Important Search Engine Optimization Tips (SEO for Beginners)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains the buzz word in the internet marketing world despite the increasing use of other internet marketing methods. Is your website effectively optimized for search engines? How much website traffic do you get? Here are a few pointers to help you increase your search engine traffic.

Search Engine Optimization Begins with Keywords

There are quite a number of aspects to search engine optimization but one of the most important is keyword research and use. Before you even register your domain name you should do some basic keyword research to determine what keywords you are going to use and then include these in your domain name, file names as well as throughout your content and in important places on each and every page.

Where to Include Your Keywords

So where should you include your chosen keywords on your web pages? As I have mentioned above, they should be in your domain and file names but they should also be in your Meta tags, the title of your page, in bold somewhere near the top of your page, in alt tags for graphics, in anchor text for links and throughout the content of your blog or website.

Meta Tags are Still Important

A couple of years ago quite a few people felt that Meta tags may go out of fashion because the content itself began to play an an ever more important part in search engine optimization, but this has not been the case – Meta tags are still important. At the very least you should have a title tag, keywords tag and description tag. Beyond this you may include others such as robots, etc.

Link Building for Search Engine Optimization

Many link building tools offer benefits in their own right but they are also very important for search engine optimization. A good example is social media marketing that has become a very popular tool for marketing - but the links you have on your social media sites to your blog or website can also help with your search engine optimization, get you multiple listings on the search engines, etc.

The more links you can get to your blog or website using social media marketing, article marketing, banner advertising, etc. the better. Use as many marketing tools as you can to get as many links as possible.

Technical Optimization

In addition to keywords and link building for search engine optimization there is also the aspect of technical optimization which means ensuring that your website is properly designed. Ensuring that your website follows good standards for the code it is written in is an important part of search engine optimization.

Technical optimization means that your website should be as easy as possible for the search engine robots (spiders) to read. If you had to use a text-only browser to view your blog or website you should still be able to see your site properly and the content should still be readable. Websites that have written content in Flash, graphics, etc. or just contain images are lacking in the department of technical optimization and will generally not rank well on the search engines.

You should also ensure that there are no so-called ‘dead’ links on your website where a site or page used to exist but no longer does, as this can harm your search engine rankings. Also, make sure that the code on your website is well designed including end tags in HTML, etc. You can use a code validator from W3.org to ensure that your website is correctly coded.

Sitemaps and Submissions

Once you have created your website choosing and using the right keywords and have ensured that it is technically optimized, another way you can help to improve your search engine rankings is by using sitemaps and submitting these to Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines that allow for this. This helps to get your blog/website indexed faster and more correctly and can keep them up to date with what is happening on your website.

Search engine optimization can greatly enhance the amount of website traffic you receive if done correctly. Proper search engine optimization includes keyword optimization, technical optimization, Meta tags and link building. Submitting sitemaps to the search engines can also help to improve your results and get you indexed.

Good luck!