How to do SEO Properly

My mom always tell me that if I can't do it properly then don't do it at all. It wasn't long before I realized that if I lived life by that standard then I won't be able to do much at all mainly because only a few of us can do it right the first time. The same is true in SEO.  Chances are you won't be able to do it right the first time. Nice thing though is that there is a list of things that have been proven to be right both by the gurus and by time itself.SEO is a challenge in itself especially if you're targeting a market that has lots of very able competitors but since search engine optimization is not an exact science, even the newbie of all newbies stands a chance against the giants.  I've seen websites dominate a particular keyword for months only to see them vanish from the SERPs.Now that we know that SEO offers a level playing field, it's time that we move on to our list.  It can be divided into two major steps which are:1. Onpage Optimization2. Offpage OptimizationOnpage Optimization is the process wherein you make sure that the keywords you are targeting are located in the proper places allthroughout your website.  These places are:1. The Title Tag2. The H1, H2 and H3 tags3. The first paragraph of your content4. The last paragraph of your content5. The footer of your website6. The "alt" attributes of images7. The "title" attributes of inner linksTo cover all bases, you may also want to add a meta description and a meta keywords tag.  Most importantly, do not overstuff your webpages with your keywords.  Put them in naturally.  Think of good content that readers will love to read and you'll notice that your keywords will fall in their proper places.Assuming that you've done all those already, the next step would be offpage optimization.  This part is tougher but is very important because search engines no longer base everything on your website alone.  They now look for other websites that talk about your website and try to analyze the relationship between the two.  The closer the relationship the better.Offpage optimization is often called link building and here's what you should do:1. Submit your website to directories.2. Ask your friends who have websites to link to your website if possible.3. Write good articles on your website.  If you write good enough, people will naturally link to you from their websites.Offpage optimization takes more time than onpage optimization but it's definitely necessary.  The belief is that more natural links you get, the better rank you'll have.Lastly, there are a couple of things to avoid:1. Don't plagiarize other people's content2. Don't spamDo these and you'll probably get a good ranking in the search engines before you know it.  After all, no challenge is unbeatable.