rank high for the keywords you want, you need backlinks.

Starting off, you may want to research the keywords you want to rank high for.  You can use Google's tools to determine the volume of searches and the competition for each one.  Once you've found the keywords that you're targeting, you're ready to pursue backlinks.

Backlinks can be obtained through the following methods:

1. Natural Backlinks - Over time, if you have quality content, people will naturally link to your site.  Google hopes for 100% natural backlinks, but obviously that's not the case.
2. Link Exchange - You might trade links with another website.  Google most likely definitely notices a reciprocal link exchange and probably devalues them accordingly.  You may or may not be able to get around this by trading one-way links if you have multiple sites.
3. Relationships - Work on building relationships with other website owners and operators.  If the person likes you, they will probably more likely do you a favor and link to your site.

I'm not a fan of pursuing spammy links from message boards, forums, article directories.  I don't think Google buys them as Google can easily decipher quality, natural links from these.

Quality Vs. Quantity

In this argument, I think you want both.  However, you will hit a ceiling without quality links.  You will need some high quality sites (determined by Google page rank) to link to your site.  Hopefully over time, you will increase both the quantity and the quality of your backlinks to your site.

SEO is not a sprint.  It's a marathon.  It is constant.  As long as you operate your website, you will tweak your SEO.  Remember, SEO is fluid and changing.  Google may change the rules, so you will need to monitor changes on the web.  Also, you're competing with other sites so you have to continue to outpace websites that are fighting for the same spots as you.

If you have a quality website, by just taking the steps discussed in this article, you can definitely place in the keywords you need to place in and drive traffic to your site.  Good luck!