Understanding SEO

For those wanting a successful online business or are trying to make money online, learning search engine optimization should be a priority.  Search engine optimization is the process of using on site techniques and off site techniques to rank your website well in the search engines.  One of the biggest follies that the majority of new online business owners make is placing priority on search engine satisfaction over visitor satisfaction.  If you do manage to rank your website well in the search engines the visitors coming to your presence will be unsatisfied which means an extremely low conversion rate.  The more time you spend on your site trying to make visitors happy the more income your website will generate.  Visitor satisfaction is also a viable search engine optimization method because a website which truly fills visitor needs and is extremely helpful will have a much better chance of being linked to by other websites within the niche.

To begin search engine optimization begin with your presence.  Think of a niche that you have an expertise in and use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to look for keywords which have enough traffic to support your online income goals.  Place your main keywords in the URL, titles, and the first few sentences of content.  These are the areas that Google and the other major search engines look at first and the hardest.  You should also optimize your navigation system.  This will be your best form of internal optimized link building.  To optimize navigation remove all generic terms replacing them with the keywords you would like the page to rank well for.  Next make sure that every page of your site has a link to the main pages of your site.  Finally never forget the importance of continuous unique content updates on your site. 

The final aspect of search engine optimization which also is considered under the broader term of internet marketing is link building.  When building links make sure you focus on whitehat ethical link building.  The main underlying focus of any link building campaign should be natural link building.  This is the process of creating content on your presence that when read by webmasters and bloggers they automatically link to you.  To get indexed and help your presence in the search engines manual link building is also quite helpful.  There are thousands of places that are great for links building and some of the best include article directories, free web directories, and link exchanges.  For link exchanges I recommend using the free service at linkmarket.net.  This is a link exchange directory which automates the process of exchanging links with other web presences.  For article directories simply go to Google and search for “list of article directories”.  Free web directories may be the most boring to create, but are also the easiest form of one way links.  One of the largest sources of free web directories you can find at directorycritic.com.